03 Jun How To Choose What To Write About
I don’t know how many times I’ve sat down to start writing, only to find my mind blank. To have no ideas and no clue where to go. It’s not an uncommon problem. It’s called writer’s block, and many people who are not natural writers suffer even more so.
What should we write about? If we have a business blog, what should we be blogging about? How can we possibly keep our readers interested?
These are common questions among small business bloggers, and today I’ll present to you half a dozen quick, simple, and easy solutions to help you solve this mind-numbing problem.
Number one, I always suggest that you start with your customers.
Yes, very, very important. After all, are not these the people who will be reading your blog? Are not these the people who will be digesting it, sharing it, talking to their friends about it, we hope? Of course. So, firstly and foremostly, we must make sure that the content of our articles–the theme of our blog–is highly interesting to our readership, to our customers.
A good way to find out what they want is to ask them. You can do that with a simple question going out by email with your weekly newsletter.
Or you can do an online survey, perhaps at your blog, or maybe through Facebook or some other medium. I like to use a website called ‘Survey Monkey’, which makes it very easy for me to collect a survey, up to 100 responses free, and find out exactly what it is that my customers, my readers, are looking for.
Today, I’m writing about blogging for small business and how to choose what to write about. How did I know that was a good topic? Because it’s a question that I get asked time and time again. ‘Paul, what should we write about?‘These are the answers.
Another good way to get ideas is to do some keyword research. If you use something like the Google External Keyword tool, you can simply punch in your area of interest, ask it to search, and it will come back to you with a whole bunch of ideas, keyword phrases, of what people are actually looking for, searching for, in Google. This is a fantastic way to get ideas, food for thought for new title suggestions. Of course, it only takes a moment to take one subject that people are searching for and turn that into a ‘How To…’ And of course, how-to’s are great article starters. Yes, or perhaps “Six Ways To” or “Three Ways To Understand…” or “What You Didn’t Know About…”.
These are different title suggestions. Keyword research can give you a very, very fast access to hundreds of different keyword ideas and title ideas for your business blog.
Another place that you can look at is Yahoo Answers. I mentioned earlier that it’s great to write how-to articles. It’s also a brilliant idea to respond to questions. Yahoo Answers will give you questions, and of course answers. What you want to do is look through the questions. Look for popular questions. Go there, and simply search for your topic of interest, your business blog theme. The ideas, or things about the products that you sell. Look to find out what it is that people are asking about your product or service, and then answer it.
But don’t answer it at Yahoo Answers. Answer it on your blog in an article. This is a fantastic business model for online small business blogging.
Another thing you can look at is the latest news polls. Do they run polls and publish them in the news in your business or in your service sector? If they do, this will let you know exactly what people in your area, in your country, are looking for. And of course, you can then blog and write about those topics, those ideas. Give your feedback. Make it more than just an article; share both the article and your opinion on the article.
That’s the key to success. You see, anyone can write articles, just like anyone can run a poll. But your customers become interested in your opinions about these topics, about these issues. And that’s where your success in your blog will lie. Look at the news polls. They are a never-ending source of article inspiration.
You can also look at the latest news in the newspaper or on the television or on the radio, and pick up on stories in your related industry, for related products or related services. Yes, if you hear someone talking about some thing, why could you not also talk about it? Or even talk about them talking about it. There are many different ways to take. There are many different angles to take.
It all comes down to the fact that you must be open and you must be aware of what’s around you, to what’s being spoken about, to what’s in the media, to what people are talking about. Look at the latest news. And if you come up with something, if you see something, then that becomes a new blog post for your business.
Lastly, you could also look at just other hot topics. Look online. Use things like Google Trends, or more accurately, Insights for Search. If you find that things in your industry and things in your business or related products or services are on a trend spiraling upwards, why not comment on them? Add your thoughts. Add your feedback. Look at the latest Twitter trends. Look at Facebook trends. Look at what the people in your industry are talking about.
If they’re talking about it, chances are you can talk about it too, and your customers just might be interested. Hot topics are a great source of inspiration for your imagination, when it comes to writing and adding content to your small business blog.
There are 101 other ideas out there. Just be open to them, and go get them.
