The last workshop of the day was on a topic near and dear to this live-blogger’s heart. BLOG TOPICS! If you’ve ever done any writing, especially blog writing, you know how difficult it can be to catch the Muse sometimes when you need a topic to blog on. Natalie Gould with Advice Interactive Group was kind enough to offer some professional-level tips and tricks!
Tips for Creating Blog Topics
- Use your social media feeds to see what things are being asked by your clients. If you have a customer service department, ask what customers are asking and write a blog or two that addresses the questions.
- Blog about your learning experiences. Write about a challenge you faced and how you fixed things. Share about your successes and give tips on how others can replicate that success.
- Use Google Analytics and see what topics are doing well and write more about those topics or topics that are related.
- Use Google Trends – it allows you to really focus in on specific topics.
- Keep a notepad on your desk so you can write down topics as things come up in your day: as you get questions from clients, as you solve problems, etc. You can also email yourself or leave yourself a voicemail if you’re on the run and have a sudden inspiration!
Additional Hints to Make Your Blog Readable and Informative
- Make sure your keyword is in your blog title
- Use bullet points
- Internal links are important, link to past blogs on similar topics
- For external links, you can reach out and ask if the person/business that was mentioned will share with their audience
- If you are blogging on a WordPress blog, you can use the plugin Yoast SEO
- And be sure to have a call to action to get people to take a next step
Remember to always keep your intended audience in mind when you are writing and formatting your blog post. Also, even though images can slow down page loading times, sometimes a picture can save you a thousand words!
Avoid Plagiarism
You can run your content (or the content from your ghost blogger) through Copyscape Plagiarism Checker to be sure you aren’t in danger of posting work that might be too close to someone else’s published work.
Tools to derive blog posts from your keywords
Use an Editorial Calendar
And finally, Natalie recommends using an editorial calendar. This is especially helpful if you blog for clients or manage more than one blog. Using a spreadsheet that tracks who is going to write about what topic and when can help keep things organized AND offers a way to know (without scrolling through dozens of posts) what’s already been covered.
This workshop was a brilliant way to wrap up the “pre-conference” and get fired up for all of the fun topics on the agenda for tomorrow!
To learn more about Natalie Gould you can read her full bio on Rocks Digital.
