It’s time for another blog post!  You wake up early, have a fresh cup of coffee in hand, sit down at your laptop and….nothing.  You procrastinate: scroll through your recent social media newsfeeds…clean the bathrooms…read the paper…and still nothing.  Oh!  Time for lunch!  Maybe your thoughts will work better after some brain-food…and a few more hours of staring at your computer screen…If you’re reading this and recognize the “process”, you are definitely not alone!  I am regularly blog-motivated with one idea, and by the time my brainstorming/procrastinating process (see above) is complete, it’s usually transformed into a completely different topic.

The blog-writing process is ever-changing and can take a lot of creativity and frustration….err, patience… but a great and popular post is very rewarding.  We’ve polled our team and have come up with some favorite tips and tricks to help get you started, and keep you on track!

Pick a Content Marketing Goal

What is it that you want to get out of this blog post, and your blog for your business in general?  Are you hoping to generate a ton of traffic (and hopefully leads)?  New brand awareness? Revenue (through advertising, etc.)?  Just for fun? It’s very important to determine why you are writing a blog post in the first place, and this will help you narrow down the best topics to look at to get you closer to that goal.

Brainstorm Topics

After your content marketing goals are set, it’s time to start brainstorming topics.  If you have a team of writers, have everyone sit down and come up with topics that they have experience with and topics that they are interested in – and don’t be afraid to search around on Google.  Search within current events, other popular blogs, and news or updates relevant to your industry.

Now is also the time to think about your potential audience: what can you offer them that is different than any other blog?  What can you teach them or show them to keep them interested in what you have to say?  However, it is important to remember that you and your team will be the ones writing these posts, so don’t only pick topics that you think others will enjoy reading; list topics that you and your team will enjoy writing.  If you are passionate about what you write, your audience will see it and keep coming back for more.

Review & Filter

Review all topics against your original goal: if any of them don’t match up with each other, try to edit them so that they do, or remove them entirely.  Continue filtering through the topics to create your “favorites” list: make sure to remove any off-limits topics or controversial topics that would be safe to stay away from, or make sure you are confident you can defend them, if need be.  Use your final list for your blog schedule – and don’t worry about ideas running out.  As you do research and writing for each future post, you’ll continually come up with new ideas and can add them to the bottom of your calendar (or post them when relevant).

If you’ve completed a brainstorming session, as noted above, and still can’t come up with a solid list of ideas, review some top blogs and bloggers for inspiration. Time.com posted a summary of the 25 Best Bloggers, 2013 Edition a few months ago.  Scroll through some of the bloggers’ recent posts and try to pinpoint what they do to pique your interest, make you laugh, and keep you interested.  It’s also kind of fun to find top blogs and read their first-ever posts, and then read their most recent posts to see how they’ve grown or changed since the beginning.  Bloggers don’t write one post and become popular; it takes time, a solid effort and consistently good writing to grow a loyal audience.  Don’t give up!

If you’re stuck and looking for additional advice to help you with your content marketing strategy and implementation, we would love to help.  Please contact us for details.