Originally published on our Medium
We’ve talked to hundreds of business owners, and the absolute majority of them find blogging intimidating.
There are industry gatekeepers and service providers that invest a lot of effort into trying to make blogging look hard, expensive, or ineffective.
But none of that has to be true for your business.
- The #1 blogging mistake business owners make is not blogging at all.
- The #2 blogging mistake business owners make is having no system of coming up with good blog content ideas.
Most small businesses have no blogging strategy and do what everyone else does or, even worse, they hire a writer and let them come up with topics (bad idea!)
Sourcing content ideas is, perhaps, the most important part of your content strategy, more important than tools, KPIs, or market research reports.
The reason for that is when you are sourcing content ideas from the right places, you take care of everything else automatically.
Let me give you some ideas on where to source the best blog content ideas.
We use a lot of what I mention here in our client work at WebCopyLand when we design content strategies for businesses.
We can help you build an effective, long-lasting, and converting blog — but I absolutely don’t mind if you do that yourself after reading this post.
You need to understand that there is an infinite supply of great blog post ideas, and you never have to run out of them.
The trick is to start with the best sources so that your competition has a hard time catching up.
Let’s go.
The best sources of blog post ideas for SMBs
1. Your customer support experience
If you ever sold any products or services — you are already at an advantage!
Blogging will come easy because you have your customer support experience. Go through the queries, copy/paste replies you saved, get it all into one document, tag it, and understand it.
Use blog posts to cover the main questions your customers have.
Address their fears and concerns.
Analyze the alternatives that they are asking about.
Build a customer persona and expand their interests based on that. Blog about those interests once you run out of topics.
Here’s a more detailed post on transforming your customer support knowledge base into a blog.
Pros: This way of sourcing blog post ideas is as targeted as it gets. The more you sell the more feedback you get, and the more blog post material you accumulate.
Cons: You need to have at least some sales to accumulate customer feedback.
2. Your industry experience
This is the stuff that will set you apart from your competition for months and years to come.
Pack your industry experience into fun, clear, and thought-provoking blog posts without worrying about keywords or trends. Make predictions, contrarian statements,
Pros: A true edge over your competition, the birthplace of thought leadership content.
Cons: You have to be experienced, you can’t fake this or AI your way through it.
3. …Your writing process
Even if you hire a writer to produce your blog posts, you will still be spending some time putting together briefs for them.
As you do it you will run minimal research and come across more and more ideas. It’s inevitable.
I get around 3 new blog post ideas on average while writing blog posts. While writing this one, I got two. Still works!
4. Your analytics
Google Search Console is an amazingly undervalued tool.
Most businesses use it for tech SEO like indexation and broken links detection, but it offers great value for content strategy and production too.
GSC content audits are the #1 service we recommend for old and messy websites — and here’s how they’re done.
Pros: First-hand data dealing with the true popularity of search queries and the interests of your target market. Beats third-party tool keyword research any day.
Cons: You need to have a fair amount of content indexed by Google already, so it’s not for brand-new blogs.
5. Your clients’ success stories
Find a client’s story success story and package it into a case study.
If you make it detailed and vivid enough it can get you access to a lot of shoutouts and backlinks.
Another benefit of having detailed case studies on your site is they pick up a lot of unexpected impressions on Google — you can turn those into new blog posts with Google Search Console audits.
Pros: You get unique content relevant to your products and clients that the competition can not easily replicate.
Cons: Most case studies and success stories are underoptimized and leave a lot of SEO traffic on the table. Read this post to learn how to fix that.
6. Your buzzwords and the content that services them
This is a fun twist you can use to get your brand to stand out.
This may not be applicable to all businesses, but you have to still keep it in your arsenal and be on the lookout for buzzwords to ride.
Here’s the post explaining the idea behind buzzword marketing and how you can launch a buzzword.
In a nutshell, you “marry” several existing concepts from different industries or give something basic a fresh twist and turn it into a new concept.
This gives you an opportunity to produce a lot of content explaining, defending, comparing, or even retiring your buzzword.
For the sake of getting content ideas, you can have your blog “service” a buzzword someone else in your industry has launched just as well.
Pros: Creative and fresh, can get you a lot of exposure if done right.
Cons: Not for every industry and personality type.
7. Your competition
Read their blogs and social media profiles, subscribe to their newsletters.
Identify which channel is their golden goose — whether it’s LinkedIn, Instagram, or a blog on their website. Different industries and niches favor different channels.
As you follow your competitors’ content production efforts, you will get more ideas for your own blog.
Pros: This method of sourcing content ideas is simple and fun. It’s great for covering the basics of your niche and securing the baseline relevance of your business website.
Cons: A lot of your competitors have no idea what they’re doing online. Be careful not to follow the blind or rely on their actions too much. With time, try to be a thought leader rather than a follower.
8. Keyword tools
This is the simplest, most basic way of coming up with blog content ideas.
Use a simple keyword tool like Ubersuggest and harvest a bunch of keywords relevant to your products or services.
Go through the list and turn some of these keywords into blog posts. Pay attention to the search intent behind these keywords, and make sure you double-check their relevance.
While starting out, you will have to use keyword research. As you grow the “meat” of your blog, make sure at least 40% of the posts are based on searchable keywords. With time, dedicate more effort to the topics sourced in other ways.
However, keep in mind to cross-check every blog post you put out with your keywords list. If a post is fun and meaningful, there’s no shame in optimizing it for search too.
Pros: Simple, basic, and effective if you know what you’re doing. Good to cover the basic semantics of your industry and niche.
Cons: There’s no barrier to entry, everyone’s doing this. If you only blog along a list of keywords, you are competing with the whole world. This method does not let you produce thought leadership content.
9. Your target market’s conversations
Go where your audience is — forums, social media groups, messenger group chats.
Notice what topics get mentioned the most. Is there anything that always stirs a discussion?
Turn your target audience’s discussions into blog posts, and add your expert opinion.
Pros: A great way to produce fresh and ultra-relevant content.
Cons: Could be a bit time-consuming, otherwise there are none.
11. Repurposed content
- Popular X.com threads turned into posts,
- Transcribed YouTube videos from opinion leaders,
- Several LinkedIn posts glued together,
- A printed brochure you got at a trade show,
- Hijacked news pieces — rewritten early and with more detail than the original source,
- A trend from Instagram explained and analyzed in text,
…the options are endless. You have to be in the loop all the time though (or hire someone who is!)
Pros: This technique gives you access to endless blog post ideas.
Cons: Not every post will be a gem, and you have to be deeply immersed in your industry to spot opportunities.
12. AI tools
I’ve previously written that you should absolutely not depend on AI tools for content planning, and I still stand by it (read this post to understand why).
However, you can still look for that extra edge using AI assistants. Getting another “opinion” never hurts, especially if you feel stuck.
As you can see, AI tools are at the bottom of the list, and you have to keep them that way. 90% Of your competition will start with them, which will put them at a disadvantage.
Pros: Good for quickly brainstorming wild ideas. AI tools could also help if you feed them your blog link and ask how it can be expanded.
Cons: AI tools need correct prompting, supervision, fact-checking, and caution. They will only suggest what has already been suggested elsewhere and got into their training data.
13. Something YOU are best at working with?
Sooner or later you will find a blog post idea sourcing tactic that will fit your level and personality.
Until then, experiment with everything listed above!
If you need help or want to bounce some ideas off of me — get in touch!