Blog Post
I Don’t Have Anything to Write About!
Several MWD Web clients are apprehensive about this whole blogging thing. They worry that they don’t really have anything useful to contribute, that there’s nothing interesting to talk about in their industry, or whatever. You, reading this post, might also feel like you don’t have anything to say.
Of course you do!
You’d be amazed at the number of ideas you can come up with if you apply yourself to it. Here are some tips on coming up with blog post material.
1. Keywords
What keywords do you want the search engines to pick you up for? Take a few minutes and write out a list. Before you know it, you may have as many as 30-50 different words/terms.
Now, look through that list and identify the unique words/terms; for example, “Find a Web developer in Denver” and “Denver Web developer” are substantially the same, whereas “Online shopping Denver” and “SEO Denver” are two completely different things.
Now that you’ve got a list of unique topics, think about how you can make a blog post out of each of those. Again, a blog post does not have to be a 10-page discourse (and if it is, you would do well to break it up into smaller chunks).
Suddenly you’ve got quite a few things to talk about!
2. Case studies
What kinds of problems have you solved lately for clients? How many glowing success stories have you brought about in the past? For any problem you’ve solved, odds are that there are others out there struggling with exactly the same thing. By sharing your lessons learned, you become the expert and boost your traffic. Just be sure to make the post about how this experience you’ve had can benefit the reader, and not simply a “Look at how great I am” ramble.
3. News commentary
Has anything in current events been related to your industry? Briefly share the contents of the news report, and then add your own commentary on how it affects your industry and the clients you serve.
4. Embellish on your older posts
Perhaps a post you made a few weeks ago touched on a subject that calls for a more detailed post of its own. Look back through your old posts and see if there’s anything to expound on in greater depth.
Similar to this: as you’re writing a post, if you see an area where you can write a more detailed post later, you may want to get started on that draft now. This will make it easier to finish it up later, when it’s deadline time. Or even better, finish that post now, and schedule it out.
Or you might have several outlines going at once, which don’t really relate to each other. In this case, when it’s coming time to make another post, you can easily pick one and finish it up without having to stress about what topic to cover.
One Simple Rule
As you’ll quickly discover, you have a lot of things you can write about. The one imperative rule, however, is to make it relevant to your audience. Don’t just post about your latest offerings, new products, etc. without providing something of value to your readers. Remember, your readers want to know “What’s in it for me?” – and shining the spotlight on yourself isn’t going to do much for them. Show how your new product will be helpful to them (think benefits not features), explain how they can apply the lessons you’ve learned, and so on.
Next week, we’ll have a personal example of why scheduling posts in advance is such a good idea, and how things can go terribly wrong if you wait until the night before.