If I mention blogging to my clients they often look at me like I have just suggested they boil their heads. A mixture of horror and confusion. So why are people just so frightened of blogging?
Mostly, after a short recovery period, another coffee and some gentle coercing nearly everyone says the same: “but Emma, how do I think of something to write?”.
Easy peasy, here’s how:
- Customers Ask Questions Right?
If a customer has ever asked you a question, boom, you have a blog post. Answering the same question (of course without names) in the less informal setting of a blog gives you the ability to extend your answer and talk around the subject in more detail. If that customer has asked the question then plenty of others will probably want to know the answer too. - FAQ’s or Customer Survey Results
In fact, use this principle for all of your FAQ’s. Simply take a question and answer in full and you probably have at least five blog posts ready to go. Customer Survey Results are also great at gleaning insight into your customers and the sort of issues they have. Again turn any response you would send the customer into a blog post.3. Google It Everyone asks Google everything, so why not ask for a blog post subject? Simply type into google search your area of expertise and a question, for example:“marketing” (the area of expertise) and then add the words “how to” (or a similar question)
You’ll find that Google comes up with a number of suggestions, see mine below.
That gives me 4 or 5 good starting points for a blog post. Try it.
4. Find the pain
A well-used marketing and sales phrase is “find the pain”. Basically you are looking for something that pains your customer and then you solve it for them, either with your product or in this case your blog post. For me the pain could be “I’m not sure what social media management tools I should be using”. Right there I have a number of blog post options: either review a social media management tool each week in a blog series or write a post about the top 5 social media management tools.
5. Watch the News
The world is always changing. Sometimes for the better and sometimes not, but either way it sends you a little bit of blog post fairy dust. Changes in law, updates within your industry or even news-related or tv series that have common ground for your business send you a raft of blog post discussion points.
Keep your readers up to date with these changes or discuss how the latest news story could affect you and/or them.
Set up a google alert with some of your industry keywords and simply see the ideas fill up your inbox.
Still need some help? Watch out for next months blog post when I look at how you can get blogging like a pro.
