Updating your blog on a regular basis is a really good idea, but what you don’t want to start doing is positing blog content for contents sake (I have done this in my earlier days of blogging). You need to try and keep your blog up to date and exciting so people will stay subscribed to your site and you will get new subscribers too, but also to add content to your website. As we know Google stresses that “Content is King” but what do you do when you have no ideas left?

  • Have a think about the industry you are in and the work you do, consider ‘keywords’ for your blog. For example if you are a hairdresser you want to write about hairdressing so when looking for inspiration you could type ‘hairdressing blog’ into Google and you can see what other hairdressers are writing about and use their ideas for inspiration.
  • I often go to eHow.com and put in the industry that I am writing for. For example if I am looking to write content for a cake company I will type in ‘cakes’ in the search and then look through all the articles that have cake in the title to try and find content ideas or inspiration for my own content ideas.
  • Think about what your customers want to know, if you design websites then think about the questions that you are regularly asked and write a piece of content about this question and the answer – for example you may regularly be asked how many pages a website may need so you can go into detail about how many pages are needed for each type of site, for example a site that sells products may need a page per product but a website that just promotes a company’s services may just need a few pages. The chances are if you are being asked these questions regularly over the phone, people are typing the questions into Google everyday so you could attract more visitors to your site through this article, and these could become more customers!
  • Have a look in the newspaper or watch the news, see if anything has happened that is to do with your industry. For example if you sell dresses then you could write content about the dresses recently worn at a big film premier or awards ceremony.
  • If you’re feeling a bit cheeky have a look at your competitor’s websites and see what their blog writers are up to; what have they been writing on their blogs and could you put this sort of thing on your blog?
  • Have a look at the work you have done and consider creating case studies stating what the client came to you for and what you gave them as a solution. You can add before and after pictures if required.
  • Go through your customer testimonials, if a customer has said you were great at what you did then shout about it by putting it into a blog post. If you sell products on your site you may have numerous short reviews in which case you can choose a selection of the best and do a weekly or monthly ‘Happy Customers’ blog post.
  • Look at the feedback you have received, if a customer said that it would be helpful if you offered an additional product and you now do that product put it into a blog post; explain that you are always happy to help clients. Show the customer’s request and explain in the article what you now do to improve the business going forward.
  • I have spoken about it before but ‘National Day Blogging’ can be an excellent idea. Have a look at the wacky ‘national days’ out there and write content about them. For example if you own a restaurant and it’s ‘National Fish & Chips Day’ then you can write a piece of content about Fish and Chips, talk about how your chefs make the mushy peas just right, or the right way to serve fish and chips.

Where do you get your content ideas and inspiration from?