Today, tough competition is the norm in every industry. Since there is no scarcity of goods and services, commercial brands can no longer afford to approach the market with flimsy sales messages and expect to be overwhelmed with new orders. You have to take the time to build warm and lasting relationships with your target audience, deliver value and establish credibility.
One way to achieve those goals is by launching a branded blog on your website. Use it to share useful information, answer customers’ questions and address their concerns. Brilliantly written articles, evidence-based case studies, and eye-catching infographics are key to building a dynamic blog that establishes you as an expert and gains the trust of your customers.
In this article, the Clever team shares the best blog post ideas for beginners and seasoned entrepreneurs. Use them to create superior content and earn the favor of your target audience
1.Challenge Theories
People often believe in certain things because it is common to believe in them. A well-argued rebuttal can totally change their perspective. Look for popular theories in your niche, test them, and post the results on your blog. Content that challenges long-held beliefs will not only be useful to your subscribers but also give you exposure as a knowledgeable specialist.
2. Dispel Myths
No matter what industry you are in, chances are high there are some myths and stereotypes that can and should be dispelled. The community will be grateful to you for thinking outside the box, shedding light on unknown facts, and bringing the truth to the surface.
3. Common Mistakes
Telling people what not to do can sometimes prove more useful than arming them with detailed to-do lists. Most businesses think they have a win-win strategy until minor blunders throw a wrench in the works. By listing the most common niche mistakes, you will help your followers detect pitfalls and deftly bypass them.
4. Blogging Tips
By posting an article about content marketing, you can share helpful ideas with your followers while using your own blog as a prime example. Readers are more likely to trust in your expertise and the effectiveness of your tips if they see them put into practice in your blog.
It may seem risky to share your success formula, exposing it to competitors who can beat you at your own game. But talking about content marketing is different from sharing the technology behind your products or the recipe for your signature dish. Most marketing tactics are commonly known. You are simply showing your audience how to apply them.
5. Checklist
A checklist provides a step-by-step guide for achieving a certain goal. Brief and concrete instructions establish order, dividing the work process into logical stages. A checklist helps to distribute tasks in a logical sequence among team members. Create a useful checklist to help your readers accomplish any task, especially the beginners in your field.
To get a feel for the ideal checklist format, read the Clever team’s recent post, Ultimate On-Page SEO Checklist to Boost Your Rankings
6.Guide
A guide is basically a more detailed version of a checklist. Not only does a guide describe the steps that should be taken, but it explains how they should be done. Information in a checklist is action-oriented, but a guide goes deeper to help the reader better understand the purpose behind their actions.
A detailed guide paves a shortcut for your followers to learn new skills, making it easier for them to solve unfamiliar problems and absorb practical knowledge.
For an inspiring example, check out our Ultimate Niche Marketing Guide
7.Solving a Problem
If your followers are struggling to solve a certain problem, do them a favor by providing an effective solution. As a seasoned specialist, you know what pitfalls await novices down the road. Tell about your background to help them overcome future challenges without having to endure the same things others went through. They will show their gratitude with loyalty and additional purchases.
8.Curious Facts
Rewriting articles from your competitors’ blogs will bring you less than mediocre results. No one wants to read cliche tips and outdated news. To win your readers’ hearts, provide fresh, exclusive and exciting content. Engage your readers’ minds and pique their curiosity by sharing little-known facts and unusual perspectives on everyday topics, to keep them constantly engaged.
9.Top List
In the era of information, people do not want to spend time reading second-rate and pointless content. Users want to read about the most effective tips, breakthrough solutions, and powerful tools.
Publishing a top list on your blog lets followers know that you have sifted out the fluff to deliver only the most valuable and important details in your post. Visitors will eagerly click on titles like “5 Best Smartphones of the Year” or “10 Richest US Athletes,” and they will return for more.
10.Guest Post
Contributing guest posts is a great way to establish useful contacts with niche experts, get a fresh perspective of your market, and take the load off your writers. Be sure to provide straightforward contributor guidelines on your site and check incoming content prior to posting it.
Announcements on social media and themed forums should help attract the first batch of guest writers. If the promotion works out, news about your contributor platform will go viral, the word-of-mouth will do its job, and new writers will come to your site without coaxing.
To encourage good specialists to contribute to your blog, feature their names and bio in author info, as well as enable dofollow links. People will appreciate the opportunity to expose themselves as niche experts and attract traffic to their online stores.
11Series of Posts
It is quite possible to consider all the important details and pitfalls of some topics in a comprehensive overview, but an excessively long article will turn readers away. As an alternative, publish a series of posts, each devoted to a single facet of the general topic. Doing so will give readers time to digest smaller chunks of information, put your tips and suggestions into practice, and set the stage for the next post in the series.
Another benefit is that multiple posts on the same topic will pop up in search, attracting more traffic and increasing the number of links to your commercial pages.
12Interview
Collaborating with prominent industry figures can boost your credibility. People value hands-on experience and real-life scenarios. A single success story from an industry leader whose venture overcame obstacles to thrive is worth more than a dozen articles with abstract ideas about how to excel.
Frontrunners are always busy, but most of them will be pleased to give an interview. Pitch them a short questionnaire via email or Facebook. You can lightly edit their responses, as long as you don’t distort the meaning. Your interviewee will be offended if you promote your own ideas under the guise of an interview in their name.
13.Advice in a Challenging Situation
If you know your readers regularly face certain challenges, be the first to come to their aid with relevant information. A legal company might post an article entitled “How to Hold onto Your Property in a Divorce.” A software development company could post an article on “What to Do If Hackers Crash Your Site.” A physical therapy clinic might post about “How to Eliminate Back Pain.”
You can provide tips on how to solve any tough situation that falls under your area of expertise. Posts that greatly simplify your customers’ lives showcase the value of your business, and enhance the trustworthiness of your brand. You will expose yourself as a practicing specialist, not just a mouthpiece, increasing the number of users who turn to you for help.
14.Review of Your Favorite Tool or Method
Tell about professional approaches you most often resort to, explain why you enjoy using certain tricks, and report what heights they helped you achieve. Such content shows you assemble your toolkit very selectively, genuinely love your craft, and want to deliver the best results to clients.
15.Lesson Learned
Nobody succeeds without failures. Errors and misconceptions are common part of the growth process. Inspire your followers by telling how you learned from the challenges you have overcome and turned your weaknesses into strengths.
Choose a problem that arose from your own negligence, and discuss how you handled the consequences. Explain what you learned from the situation, and how it transformed your worldview. Being open and transparent with your followers makes you more human, and gains their trust. Business owners are often reluctant to admit their mistakes, even to themselves, which keeps them from leveraging their experiences to do better in the future.
16.Forecast
People want to peer into the future and adjust their business strategies in anticipation of approaching changes. You can give them a glimpse of things to come, but refrain from guesswork. Do your research and back up your predictions with solid facts. If you claim the average market price of a certain product will grow over the coming year, cite current factors that are likely to bring about this change.
17.Performance Boosting Tips
Businesses constantly strive to optimize labor and everyday processes to increase the resource-effectiveness of their operations, to save time and money. But you don’t need to run yourself ragged to be productive. Sometimes, it is enough to do things the right way. Outstanding results stem from fundamental skills, a well-thought-out strategy, and a diverse and effective toolkit.
If you know how to optimize business processes and boost productivity without compromising quality, share your wisdom with readers who can benefit from your tips.
18.Opinion
Choose a burning topic in your niche and express your point of view in a diplomatic way. Do not get too emotional or you may offend readers with opposing views. Write impersonally and with discretion, and be sure to back up your statements with convincing arguments and facts.
19. Latest News
Whether you are an Internet marketer, a lawyer, a business adviser or a doctor, your niche is continually undergoing changes. Help your subscribers keep abreast of the latest news.
Write on topics like changes in legislation, innovative technologies, new marketing channels or other emerging news. Be the first to tell people about the latest trends and your opinion about them, and explain how they may affect future industry development.
To stay informed, subscribe to the newsletters of trendsetters and influential organizations within your niche.
20.Unique Tools
You can review various plugins, helpful services, rare applications, new versions of software your readers use or other technological innovations. Describe the operating principles of these tools, list their advantages and disadvantages, compare them with analogs, and publish the results on your blog. Subscribers will admire your detailed research.
21.Press Release
A branded blog is a great place to inform your target audience about the release of new products and services. In addition, you can use your blog to present a concept or idea, analyze customer feedback, and decide whether the project is worth pursuing.
22.Q&A Post
Even if your site has a designated FAQ section, things will always come up that confound your clients and need clarification. Collect their questions and provide detailed answers in your blog posts. So you will establish a lively dialogue with your audience and keep them constantly engaged with your brand.
23.Survey-Based Articles
Conduct surveys to find out what your users are interested in. Use Google Forms, send questionnaires via email or launch polls on social media. Reach out to both established clients and new visitors.
Collected feedback can be used to select relevant topics and write statistic-driven reports. For example, you can ask respondents what features of your product they value most and why and where they think there is room for improvement.
Summarize results in a post, for example, “54% of users like feature A, 34% like feature B, 27% would like feature C to be replaced with a new feature D. Based on our customers’ opinions, we are going to boost features A and B, and replace feature C with D in the new version of our product.”
Such content shows your clients that they play an important role in your brand’s product development, and that you use all your knowledge and resources to cater to their needs.
If you want to learn more about strategical planning and sales-boosting, please read this article
Inspiring Tools and Resources
The following resources can be used to determine your users’ interests and preferences and generate winning blog post ideas.
Google Trends
Leverage GT to gauge which queries your prospective clients most often enter in a search bar. Use your blog to shed light on issues that concern them, to provide the most relevant, meaningful, and valuable content. Also, take advantage of related queries to diversify the topics of your posts.
Quora
Quora is a free Q&A service with a simple and straightforward registration process. You can log in with your email or via one of your social media accounts.
Conduct thorough research to determine what topics people most frequently ask about. Use niche keywords and queries collected with Google Trends to find relevant questions, and create high-end content to satisfy your audience’s curiosity.
Pinterest is a search engine for visual content that can be a valuable resource for tracking the latest trends and the products people are most fond of.
Use the helpful “Trending Ideas” section to find popular topics within your niche. Enter keywords in the search bar and see numerous themed articles, videos and photos appear in results.
Monitor blog posts of your successful competitors, adopt the best content marketing practices and augment them with your own unique ideas.
Forums
People bring their questions and tough situations to forums to get answers from fellow users who have faced the same challenges. Visit popular niche platforms and find out what topics are most actively discussed by your community.
Apart from taking inspiration and article topic ideas from forum threads, you can add to the mix and invite users to visit your site for comprehensive information on any issue. Natural-looking and non-intrusive link-building will help you drive traffic to your site and grow your readership.
Respond to the Public
You can use a single keyword to generate a long list of themed questions with ATP. The tool pulls popular queries from search engines and detects the issues that constitute the greatest interests of your audience.
People Also Ask
Google has equipped its search panel with the helpful People Also Ask feature. It provides questions and answers related to your basic query, allowing you to study different facets of the subject. This information may be used for writing brilliant articles or for compiling an FAQ section for your site.
Related Keywords
SEMrush and SerpStat are advanced keyword research tools that SEOs often use to expand a site’s semantic core. Commercial bloggers can also take advantage of these programs to discover concepts related to their business niche. It is no longer necessary to wrack your brain to come up with a fresh and searched-for topic.
Google Autocomplete
Thank you Google, for one more helpful feature. Writers can pitch a keyword to Autocomplete and see it transformed into a full-fledged blog post idea. Smart software grasps your focus concept and branches it into multiple topics, building more extensive wording.
Final Thoughts
Use our list of blog post ideas to create unique and engaging content for your website. Remember that your articles should be up-to-date, well-written and free of grammar and spelling errors.
Also, be sure to provide easy-to-find buttons for sharing on social networks, and surround them with strong CTAs. Word-of-mouth will help you attract free traffic to your site.
By applying our tips, you will gradually grow your audience, strengthen the reputation of your brand, establish a lively dialogue with your followers, and convert them into well-paying buyers.