You know the feeling, you want to put a blog post up, you know you should, but you end up staring at your screen blankly before anything comes to mind. Inspiration can come from anywhere though, last time I got inspiration from being asked what kind of tea I wanted (don’t worry, I’m not going into that one again!). But seriously, people who don’t blog won’t understand – but it can be hard to get those creative juices flowing. It was thinking about this, that has led me to want to write a blog that might help me, and you, later on too. So with that, here are the top four blog post topics to stop you struggling with ideas!
Blog Tip Number 1: Portray your expertise; share your knowledge with others
This one is my favourite. There are most likely lots of things you do in your daily job or life, that other people don’t know how to do, and would hunt out, in an online world, to help get them through what they need to do.
Being a Social Media Apprentice and a teenager, my first thought is always to write something about Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. We’ve already done a post for Facebook, but since then Facebook have changed everything (much to both my excitement and dismay in equal measure) about their business pages. These are a good idea to do if you have a lot of clients coming to you about problems they have had with your particular topic, especially if it’s something that only takes five minutes to fix by someone who has a working knowledge of the subject itself.
Blog Tip Number 2: If in doubt, use gifs
Got your blog post but it’s a bit too short or you’re struggling to get your message across? Try using a .gif? It’s almost a cheat – but they can be very useful if you have an informal blog (ie. A blog like Buzzfeed benefits highly from this method but a blog like ours could really only use them every now and then). It grabs the reader’s attention and draws people in. Make sure it’s a relevant .gif though! The .gif is even better if you made it yourself, like the one in this blog that we made for our customer who’s business is very stone orientated.
Blog Post Number 3: Inspirational Quotes
“In moments of doubt, I’ve told myself firmly ‘If not me, who? If not now, when?'”
-Emma Watson
Inspirational Quotes from your favourite people can be great to spark an idea for a blog post, and can be used either as a conclusion, a beginning, or to spice up a middle. You could use it as a blog about the person who said the quote, or the meaning of the quote itself. You would be surprised about how many idea’s you can extract from a simple quote from Gandhi, Martin Luther King, or even Beyoncé. You might start writing and then suddenly think of another point for or against what you are trying to say in your blog!
Blog Tip Number 4: Write a short story, a case study or a scenario.
We did this a while ago about a salesman called Ad, and again with our tea and coffee dilemma (we haven’t exactly rectified that quandary so feel free to pop in and drink some!). A story like this will capture your reader, make them read it to the end to find its relevance to their business. If you have a knack for writing in this way, it can make it easier to convey your message.
Blog posts are what you make them, and can be anything you want them to be – share with the world, indulge in blog-writing therapy! Sometimes they can be difficult to start the blog-ball rolling, but once you get into it the ideas flow and you don’t want to stop once you’re in that zone! If appropriate, just double check with someone else first! You don’t want to be all rant-like and get on your own particular soap box, especially if you’re writing for your business! It’s always good to get an outside mind to read over your work, see what you can change and make specific to your reader (And it helps to optimise it too, otherwise it will never get seen).