How to Find New Topics for your Company Blog
Having a company blog can be extremely beneficial to your business in many ways. As high-quality, informative content becomes an increasingly important factor in determining how sites will rank in search results, many businesses are discovering the immense power of having a blog on their company website to increase rankings, increase traffic, expand brand awareness and drive conversions.
Today on the Volume 9 blog, we are going to take a look into what kind of content businesses should blog about and how to establish themselves as industry leaders.
First, the absolute golden rule of blogging on your business site….
It’s About Them, Not You
It is a very common misunderstanding amongst businesses that having a blog is a place to flaunt how awesome the company is, convince readers to convert, talk up services, or inveigle their audience with “101 Reasons Why You’ll Love Our Products” posts. If you think your company blog is all about self-promotion, you are missing the point.
It’s not about you, your products, or trying to prove anything to potential customers. It’s about providing information and value to people who are searching within your industry for answers, advice, and information.
It just so happens that these people are going to be your most qualified leads as well.
An Example in The Home Renovation Niche
Let’s use John’s Awesome Plumbing as an example.
Newlyweds Tim and Tonya just moved into a house and want to make some renovations to their bathroom. They know there is a lot of work to be done, but want to do as much of it as possible themselves to save some money. So they get online and search for “How To Caulk a Bathtub Yourself”.
John’s Awesome Plumbing understands the need to cater to people who are looking for helpful information in the plumbing industry. Let’s say they have a post on their blog entitled “How To Caulk A Bathroom By Yourself In 5 Easy Steps” — Tim and Tonya end up finding this blog entry on John’s Awesome Plumbing’s website and learn how to caulk their bathtub DIY-style. At the bottom of the article, they find a link to another post on John’s Awesome Plumbing’s website – “How To Diagnose Water Leakage Under Your Bathroom Sink” — perfect! That’s one of the things on their bathroom to-do list.
Eventually, Tim says to Tonya, “Gosh, these guys at John’s Awesome Plumbing sure know what they’re talking about, don’t they, honey? Maybe we should get in touch with them to do the pipe work underneath the house because I’m not quite so sure we can do that on our own.”
But if they’re searching for information on how to caulk a bathtub and all John’s Awesome Plumbing talks about in their blog is how amazing all of their plumbers are, how they’ve plumbed fancy hotels and convention centers, why people need to choose them over the other plumbers in the area, etc., people like Tim and Tonya will never derive value from what they’re posting.
What Would You Search For?
Think about when you search for helpful information online. You don’t want to be inundated with a bunch of self-promotional garbage about how awesome one company is over the other. That’s what an About Us page is for. Not your blog. Your blog is a place to compile interesting, informative information within your industry in such a way that establishes your company as an industry authority and, at the same time, provides helpful, valuable information in response to the human needs behind the search query.
So what kind of content should you be posting on your company blog?
Answers to Industry Questions
People search the internet for solutions to their problems. If you can credibly establish yourself as an industry authority, you gain the trust of those asking the questions and when it comes time for them to make a purchase, you’ll be their obvious first choice.
How-To Guides
Informative content that that educates and empowers readers is a great way to establish yourself as an expert in your field. If you can teach someone how to tackle smaller projects on their own and establish yourself as an industry expert, when it comes time to hire someone for the bigger projects, you’ll again be the obvious choice.
In-Depth, Informative, Educational Content
Notice a theme here? Having a company blog that provides educational, informative information to your readers is invaluable for creating trust and authority. You are most likely an expert in your own field, as you should be. Share this expertise with those who are searching for it and they’ll trust it when they need it beyond their own capacity to get the job done.
An Industry Glossary
Your potential customers may be perplexed by something related to your industry and searching for a definition for a specific term or acronym. We see this a lot in the world of SEO and internet marketing (PPC, CPC, GA, GWT, DF, NF, SEM, KPI, 301 Redirects, etc.). Industry glossaries are a great way to drive traffic and pique interest in your site over a competitor’s.
Share Industry News
Blogging about newsworthy topics within your industry is a great way to attract potential customers who are conducting research. For example, you may have a real estate website where you can publish news regarding new housing laws in your area or post weekly roundups of open houses in a particular neighborhood.
Or, in our case, we always make an effort to blog about the latest Google algorithm updates.
On May 19th, Google began implementing the Panda 4.0 update. Immediately, our CEO Chuck Aikens posted this article, which garnered a 722% increase in website traffic over the next two days, as there were many website owners who saw fluctuations in rankings and wanted to research news in the industry. Those are exactly the kind of people we want reading this blog. But if all we posted on our blog was self-promotional fluff, they never would have visited our site.
There are many, many topics that you can blog about on your company blog that provide informative value to your readers and don’t come across as overly self-promotional. Keep in mind, it’s alright to talk yourself up a little bit. Just don’t write your entire blog as a bragging outlet. That being said, if you would like to take your business to the next level, our content marketing specialists here at Volume Nine would love to help you get started today!