Some of the popular ways to find fresh content are:
●
Polling your customers
●
Read interactions on Facebook
●
Ask for feedback in a newsletter
But what if you don’t have a big following, or don’t have the
time to sort through massive amounts of blogs and comments?
We’ve put together five quick
and efficient ways to come up with proven blog topics that your audience wants
to read about.
Google Suggest
A shortcut for doing basic keyword research, without logging
into your keyword tools, is to use
the Google search bar. In an effort to make searching easier for users, once
you start typing, Google suggests
similar phrases that other searchers are using.
This is nice from a search perspective because you typically
don’t have to finish typing your phrase to get what you are looking for. It
also brings up some phrases that you might not think of yourself.
I often find myself looking for something online, but not
knowing exactly what the phrasing is for my search.
Now , put your
writer’s hat on. Google is literally
serving up blog ideas on a silver platter with the suggested search phrases.
These are words and sentences that actual users are typing in to find things!
Spend a little time typing words into the search bar, but don’t hit enter. This gives you
the drop down shown in the picture above. If you don’t find something that
grabs you right away, then just hit
space and type “a”… then backspace
and type “b”, etc.
Lots of possibilities!
Twitter is so
valuable for up to date news and trends in any industry that you want to
search. The search.twitter.com dashboard that twitter built has the ability to
really drill down by category and #hashtags.
Here is some more good info on searching twitter for business growth.
Searching for subjects that people are looking for with your
own ideas is the long way, so
why not find out what people list in their profiles. This gives us a much
better idea of what people want and care about.
In comes FollowerWonk. SeoMoz built an awesome tool to slice and
dice, your friends, or ANYONE’s twitter profile. One of the functions that I
like to use is the words listed in people’s bios. Below is a word cloud that I
made in FollowerWonk with the people who follow me on Twitter.
As you can see a lot of my followers talk about marketing, real
estate, and the internet. If you go a little deeper you can also see people in
my fan group are entrepreneurs and fathers. Those two pieces of information
alone were worth doing this search once. I know the tone to use in my blog
posts should be around having your own business, and can be family oriented.
The possibilities with this tool are huge! You can go to a
thought leader in your industry and see the word cloud of their following, or
pick out a competitor that is active on Twitter, and see what their audience
finds important! (This may spin a blog
post strictly on FollowerWonk!)
One of the 3 things I look forward to most in my email inbox
each week is Quora. Some of the best, most thought provoking questions come
from this website. It’s literally the best place to go ask a question and get
an intelligent answer from an expert.
Don’t just think of this place like the old Yahoo Answers
either. There are great SEO implications by being involved here as an expert
yourself. The rise of social signals in the search engine optimization formula
makes places like Quora a goldmine gaining expertise and authority online.
Another nice thing about Quora is the diversity of the
questions asked on the website. There are a lot of good mainstream typical
queries answered, but there is also a very creative side as well.
I always like to read outside of my industry and main hobbies
to get a different take on life. The best ideas always come from the edge of
your comfort zone and expertise, and
Quora is a place for exploration.
Case Studies
Everyone wants to see how something works on a real business. I
am personally a “show me how“ type of guy, that likes to see
process and then the results. If you show me big numbers and big promises
without proof, then you can count me out.
Human nature is similar. If you tell me something without proof
I may explore it, but if you show me something convincing, then I will pursue
it.
So find clients or customers that you were able to do good things for, and document that
journey. Creating a story around the things you did successfully will not only
give you new blog ideas, but act as a great testimonial for your business.
Twitter has become a powerful way to engage people in live
events and find out their opinions and challenges right away. Here is a good
case study on live
tweeting during large television events.
Feature a customer
Nothing pumps up the popularity with your customers like a
chance to be featured. This is another way to build testimonials and content
for your blog at the same time.
Start by sending an email or putting up a social media post
asking your customers if they want to be featured on your website? Direct them
to send in an email with…
What they bought
How the process went
What would you change?
Now you hopefully have a nice grouping of honest customer
feedback, and a feature blog post to write on how that customer’s interaction
went. As a bonus they will most certainly give you some additional things to
work on as a business. Now go blog it up with your new info(!)
There are tons of ways to spark the mind for creative business
content. Whatever you do, spend your time looking in places that speed up that
process!
From Guest Blogger:
Jake Jordan is a Marketing
Strategist @AgencyEntourage, a Dallas, TX Advertising Agency that specializes in
content creation and strategy via email campaigns, social media and blogs. Find
out about their tailored plans at http://agencyentourage.com
Jake on Google+>
