If you’ve been reading the Hughes & Co, blog enough, you’ll already know how important blogging is to your digital marketing strategy.
Blogging is a great tool to build your website traffic but, is only truly effective when you are writing blogs that are of interest to your target market.
Every once in awhile we all run into that feeling; you know the one where no matter what you do something interesting and relevant to write just isn’t coming to you.
When we run into that situation, we like to revisit these simple ideas, for inspiration yes but, also for reminder and guidance.
Solve a problem
Solving your customer's problems, it’s one of inbound marketing’s guiding principles. Perhaps we forget that every once in awhile.
Sit back and think, what questions have my customers been asking lately? Or what problems can I help new customers solve? Write a blog on the ways that you can help your customer, the solutions you offer.
In fact, we’re doing it right now. How to generate blog topics is a huge question our clients ask often and these are just some of the solutions we are able to offer.
Write a new blog series and build out
Blog series are a favourite of ours, they draw in your readers and create a weekly interest and intent. Blog series also allow us to plan content ahead of time, that way, you may be stuck today but, for the next four blog posts you are set with a solid structure and idea.
You will still need to find a series. Think, is there a topic you wanted to write on but, haven’t because the post would hit over 500 words? Break that topic down into a series. Do you have a number of platforms on which your product or services could be used? Write a series on the different applications by platform. A great series inspiration can be found in the #throwbackthursday hashtag; introduce a blog that shares a concept one day every week or month.
Take inspiration from successful industry blogs
It is very easy to look at a successful blog and want to borrow content or original ideas from it but, stealing is never okay, instead you should be using other blogs for topic inspiration. Find a blog that is doing things well, and scan through their topics. This breeds ideas and room for growth
What we suggest doing specifically is looking at a particular blog that worked and then repurposing that idea for your niche product/service and target market. Chances are that successful blog has had the time to develop a blog structure that works, they are experts and that is why they succeed.
Write about what is trending in your market
There are a number of great sites that you can visit to find the top trending articles on the web. These websites breakdown articles by topic so that you can see what your target market is interested in reading. Those articles that are trending are trending because 1, they are useful and 2, they are relevant to your audience.
So what website should you be visiting? We recommend visiting Alltop and BuzzSumo.
Use a structure
/blog/busting-blogging-myths sometimes going back to something as simple as a structure, refuels your imagination. There are a number of go-to blog structures that we use, and today we’re sharing:
- The List Post
- The How-To Post
- The Stats Post
- The Newsworthy Post
- The Review Post
- The Video breakdown Post
- The Case Study Post
Looking for more advice on blogging and how to create blogs that get read, connect with us at Hughes & Co. today. Hughes & Co. is an Ontario based inbound marketing agency.