Inspiration for Your Company Blog
Rule number one for your company blog: make sure that your content is educational, informative or entertaining. Never be tempted to use your company blog as a sales letter or to pitch one product or service in any shape or form. You can certainly talk about your areas of expertise, of course but they should be general and not related to how you may specifically help to address certain issues.
Here are some ideas that might fill you with inspiration:
On a regular basis, keep on top of new trends. You should be sure that you sign up to receive news feeds from industry-leading websites and news organizations relating to your niche. Go to Google Alerts, for example and register so that you are notified whenever a news story breaks about your keywords. Whenever you receive these notifications, which could be instantaneously or on a daily basis, see how you can devise a blog post with a fresh angle right away.
Do not be afraid to push the envelope. If you truly are an expert in your niche, then you should make sure that your blog is a vehicle to let people know this. Within reason, don’t be afraid to be controversial. Look at a particular topic that may already attract a good deal of interest and pitch in your angle. If you have something very cutting edge to say, your blog posts could be distributed virally through bookmarking and social media and provide good traffic.
Remember that the visual image is very important. Why not create a video log and post regular videos addressing associated ideas, solutions or problems? Remember to distribute your video posts. You’ll be surprised how many viewers they will get and how much interest they will, themselves, generate.
Freshen things up by inviting some guest writers. These could be other members of your organization or they could be other experts in the field. Few marketers shy away from publicity of any kind and you don’t necessarily have to be involved in some kind of joint venture with another industry expert to get them to post for you.
Many people are attracted to “top tens,” for some reason. Compose a top ten list every now and again, representing a fresh angle on an important topic.
Remember that people are often searching for answers – “how do I do this” or “where do I find that.” If you set up a blog post or a video blog post to walk people through a solution to the problem, they will be very grateful! Note that you are trying to establish your blog as a reliable and regular source of valuable information. People are much more likely to bookmark your site and return often if you have provided them with a much sought after answer and saved them a lot of searching time, to boot.
Do you have some blog post gems that you would like to share?
Matthew Toren
Nice tips, that is what I can say. Google Alerts, I have never used it and I don’t know what it is. Since you mentioned it, I think that maybe I need to try it.
Thanks for your tips again :).
Nice post! I really enjoyed the tips about including a visual image and the importance of people searching for answers. I have found these two items to be very true thus far with my own blog.
Thats a bunch of great tips for building a good blog. It may also be a good idea to have a contest about a topic to build a solid following for your blog.
I just wanted to say thank you for giving me a great idea for getting content for a sideline project of mine. I’d never thought of using Google Alerts to get content. Once again, thank you!
That’s real good. I’ve never used google alerts but it sounds like it will definitly help out! Thank’s for the advice, it help’s.
hi.very good advice,i am new to blogging and this has some great tips and advice,i just started my blog last week.so thanks for the tips
Nice Points Matthew,
I have used google alerts for a few months now. It can be good or bad. One of the problems that I have with it is actually too much content to filter through. I finally learned my lesson and put “..” around my phrase and that really cut down on the amount of information I was getting in my alerts.
Thanks for the tips you articles seem to be on the ball(football team err term) it was refreshing to read about your thoughts on original interesting content. I take it your ideas have superseded post-modern Philosophy.
Google alerts really make sense. I was also inspired as i read your post. Your advises are very well said. Thanks for this Matthew.