Ideas for content for marketing your business: what to blog about?
Ideas for content for marketing and knowing what to blog about starts with strategy
Like most things clever in your business, strategy comes first. And that’s no different when it comes to knowing what to blog about and generating ideas for content for your business website. Whether you’re a small business or a large enterprise, if you don’t have a solid strategy for your content for marketing your business using organic search tactics, chances are you’re not going to get the long-term results you want.
There are lots of different ways to approach ideas for content for marketing your business, but one of the best is to start with a broad topic that’s relevant to your industry or niche, and then break it down into more specific sub-topics. For example, if you are a therapist, a broad topic could be “anxiety”. From there, you could break it down into sub-topics like “social phobias” (further sub-topic: managing social phobia at work) or “panic disorders” (further sub-topic: dealing with panic attacks). This is often referred to as a pillar and content cluster strategy and is a terrific method for strategically planning what to blog about and generating ideas for content that will keep you going for a full year (this is exactly the method we use when we create 12-month content calendars full of ideas for content as part of our Clever Marketing Plan).
The broader topics you choose as your pillar ideas for content should align closely with your core services. It can be easy to get off topic—I’ve been there!—and think that you know what to blog about simply because you have a whole lot of ideas for content around a range of topics that you care about. It’s an easy trap to get fixated on tangential topics that may well be very interesting and are often still relevant, but are unlikely to build an immediate connection to the problems you solve, unlikely to hold long-term search marketing value, and—worse—will probably bring the wrong audience to your business—people who want to buy what you’re talking about instead of the core service you really want to sell. This brings me to my next point.
You can't know what to blog about unless you know who you're writing to
If you’ve put in the work to tightly define your target audience, you will find it a lot easier to know what to blog about and to generate ideas for content that are specific to that audience in ways that boost the content for marketing across your entire business. If you haven’t, I would highly recommend doing some research on this before you start coming up with ideas for content. It will save you a lot of time and effort in the long run because you won’t be flailing about, trying to figure out who you’re talking to.
Most marketing agencies encourage you to create client personas for your business; but honestly, I find these too impersonal and they always struggle to connect in the deeply human way that you need in order to build long-term relationships with your ideal client. Disconnected content is not content for marketing. It’s a one-off with no long-term or ‘evergreen’ value and is more often than not a huge waste of your valuable time and budget. Plus it takes ages to ‘imagine up’ a fake client persona.
At my digital agency in Sydney, we advise you to use real humans and actual clients that you know and love as the basis of your audience. It’s much easier to think about who your favorite clients are, what makes them awesome, and the ways you have talked to them in the past that have connected and built that relationship. Talking to the real people that make up your audience makes it a million times easier to build ideas for content for marketing that works.
Knowing your ideal client can be helpful to identify the ideas for content that have not worked in the past, completely changing the success rate and your ROI on the effort or budget associated with the creation of that sort of content. Identifying your ideal clients so you know what to blog about makes it easier to go from zero to generating content for marketing that actually works to bring in business. Have a couple of these clients in mind for different aspects of your business or your services, and you’ll have real humans to talk to — helping enormously with tone, pitch and precisely what to blog about.
Pinpoint what to blog about by researching your competition for even more ideas for content
Now, the value of researching your competition is often under-valued, particularly in niche businesses with a very specific target market. But did you know that your competitors can be a fabulous mine of topic ideas and topic gaps that help you know exactly what to blog about to boost your content for marketing success. When you start doing research on your competitors, you should be looking for:
- The overall quality of their website and blog.
- How much traffic they are getting in general.
- Whether or not their target market is the same as yours.
What you’ll quickly realise is that, in many cases, your worthy competitors (the ones nailing it with valuable, high-traffic content) aren’t really doing anything special. But what they are doing is writing content for marketing that appeals to their audience and structuring that content around a clear strategy to create content for marketing that increases their visibility in search engines such as Google. And how do they know what to blog about to appeal to their audience? They know their clever, that’s how.
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The golden rule for knowing what to blog about: know your clever
What makes you you is the result you can bring to your clients. It’s who they are and what their problem is + your solution = how that makes them feel. Note that this has absolutely nothing to do with how you do what you do. Your clients don’t want to know the ins and outs of how you do your job. They want to know how you will change their lives. This can be determined by all sorts of factors from your values, to your process, to the tools you use.
When it comes to your content for marketing, this means specifically addressing client problems and writing about how your solution solves them. Knowing what to blog about means knowing how your service makes your clients feel. Nail that and the ideas for content will flow.
Align content for marketing goals and know what to blog about to achieve business objectives
Writing for the sake of it may hold some value in helping you nut out an idea or communicate a timely message, but what is it really doing for your business? Is the creation each piece of content going to hold value beyond the initial people who learn of its existence? If you’re serious about building a valuable business then you will be equally serious about seeing return on investment for your digital marketing efforts. This means knowing what to blog about and focussing your efforts on ideas for content that actually deliver a return on the investment you made to create it.
If you can directly link every piece of content for marketing you create to a marketing goal you are trying to achieve, you will get more out of your marketing efforts and should be able to in turn directly create your content for marketing goals that deliver a business objective.
Publishing online via your website should mean creating content for marketing goals that actually deliver business value. That value can grow over time as more of the right people discover and share your insights on a platform that you, and only you, own—your business website.
Marketing goal examples that influence what to blog about:
- Attracting high-quality visitors.
- Generating leads.
- Converting clients.
- Educating clients about how your services can give them results.
Each of these marketing goals should in turn align with a business objective. That way all of your ideas for content are more than just ideas. They are content for marketing that moves your business where you want it to go.
So get strategising — first detail your business objectives, then devise marketing goals to help you achieve them. Trust me, once those jobs are done it will be SO much easier to know what to blog about and you’ll have ideas for content tapping straight from your brain to your keyboard.
Ideas for content — get your pen and paper ready!
Now you know your strategy, your audience, and your competition you’re most of the way there. Add to that the special sauce of what makes you unique—your clever—and you’re on the verge of a recipe book full of ideas for content ready to go so you’re never wondering what to blog about again.
Key ideas to generate content for marketing that generates actual revenue and stops you guessing what to blog about
- Topic-based ideas for content start with your core services as broad topic areas for you to drill down on in sub-topics and related articles. These should be your key pillars of content for marketing that aligns with your business objectives.
- Thought leadership pieces that show you understand the problem and where your client is coming from—let your audience know you deeply understand their needs, form a connection and they’ll want to hear from you.
- Values-based ideas for content show potential clients that you’re just the kinda real person that they’re looking for because your values click with their own—again, demonstrating that you ‘get’ them, you get ‘it’ and you’re not just selling snake oil.
- ‘How to’ guides that show clients real solutions. Yes, it really is good to give away some of your knowledge for free — if you don’t show anything of what you know in what you write, how do prospective clients know you know anything at all?
- Use your content for marketing that answers real questions that your clients have. I actually find these to be some of the easiest sources of ideas for content and also the quickest articles to write because I’ve already written the answer for a real person. Trawling your email is a great way to discover these gems. I bet if you dig around, you’ll find a treasure trove of topic ideas and pre-written answers ready to morph into a blog post.
- Look at what your competitors are writing about and see if there are any relevant gaps you could address better — this can be a great way to discover what to blog about to specifically separate you from your competitors. Keyword research is an easy way to identify these gaps using tools like Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest.
- Write about how your services make people feel. As an example, here at my web design agency, I often talk about how our clever combination of strategy, process and technology makes it easier for small businesses to operate online. This deeply resonates with my clever and creates content for marketing that connects with the exact types of people who are looking for the clever we can add to their online businesses.
- Think about the marketing goals you have set up and the goals you are trying to achieve for your business and write your content for marketing strategically with a specific goal in mind.
Other ideas on what to blog about for your business
- Case studies from clients about how you helped them. Case studies can be de-personalised) to protect the identity of your client if you can’t use specifics. Demonstrating the ways in which you have helped one client can go along way to showing a potential prospect how you can help them too. Getting ROI on your content for marketing can be as easy as giving your ideal audience a better opportunity to know, like and trust you.
- Case studies on your process in relation to a specific problem solved. Remember, by ‘process’, we’re not talking about the technical aspects of getting the job done, but all the ways that you work your magic to make your client feel amazing. This sort of article should ideally name the client helped if possible, but you can write this type of case study without the client’s input. Do always check they’re ok with it before hitting publish though, and grab an accompanying testimonial if you can! Case studies create excellent content for marketing with social proof built in.
- State of play articles on industry best practices as they relate to your core services, showing you’re ahead of the curve.
- Business-specific posts about updates to your service offerings, your processes, or your team and why the changes are awesome— these can be fun ideas for content that make it easy to flesh out your content calendar.
- Industry news can provide great ideas for content that is highly relevant to client needs. A specific example of this is changing visa requirements for immigration agencies! Keep this info updated as people needing your services will be searching for quality advice about industry changes. This stuff is great for search-based discovery.
Ready to plan out your ideas for content?
Has this got the cogs in your brain turning? You should now be brimming with ideas on what to blog about specific to your business, your clients and your clever. Ideas for content for your business should be tailored to what your target market wants to read or else you’re creating content for marketing with a short lifespan and no direct business value — and that’s not really marketing at all. Make the investment in your marketing time or budget and get a proper strategy lined up to give you real ROI on your efforts.
Always remember to keep your ideas for content and your writing style focused on your audience and their needs, and you’ll be writing better content for marketing. You’ll also know what to blog about to create a real connection with the exact types of people you want to help so your content can keep attracting and converting clients for your business long after you write it.
Need help knowing what to blog about to align your content to your business goals? Check out our virtual Chief Marketing Officer service, where we lay strategic digital marketing foundations and provide ongoing support to maximise the return on marketing investment for your business.
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