Does your business have a section on its website for blog posts?
You may think that your business doesn’t have much to write about, or that maintaining a blog would be a lot of work for little reward, but a company blog can be very beneficial, no matter your industry:
- Blog posts with keyword optimisation can help improve the search engine rankings of your website, increasing organic traffic and driving potential customers to the site
- Insightful and informative content can help to build trust with your audience, positioning your business in an authoritative position within your industry
- Including calls to action within your blog posts can encourage visitors towards certain conversions, such as filling out a ‘contact us’ form, subscribing to your newsletter or downloading resources
- Content from blog posts can be repurposed for email newsletters or social media posts, expanding your reach from a single piece of content
- Blog posts allow you to showcase the individual personalities of your team members or content writers, making your business more relatable to potential customers
What to write on a blog
You can’t write a few blog posts for your site and expect those few to do all the heavy lifting for you – the key to a successful company blog is regular, valuable content. However, that’s easier said than done. Brainstorming suitable topics for your blog can be difficult, as you can’t just slap anything together and expect it to perform well.
Your exact topics will depend on your industry and brand, but here are some general tips to help you conjure up valuable blog post topics:
Understand your audience – Who is your target audience? What are their interests? What are their needs? What problems can your business solve for them? You may need to use various methods to identify what exactly your audience wants to read, such as surveys and social media polls.
Share your expertise – Do you have team members who specialise in certain areas? Is anyone particularly well-versed in their field? Sharing knowledge is a great way to produce content that is not only relevant to your brand but also valuable to your audience.
Leverage internal data – Does your business receive common questions from new or returning customers? Do you have any internal data that indicates an emerging trend, and if so, would this be of interest to your audience? Get creative with the information and data your business already has, as there’s often a few hidden gems that can make great blog post topics.
Keep up with industry trends – What’s going on in your industry at this current moment in time? Are any large conferences, webinars or events taking place? Check out relevant hashtags on X (Twitter) and LinkedIn to find out what others within your space are talking about. Your audience may not follow your industry closely, so be the voice to inform your audience of things they might have missed. Give your own opinions and input to complement any industry changes – is this a good change, or do you think there could be problems down the line? Adding your own opinions to industry trends and announcements helps bring personality to your business.
Find SEO-focused topics – There are plenty of tools that can provide you with relevant keywords that your audience may be searching for, such as Google Keyword Planner and Ahrefs. Looking into search queries through tools like AnswerThePublic can also be beneficial for picking blog post topics. Another easy way to explore this avenue is to pop a relevant search query into Google and scroll down to the ‘People Also Ask’ section, which will provide you with different questions under the same umbrella as your original query.
Brainstorm – A simple but effective brainstorming technique is mind mapping. Pop a general idea in the centre of a piece of paper, and start branching out with related topics. Having a physical visual in front of you can make it easier to generate new ideas. You may choose to gather a few members of your team for a group brainstorming session, as different people’s ideas may spark a new idea for someone else, starting a cascading flow of useful topic ideas.
Blog post examples
Every business is different, so consider the above points when deciding what the best types of blog posts are for your brand. Here are some different types of blog posts you may choose to implement into your company blog:
Expert insights on relevant topics – Use your blog as a home for practical guides and advice that can help solve common problems or concerns experienced by your customers. For example, technology companies can benefit from writing blog posts designed to help customers set up, maintain and troubleshoot their devices, as well as understanding software features.
Interviews and opinion pieces – Similar to the above point on expert insights, feature interviews with industry leaders and your own employees to add a personable touch to your blog whilst providing valuable content to your audience. For example, healthcare and wellness companies may choose to interview specialists and experts to provide authoritative information on health topics and treatments, along with practical advice, or have individual team members produce content discussing their personal healthy living habits and tips.
Research and data pieces – Businesses that operate in knowledge-intensive industries can benefit from sharing new and interesting research and data. This doesn’t have to be your own data – just make sure you give proper credit! For example, professional services, such as marketers, can provide valuable content for their audience in the form of new research data. This could be detailing what consumers want to see from marketing activities, or what brands are currently focussing their marketing strategies on.
Case studies – Share previous success stories and analyses of projects or customer experiences. This can help inspire potential customers by showing others’ successes, and may even answer some questions they have about your product or service. For example, companies operating in the manufacturing and construction industries can use case studies to show an in-depth look into completed projects, discussing the choices made by the customer, materials used, time until completion and level of customer satisfaction. If your business accumulates a lot of case studies, it may be worth having a dedicated section on the site for these. But if they’re few and far between, they make a nice addition to your blog.
Keeping up with a regular company blog may seem like a lot of work, but it can be well worth the effort. Of course, if it is a bit much, you could always enlist the help of a friendly agency to assist with blog post ideas and creation!
