Struggling for content ideas for your business blog posts? You’re more likely to be struggling if you don’t have a content plan, and a list of topic areas and post types to choose from. That aside for the moment, here are some excellent ways to regularly generate good topic ideas for your small business blog.

1. Read your industry publications

Reading what others are writing about can give you some ideas for your own material. You might be able to write an opinion piece on something that’s happening in your field, or write a post to provide information to your clients and prospective clients on changes that might affect them. Changes in legislation are ideal for generating topics – you may find that you can write an entire series of posts on different aspects of the changes or the ways they are likely to affect different client types.

2. Set up ‘Google Alerts’ for news relating to your topic areas

Stay abreast of breaking news on your topics and your blog posts could be the first ones found when people go searching for information. Again, your posts might be opinion pieces, or outline the potential impact changes could have.

3. Case studies

Readers love a real life story.  Could you interview a client about how they’ve used your products or services to advantage and present a range of case studies over time? (Here are some tips for creating case studies)

4. Follow your competitors’ blogs

It’s not cheating! Reading industry related blogs will help you to generate ideas for your own. Just be sure you don’t plagiarise or copy someone else’s material.

5. Explore frequently asked questions

Answering frequently asked questions in detail can be a gold mine when it comes to generating content and relevant website traffic – particularly in the wake of changes made by Google during 2013. If people often ask the same questions when calling you or visiting your shop or office, make a list and plan to write posts than answer the questions in as much detail as possible. It might also save you time – if they’ve read it on your website they won’t need to ask!

6. Seasonal topics

Are some of your products or services more popular or particularly useful at a certain time of year? Perhaps people sometimes experience difficulties at a particular time of year that you could help them resolve.

7. Technological changes that are relevant to your products or services

Very few businesses would be able to say that changing technology has had no impact on the products they supply or the services they deliver. Technology frequently delivers us alternatives, more efficient ways to do things, and new products we might like to purchase. Writing informative posts that keep your target market up to date with change has the capacity to make you the ‘go to’ business for up-to-date information.

The benefit of content planning

It’s much easier to generate topic ideas if you know in advance the type of posts you need and the subject matter you can cover. When you prepare a content plan in advance it’s also easier to ensure the work is done – you can assign someone to ensure the articles are ready for your blog at a particular time of month, and to schedule them for posting when they’re ready. Writing up a weekly blog schedule based on your content plan then allows you to plot potential topics in advance – such as seasonal peculiarities, or changes you know are coming to your industry in the months ahead.

Writing good content for a business blog doesn’t have to be a major chore. If you don’t have the resources in your business to do it, you can always look to writing services like ours to write it for you. We can also develop your content plan, schedule the posts, and look after your social media updates if required.