When you are a blog writer it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the task of finding new or useful content for your bloggers on a daily basis. It makes it easier to break down into categories like tips and advice or how to's. But what about in between all of those traffic driving posts? You need to have a variety of content to offer to keep your readers coming back daily for updates and new posts.
How does one master blogging you might be wondering?
Well, check out some tips below on how to create topics and ideas for your blogs for a full year:
Get organized: centralize all your post ideas: There’s nothing more frustrating that losing fantastic ideas that could be filling critical slots in your content calendar. One way to avoid that is to start your process by centralizing your ideas. Whether it’s a spreadsheet on your computer, a file on your Google Drive or DropBox account, or another tab in your project management software, commit to this early.
Transition this to a content calendar: Another key strategy for making your content marketing efforts successful is to ensure that you’re maintaining a content calendar. This can be an easy transition from the idea storage list above. Your editorial calendar’s objective is simple: to outline the pieces of content that you’re on the hook for, the dates that they’re run, and what you intend to talk about. Having this ensures that you’ll be able to meet your content goals, easily fit this deliverable into your schedule, and delegate responsibilities when necessary.
Ways to brainstorm topic ideas: For some people, it’s helpful to have that topic target in mind because it lets you know when you can stop looking for new titles. For others, free form brainstorming creates less pressure and allows them to be more generative with their approach. Whatever works for you is okay; just set yourself up for success.
One very fruitful approach for coming up with topics that will be of interest to both customers and prospects is to create a list of the most frequently asked questions that you hear during customer interactions. Another approach to this same type of exercise is to imagine sales conversations or informational conversations with specific types of customers.
Another goldmine of potential topics is social media. Hopefully, your company is active on social media and engaging with your customers and fans. After all, social media is one of the three pillars of SEO. In addition to sharing your content, you can use social media to help brainstorm a number of topic ideas.
Print and online publications in your space are another avenue to get ideas of the latest topics and trends to capture your industry. While many industry publications are geared toward professionals rather than customers, it’s possible to focus on translating these topics into materials that are appropriate for customers.
Another way to connect your SEO strategy and your content marketing strategy together is through keywords. After all, one of the goals of developing online content is to help you rank well for specific words. There’s a simple system that you can use to tie your SEO campaign to your content generation.
I like the voice memo's on smartphones that allow you to take note of your ideas regardless of where or how busy you are. What other ways do you use to gather topics and targets when thinking about new content?
Article Source: Search Engine Journal
Image Source: Kristina B on Flickr
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