Blogging is great for business, in fact, businesses with a blog get 55% more website visitors than businesses that don’t. The hard part, however, is picking the right content to publish on your blog. It can be difficult to know what your consumers are looking for or what sort of questions they may have - we get it! We’re here to help and give you some great tips to generate the best blog tips for your audience.

What Should I Blog About for My Business? 

Maybe you have your business’s blog newly up and running, or it’s been alive and well for months or years ... but if you feel like you have a blank slate when it comes to blogging for your business, we've got some fresh ideas to inspire you. The key to writing a blog for a business is to have content that connects with your audience - both current and potential customers -  but simultaneously promotes your industry expertise and your business as a whole. The average blog takes about 3.5 hours to write, so don’t waste time trying to decide what you should blog about. Here are 3 simple steps you can take to figure out what you should blog about...

If you don’t know, ask! The main point of your blog is to write content that your readers will actually consume. Sending out a survey to your contacts or email list, or posting questions on social media, allows consumers to voice their opinion. A great tool to create surveys on is SurveyMonkey. Their surveys are easily shareable and accessible to everyone. You can break down the survey into business categories, product offerings, or industry topics and choose whether it’s multiple-choice, or open-ended!

Social media is a great tool to utilize when trying to figure out what to blog about. All platforms of social media are fantastic ways of finding out what people are talking about. Research target topics and see what sort of questions consumers are asking... what tweets are shared with frustration, what industry groups have discussions that can be a goldmine of potential topics, and where can you join the conversation with your audience? You can develop blog ideas from there. Take some time to look at both those in your industry and outside your industry, too. For those in the same field as you: what are they writing about? What topics are trending on their blog? For those outside your industry: how are they talking about themselves (and their products or services) in a creative, interesting, and informative way? What ideas does their blog content give you? 

3. Share Your Story 

Consumers may turn to your blog simply to learn more about your business. Share news about your business - whether it’s exciting industry news or trends, product development, or an employee anniversary. Think about the insights your team has found interesting lately, too. Sharing insider information is a great way to become more connected with your readers and give them a little insight into your brand - and show them how much you know. 

How to Develop Blog Topics

So you have a general idea of what your consumers are interested in, now you have to decide what exactly your blog topic is going to be and develop it. There are some great tools out there you can check out to further investigate your topic.

• Quora: A Q&A website that is completely free and loaded with endless questions and answers, a perfect spot to find a blog topic. You can look through various niches and find out what people are talking about and what questions are getting the most attention. 

• Google Keyword Planner: One of the most common tools out there to find keywords and their rankings is through Google Keyword Planner. This free tool is also great for finding ‘hot’ topics or keywords and creating a blog out of it. 

• BuzzSumo: This tool allows you to find the content that performs the best. It does this in one of two ways, either keyword-based search or domain-based search.

Best Blog Topics for Your Business

Every industry is different in what blog topics are best. Knowing who your buyer persona(s) are and what they’re looking for is a great starting point, but looking deeper into your industry for topics can be extremely beneficial. Focusing content on trending topics within your industry will allow you to reach an even wider audience. Not to mention, it can make you more of an expert in your industry. There are more than 600 million blogs on the internet right now, that’s a lot of competition. Some great topics to get you started and help you stand out:

• Customer Success Story 
• Dispute Common Myths
• Pose Your Own Question
• Create a ‘How To” Blog
• Discuss Future Plans
• Review Something (a book, product, service, etc)
• Write a Series 
• Tips and Tricks 

6 Formatting Tips to Boost Your Blog's Read-ability

Another important aspect of writing a blog is readability. There are different ways you can format your blogs that can make them easier to read, skim through, and comprehend. Some of these blog style formats include:

Blogs that include lists are everywhere. Lists are a great way to condense information and make the blog more skimmable. They can make the content easier to digest and share with others. ‘Listicles’ - as these types of blogs are often called - are even more likely to go viral compared to blogs that don’t include lists. 

2. ADD INFOGRAPHICS AND IMAGES 

Infographics and images drive more visitors to your site and raise more awareness. Incorporating these within your blog can also help break up large bodies of text so they are easier to digest. People tend to remember 65% of the information they see in a visual versus 10% of the information they hear about. Infographics are also extremely eye-catching. Research shows 28% of readers are more likely to find what information they need quickly if the content includes an infographic and/or image they can scan.

3. WRITE A HOW-TO GUIDE

How-to’s or tutorials are a great way to connect with and involve readers - especially prospective customers and clients - in your blog. These are the most educational type of format because they directly answer the question your audience may have. When writing how-to’s make sure to break each step down into an easily actionable task so it doesn’t seem quite so daunting. 

Incorporating a questionnaire or survey into your blog can be a fantastic way to engage with readers. Asking questions and seeing the consumers answers is a great way to better your future content as well. Google forms is a great tool to utilize when creating questionnaires or surveys. Q&A’s, similar to questionnaires, are perfect for asking those frustrating questions the audience may have and providing an answer. Most consumers are going to blogs specifically to have a question answered, so providing those answers with various questions is a great way to encourage more readers to digest your content. 

5. WRITE A SERIES

Series are a great format to use to keep readers coming back to your blog for more. One idea may be too big for just one blog post, so split it up! Series are a great way to create more anticipation for your readers and even improve your SEO when you can incorporate links to the past blogs organically.

Video blogs, also called vlogs, have been increasingly popular with all the social platforms incorporating video. Video blogs are great for getting your content out to different platforms and reaching different consumers. Using video gives the listener a better chance to really connect with you and your business. Videos are much more personal and entertaining for consumers to watch. Video blogs are also perfect to share on various social platforms as well, such as Instagram or Twitter.

Every blog doesn’t have to be the same, that’s the beauty of the internet! Yours should stand out because that’s what readers are looking for. Writing on topics that matter to both you and your potential customers can elevate your company is and take your blog to the next level.