Everyone is blogging. Businesses are blogging. But a lot of businesses are blogging just to blog. And there are a large number of businesses that are focusing on copying the strategy of their competitors.
Yes, there is no harm in using your competitor’s posts for inspiration.
In fact, a lot of blog posts are formulated by using BuzzSumo to find out which posts get the most response. This analytical approach should be used to help you come up with blog post ideas.
You can find posts that are:
- Shared the most
- Viewed the most
- Provide the most buzz
And you can use these posts as inspiration, build on them and make them even better. In fact, that’s what a lot of businesses are doing right now with great success. It works – copying your competitor’s best ideas and making them better.
Once the well runs dry, you’ll need to go back to the drawing board and start coming up with unique posts. There are a lot of ways to do this, and while I am attempting to cover a few of the ways I come up with post ideas, know there are many other methods available.
Use Common Questions to Make Posts
You’re a business owner, and you need to have a pulse on your industry. The problem is that a lot of owners fail to get this pulse, so they have no idea what to write about. Common questions in your industry can lead to the best blog posts.
For example, let’s look at Bradshaw Law LLC.
The site is for an injury attorney, but if you dig into the blog, you’ll find a few blog posts that likely used a lot of the methods in this article.
One article that sticks out is: Are These Poisonous Products in Your Child’s Daycare? The title is perfectly written because it focuses on the reader’s pain point: dangers in a daycare. If you use a keyword tool to find this keyword, you’ll come up with:
- Common questions asked by people
- Common concerns
You’ll want to build off of these concerns and questions. Since parents are worried about sending their child to daycare, you can use this information to make a blog post. A few results using Keyword Tool for the query “daycare dangers,” were:
- Dangers of unlicensed daycare
- Dangers of home daycare
- Safe care environment
You can obviously dig deeper, but from here, we can come up with three great articles:
- What dangers are lurking in your child’s daycare?
- Your child’s been hurt in an unlicensed daycare. What you can do about it.
- Home daycare. Should parents take the risk?
Work off of the common questions your business has received to make new blog post ideas.
News Provides Hot Button Topics
Businesses don’t want to get into politics with their customers. Topics in the news can be used to come up with blog post ideas, but this can also backfire if the topic is too controversial. A business owner may want to stay away from news involving the Parkland shooting.
But good industry news may help drive readers to a site.
A news topic that is great for a privacy-related website or for a tech site would be:
This news topic actually comes from the FTC, but it could be used to write a post on:
- FTC charges against Facebook
- Why users shouldn’t trust Facebook with their data
You also have news that Elon Musk’s companies have all deleted their profiles on Facebook due to a recent data leak. People are eating these stories up, and you can provide curated content on the topics or put your own perspective on the drama.
Lawyers, for example, could go a step further and discuss the legal aspects involving Facebook and what this means for users.
There’s a lot of substance to be found in the news, and you can use this to come up with new posts.
Of course, these are just two ways to come up with blog posts, but there are a lot of other options, like:
- “What not to do posts”
- Personal stories
- Industry news
- Product or service development
- Curate popular content
- Recap an event you’ve attended
Work on some of these ideas, start posting and start benefitting from the increased exposure blogging offers.
