A well-maintained blog that is consistently used is an important part of any robust and successful SEO-strategy. 

Any business can and should utilize a blog as an asset within its marketing strategy. Most businesses, and individuals, will eventually ask this question: "how do I choose a blog post topic?"

If you believe your business has something excellent to offer, you can create blog posts that help you create awareness of your product and connect with consumers. Need help getting started? Follow these simple steps to help you choose the blog post topics that will help your business achieve its goals.It is easy and dangerous to believe that there is nothing, or not enough, that will be interesting to consumers, clients or the general public. Do not believe this. A blog post about how to choose a blog post topic can be interesting. Whether your business is real estate, luxury cars or SEO strategy, you can create and publish interesting content on your blog.

 Step 1: Getting Started - Define a Goal 

A blog is a wonderful tool, if used properly. The first step in choosing a blog topic is defining what the goal of your blog is. Does your blog promote products? Does it drive traffic to landing pages? Does it provide for two-way communication with consumers? If you do not know why you have a blog, you will not be capable of providing excellent content on that blog. 

Step 2: What Data Can You Use?

Who is reading your blog? Who is responding to it? Which posts have been succesful? Which haven't been successful? How are readers finding your blog?

These are just some examples of questions you can answer that will help you choose a blog post topic. Data is your friend. Choose topics that people want to read. The data you have can help you determine what that is.

What if you do not have any blog posts yet? Don't despair, you can still produce successful blog posts. 

Step 3: Find Your Intended Audience

That is, who do you want to be reading your blog.  This answer should reflect the goal of your blog, defined in Step 1. If you have data you can use to help you define your ideal audience, that's great! If you don't, that's ok! 

For example:

• if your goal is to have people subscribe to an email list, what type of email list is it? What type of person would be interested in this information being emailed out?
• if your goal is to sell a product, who is buying that product and what do they search to find information on that product?

If you can answer these questions, you can start building a profile of your intended audience.

Creating a profile of the type of person you want to read your blog can help you choose your blog post topic. It can also help you decide "how" to write your post. What angle are you taking? Should you embed video or social media posts?

Step 4: Become an "Expert"

Don't worry, no Ph.D required. However, now you that you have a goal, data and an intended audience, you must become an expert on the topic you choose. The only way to do this is research. Know your topic backwards and forwards. You can glean the required information from many sources. Have authoritative blogs been written about this topic? What are social media users saying about the topic? Is there data that you can use to support your blog post? What images are available to you?

Only if you're expert on your chosen topic, can you produce the excellent content required to accomplish your goal. You will also find that it makes the actual content creation of the post much easier for the writer.

Step 5: Publish, Analyze and Repeat

Your content is king. Ensure you know your topic well before writing. Then ensure you review and edit your content extensively before publishing. Nothing hurts credibility more than simple errors. Only hit "publish" when you're confident your post is error-free.

Promotion is queen. Now that you have done all this work choosing a blog post topic and creating excellent content, you need to ensure readers find it and read it. Use promotion such as landing page links, social media and email lists to let people know about your post.

You have posted and promoted your blog post, congratulations! You now will have lots of great data to analyze. How many people found your blog post? Where did they find it? How many engagaged with the post or accepted your call-to-action? Did you reach your ideal audience?

The most important question is: did the blog post topic you chose help you reach your goal? If it did, consider how you can repeat this success. If it didn't, what needs to be modified to ensure your future posts help reach your goals? 

A well-written blog is a great tool for any business to use. Many people view the choosing of a blog post topic as the first step. However, this can be intimidating. If you follow these simple steps, though, you can ensure you're leveraging a blog properly for your business.

1. Define the goal of your blog

2. Find useful data

3. Define your intended blog audience

4. Research your blog post topic

5. Write, publish and analyze your blog post. Then, do it again!

Do you have a strategy for choosing blog post topics? What data have you found useful when analyzing what works and doesn't? Leave the strategy to us to increase web traffic and lead generation.