Blog Ideas to Keep You Blogging in 2009

February 19, 2009 by
Filed under: Blog optimization 
235 Blog Ideas to Keep You Blogging in 2009
1 Blog Ideas to Keep You Blogging in 2009

The author: Mark Vostrikov

I know some bloggers who, over time, have learned the benefits of business blogging firsthand. But they complain that they’ve run out of blog content ideas and have nothing left to write about.

“The tank is empty. I’ve got nothing left. I want to keep blogging, but there’s simply nothing left for me to write about.”

Now, I’ve never been one to advocate business blogging just for the sake of doing it. You should blog because you really want to, and because you’ve seen firsthand how it can help your business. So if you fall into this second category, and simply need to some blog ideas to keep you going, then you’ve come to the right place.

1. Set up a Google Alert for several key phrases related to your industry. Each day, or once a week, Google will send you an email with new web pages related to that phrase (press releases, news articles, blog posts, etc.). It’s an automated stream of blog ideas to keep you going!

2. Set up an RSS reader to keep tabs on some of your favorite blogs. Google has a free one you can use. Once you have a reader set up, start adding the RSS feeds of blogs in your industry or niche. When those bloggers publish new content, your RSS reader will self-update automatically. It’s another easy way to create an automated stream of blog ideas to fuel your writing efforts.

3. Make a list of products and services that you offer, or those offered by your industry as a whole. Each one of those could be a blog topic, or even a series of blog posts.

4. Re-purpose your print materials. If you have brochures, flyers, fact sheets and other sources of information about your business, why not turn that into online content? If you have a lot of those materials, you could probably spin dozens of blogging ideas out of them. Also, by putting your offline content online, you’re making it visible to a whole new audience – search engines and the people who use them.

5. Make a list of ten ways your products or services can help your customers. If you can’t come up with such a list, you need to go back to the product drawing board! But if you can create a list of benefits, then you can easily convert them into blog topics. The same goes for the features of your products/services.

6. Make a list of 21 frequently asked questions relating to your products or services. You’ve just created a list of 21 blogging ideas at the same time.

7. Round up your team and have a brainstorming session for blog content ideas and topics. Better yet, appoint some additional authors to help you create content. You’d be surprised how many “closet bloggers” are just waiting to get out.

8. Do you subscribe to some kind of industry publication, such as magazines, journals or newsletters? Those will be full of potential blog topics you can cover. And if you’re writing about hot topics, you can even capitalize on the Internet activity fueled by those journals. Nothing drives Internet search patterns like the media! Blogging about popular and timely topics is a great way to increase your web traffic.

9. Tap into your website analytics to see how people are finding your website or blog. It should give you a list of keywords they were searching when they found your site. These are excellent blog ideas, in addition to being a good form of online market research.

10. Check out this article (that I forgot I wrote) on the subject of blogging content. It offers 15 additional ideas on this subject, with minimal overlap.

Here’s something else to keep in mind. As you’re creating all of this great new content, remember to optimize it for search engines too. Write for your audience first, offering helpful information as you go. Then go back through and optimize the content for search engine visibility. The more keyword rich content you add to your blog, the more traffic you’ll get. And website traffic is one of the first steps to online marketing success.

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