An inbound marketing plan that works to grow your business requires a consistent flow of up-to-date, valuable information that your target audience cares about. Your company blog is an essential part of the mix.
Quality blog posts boost your website’s SEO by helping your site rank organically, keeping content relevant and fresh, strengthening your authority within your industry, and incorporating backlinks.
It’s not hard to launch a blog and publish a few good articles in your first month, quarter, or year, but business blogging is a marathon, not a sprint. Without shared buy-in, a strategic direction, a tactical plan, and accountability, your blog can quickly go dark and fail to support your business growth.
Plus, there’s the pesky perennial question: What should you be blogging about, anyway?
If these challenges sound familiar, here’s some good news: Great business blog ideas are everywhere you look.
In this post, we’ve rounded up some of Weidert Group’s most dependable sources for generating fresh blog topic ideas.
And when it comes to B2B blogging, the first place to look should always be your customer.
Understanding who you’re trying to reach is essential; understanding what they care about and why, helps you create content that attracts, engages, and delights those specific individuals. Remember, while it can be satisfying to watch traffic and engagement increase, the metrics that matter most to your bottom line are conversions. Target the folks who actually need your product or service and speak to the challenges they face.
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How do you know what’s relevant to your prospects and customers? First off, they tell you. Mine your voice of the customer (VoC) resources. Dig into CRM reports, customer surveys, reviews, and questions that come in through contact forms, website chats, ticketing systems, and customer service hotlines.
And those are just the direct sources. Consider these other ways to tap into customers, prospects, and your industry for solid blog topic ideas:
Dig into search data for keyword insights. Review analytics and keyword research to understand what drove traffic in the past. Explore for insights into not only subject matter, but also content formats and tone that best resonate with your target audience. Consider how well different types of blogs perform, including:
Blog performance data can give you an idea of what you’re doing well, and which blog post ideas haven’t hit the mark. How do you know what’s working? Consider more than traffic: time on page, conversion rates, blog comments, and social shares can all indicate value to your audiences.
While your blog itself is vital content, you can also use it to promote other content pieces you’ve created to address customer interests and needs. Use internal linking and calls-to-action within your blog articles to promote related content such as:
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Tap your sales team for insights into the content that’s most timely and relevant, and create a “highlight” post that features your video or links to the selected content piece.
And don’t forget the value of updating and refreshing high-performing older blog posts. Make sure you’re delivering relevant, valuable content to your readers while you revise for structure, links, and updated best practices. A subtle refresh can boost an old blog’s SERP position.
While it can feel self-indulgent to showcase what goes on within your company’s (figurative) own four walls, interesting blog column topics can come from the inside, too. Customer relationships are human, and human stories can attract, engage, and delight, too.
Maybe your company history is intriguing, or your team pulled together to support a local nonprofit (which can also benefit from an online shout-out). As long as you keep things in balance, why not brainstorm a few article ideas that show your customers the human side of the people they do business with? Consider column article topics including:
Finally, there’s always a strong case for the creative brainstorming session. Like a thunderstorm, a brainstorm involves many elements: clouds, rain, thunder, lightning, wind, etc. Each element adds a layer of intensity, interest, and complexity.
The same is true for brainstorming; if you want a whirlwind of good column topics, you need a lot of brains. Remember these tips when brewing up your content storm:
If you’ve read this far you’ve probably already compiled a list of potential column ideas for your business blog. That’s fantastic — but don’t stop there. The B2B Business Builder’s Guide to Blogging can help you develop and execute all the critical components of a successful blog that supports your website SEO and inbound growth strategy. Just click the link below to download your free copy.
Topics: Inbound Marketing, Content Marketing
