Not All Content Is Good Content
People often start a blog as a hobby, especially those who enjoy content writing. You would see people talking about their favourite beauty product or sharing the outfits they’ve worn - they covered it all. Businesses then discovered the art of blogging. Having a blog is an essential marketing resource for your business.
The issue isn’t about whether or not to create a blog for your business; it is what you want to publish. Creating original content can be difficult, whatever industry you’re in. The internet has so many ideas that it can be hard to get original. However, it’s not always what you say but how you say it that counts. Put your own spin on the content already out there to break the pattern.
Spruce Up The Boring Posts
The standard ‘Meet the Team’ post is boring. We’ve already met your team in the About section on your website. It is time to spruce things up a little bit. We want to know what your team are doing in their spare time. How did they get to be part of your team? Your blog isn’t a Tinder profile where we need to know their age, location and height with a generic photo next to their name. We’ve chosen to sweeten our ‘Team’ content by creating videos that share something about them. Lewis and James, two of our Account Managers, have been part of a ‘Get To Know’ series where we explored a specialist interest or something unique about them. Kieran answered 13 random questions about himself, allowing our followers to engage with the content. If you missed them, you should check out our YouTube channel!
It is easy to begin writing the standard posts you believe your customers want to read, but we want to see something different. Please give us a shareable infographic about how your business began rather than a paragraph or two of text explaining the history. It is about creating a piece of content that people will be able to remember and talk about when they are offline.
Share Your Niche
We once heard that to succeed within your industry, you must live and breathe the job you are doing. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) should already be a considerable part of your website, but it doesn’t need to stop there. The customers who return to your website will be looking for industry-specific information. A good piece of content should link back to your website and include relevant keywords to help build attraction to the business industry.
Take us, for example. We are a digital marketing company offering SEO, PPC, Social Media Management and Video Marketing services. It wouldn’t make sense for us to create a blog about the rising fuel prices as this isn’t something our audience is looking for when they come to us. However, we can talk about the increasing engagement rates when a business starts using video within its marketing strategy.
Unique Content
This is the juicy stuff that we are talking about. A good quality piece of content should have interesting detail, be interactive or eye-catching, have a nice mix of imagery and videography to text and encourages users to share.
If you understand the social media game, you will probably remember the Binley Mega Chippy sound that blew up across TikTok a few weeks ago. A young person created the content using the ‘text-to-speech’ feature over an already existing video. The internet went crazy over how catchy the song was, but the outcome for the business was incredible and delivered some fantastic results. The content’s social share is much more approachable than publishing the video without the song. Do you understand where we’re coming from?
Whether it be a blog post, image or video - you should try and make your content attractive, different and simple. Your main goal is to engage with users and encourage them to return to your content or for them to step onto your website.
Stay Loyal
As we’ve already acknowledged, a blog allows your business to turn website traffic into a conversion. The next step is maintaining that customer relationship into something more long-term. Your business needs to promote trust and demonstrate that you are reliable and care about your existing customers. Yes, create content for a new demographic but don’t forget about the audience that already knows you exist. You should regularly delve into your website for refreshing content ideas and use them to your advantage.
Five Blog Post Ideas That Can Work In Any Industry
Hopefully, we have convinced you that having a blog is a spectacular idea by now, but you might be stuck with ideas on what content to publish. Fear not! We have prepared our top five favourite posts to help get you started.
1. Answer the frequently asked questions.
We are sure that your email inbox and social media posts are full of questions about your products, services, or general business questions. Gather your popular questions and answer them all in one post. If you get the question again in the future, you can then link the customer to the blog post.
2. List blog posts
These posts are the easiest and quickest to read. Marketers love a good list, and we are guessing everyone else does. You can relate them to just about everything - product lists, top tips that are industry-specific, business stats. The list itself could go on and on. If you know that your audience is searching for something, a list is a perfect place to incorporate the results. You may have entered ‘blog posts to get you started’ into your search query, and it would have bought our website up as a result.
3. How-To guides
Guides are a helpful way to share specific information about your products. It would also be a great way of introducing video to your blog. A video result will most likely appear when a customer types into Google ‘how to use x’. This is because it is easier for the customer to see how to use the product than to understand a written set of instructions. Did you know that 97% of marketers use this technique so customers can get a better understanding?
4. Talk to an expert.
It is the 21st century, and unfortunately, you are probably not the only expert in your field, so build your connections. Interview another expert or influencer in your industry sector. It is key for growing your brand and getting noticed. It can build authority with your customer and gives you more coverage. We regularly talk to other experts in our ‘What’s It All About?’ podcast. Why do we do it? It gives us an insight into them and what they do. It provides advice, not only for us but for our followers as well. We can share it on our social channels, but so can they, which means it will attract more traffic to your blog and website.
Our advice is to reach out to someone you already have a connection with. We advise that you make the process smooth by presenting the questions in a simple format. They are probably just as busy as you, so don’t make the questions wordy or difficult to answer. We also suggest thinking about your reader when planning the questions. What do they want to know rather than what you want to know about them? Your readers come to your blog for insight and information; the answers you receive should be able to provide this.
5. Celebrate success and achievements.
Have you won an award recently? Or achieved something spectacular? Celebrate it. Shout it from the rooftops. Create a blog post and social media pics to go alongside it. Your achievements and celebrations don’t have to be a huge success either. Has your product or service significantly impacted one of your customers or clients? Talk about it. Let’s say you own a clothing brand, and one of your customers spotted a celebrity wearing your clothes. It will allow you to share it across your platforms and helps build on the all-important traffic.
We all struggle for content ideas at times, but hopefully, this has given you some food for thought and a couple of ideas that can kick start your creative juices.
We’re always on hand to help you get started. Feel free to drop us a line; contact us today!
