We were chatting with a client the other day and they shared that they hadn’t really had any new enquiries lately. Their business was doing fine, but it hadn’t seen any growth in quite a while and their list of new clients hadn’t been seeing much love.

So we had one simple question for them. Are you creating new content?

When it comes to blogging, many businesses put this out of their mind, or on the back burner. Many businesses overlook blogging as a way to market their business online because they find it hard to come up with fresh ideas for blog posts. If you’ve been putting off creating blog content for your own business’ website, we hope our tips will give you the inspiration you need.

Here’s some facts about the benefits of blogging for your business:

Businesses that prioritise writing blog content consistently see a 67% increase in lead generation
70% of customers would prefer to learn about a company through articles than advertising
Blogging can help businesses get 55% more website traffic than those that don’t blog at all.

Convinced yet? If you want to grow your business, creating content on a regular basis for your website is a great way of boosting your likelihood of being found online by new clients and as we’re about to show you, can become a great ongoing tool to support your existing clients too!

Why blogging is important for your website and business

When we talk about blogging, the image that comes to mind for many people is an influencer sharing her latest cooking fiasco, or flaunting the latest trends in fashion. Whilst this is true of blogging for industries such as fashion, cooking, travel or for those with a hobby blog, blogging for business is an entirely different scenario.

We need to start thinking about blogging for our business as a lead-generating tool, and a supportive tool for both those clients who are on the fence about working with us and an educative tool for our existing clients.

Here’s just a few of the benefits of blogging, that ultimately help your blog content make you money and improve your business:

It’s a numbers game - Blogging can provide you with very specific data on your current and potential customers. By looking at what topics are receiving the most views, you’re able to hone in on exactly what your target audience are interested in.
Your content lives longer - Social media is great for engaging with new audience members, don’t get us wrong. But the shelf-life of a social media post compared to a blog post is vastly different. In 2021, the average Instagram post lasted 48 hours, Facebook posts averaged 6 hours and Pinterest averaged 4 months, for staying on a users radar after publishing. In contrast, blog posts are bringing new viewers for more than a year after they were published.
You can dive deep into your favourite topics - Whilst you’re limited to characters on platforms such as Twitter and Instagram, blog posts allow you to dive into the nitty-gritty of a topic, sharing how-to’s, step-by-step instructions or case studies that position you as the expert on the topic.
It helps new clients find you - When your blog post is relevant to your business’ services, it helps google and other search platforms (including Pinterest) to find you! Even though they might first land on one of our blog posts about Google Analytics, Pinterest or Squarespace, our blog readers often go on to explore other areas of our site and when they’re ready, they reach out to work with us!
It provides an education tool for existing clients - How many times have you had to rewrite an email to clients in preparation for working together? Or maybe there’s something they’re always asking you how to do. Creating a blog post on FAQ’s you receive can help you cut down on having to explain the same process to each client individually, becoming a valuable time-saving resource for your business.

What should you be blogging about?

Coming up with unique blogging ideas for your business’ blog doesn’t have to be a difficult process. We link to think of content falling into one of the following four ‘buckets’ of content types. This approach allows you to come up with blog topic ideas relevant to your niche, appealing to people with different purposes for consuming content.

These are our buckets of content:

Educational - this includes how-to guides, step-by-step processes and can also intertwine other content formats such as videos or podcasts. Anything that helps break down a process that your client might need to understand or do themselves is considered educational.
Inspirational - this is a great way to inspire, motivate and encourage potential clients. If your brand is personal to you, then it’s a great place to share any personal stories relevant to your services, or behind-the-scenes of your work environment. You can also share past client success stories, before-and-after transformations or case studies, to show what’s possible as a result of working with you.
Promotional - Don’t be fooled by the name of this bucket. This isn’t just a post saying ‘buy this, buy that’. But it’s a strategic approach to sharing the results you offer your clients and customers. You can talk in-depth about a particular service or topics related to it. For example, if you’re a photographer you might write a post about how to plan your outfits for a photoshoot. These are great posts to link back to a specific service offering, with a clear call-to-action!
Conversational - Conversational posts help create connection opportunities between yourself and your clients. You could do a Q&A style post, answering awkward questions your clients are too afraid to ask. Or you might talk about a topic close to your heart, a current event (one that’s still relevant to your brand and business) or share your viewpoint on a particular ‘industry norm’. The purpose of these posts is to get interaction in the comments, or people sharing and commenting on your social platforms.

For each of these ‘buckets’ of content, we also aim for them to meet three key criteria:

Evergreen Content - This content will be relevant no matter when someone clicks on it, providing useful information that’s not dependant on whatever else is happening in the world. Yes, we absolutely know that things change, which means that you should always allocate some time annually to go through your blogs and update any data, or check links to your services are actually relevant. But the core part of the content will remain the same!
Searchable Content - One of the biggest reasons we love blogging for business, is that it helps boost your searchability. Think of it this way, even without needing to know all the latest google algorithms and trends in SEO optimisation, simply blogging about relevant topics to your business will increase the amount those particular terms and phrases appear on your website. When you’re creating content on topic that your clients and customers are naturally asking you, chances are there’s plenty more people out there googling it too!
Actionable/Purposeful Content - We strongly disbelieve in creating content for the sake of it. Each piece of content has two key elements as a final result - an actionable takeaway for our dream clients and something they can do that day to move their business forward AND a purpose for our own business, whether that’s to invite them to join our mailing list, explore more topics on our blog or find out how they can work with us.

How to decide what to blog about

Ok, strap yourself in, because we’re about to share with you our signature process for how to come up with great blog post ideas consistently - so you’re never low on ideas and inspiration.

Start Searching

If you’ve never blogged before and are wondering what your first blog post should be about, we suggest starting with searching for relevant content ideas. We do this in three ways. Firstly, you’ll start with a brainstorm of topics relevant to your business.

Then take these topics and type them into Google. Don’t hit enter just yet! You’ll likely see some suggestions of what people are also searching for in relation to your topic. These make great starting points for generating blog post ideas.

Next, jump on over to Pinterest and type your topic into the search bar. Similarly to above, you’ll see a list of suggested topic searches.

Finally, we love to use Neil Patel’s UberSuggest to collect keyword research, but also use their content idea generator to see what is trending in the particular topic.

Look at what’s already working

If you’ve already started blogging, diving into your Google Analytics will give you an idea on what topics your audience is loving. Revisit this blog post and brainstorm some breakout topics that you could link to. Do you describe a particular process or topic that you could go into in more detail in a separate post? Is there a step-by-step article you could create?

If you’re already using social media your platform’s insights will help you see your top engaged with posts. Think about how you can turn that post's topic into a long-form blog post, expanding on the message you shared in your socials.

Keep an ideas library

We often find that once you start, you can’t stop. As you begin creating content more and more ideas will start to flow from topics that flow on from others. We like to keep these in a google spreadsheet, so we don’t lose track of all that gold! This is also a good place to keep any questions that keep popping up from clients.

Another great way that we’ve implemented is asking our new email subscribers to hit reply with their top questions about the topic their freebie was on - they of course get a personal reply, but this reply gets repurposed into a blog post for the future.

Ask yourself these signature questions

Over the years we’ve discovered what works when it comes to finding your blog posts and we’ve created this handy worksheet to help you brainstorm 100+ blog post ideas. Pop your details in below, grab a cup of your favourite drink and get ready to be inspired.

When it comes to finding ideas on what to blog about, the secret to blogging success is right under your nose. There’s no need to complicate it, simply start brainstorming what topics you already love to talk about with clients or on your social media, or if you’re feeling stuck use our prompts above to come up with hundreds of blogging ideas for your business.