Brands

WTF Should My Company Blog About?

By Jennifer Gregory

You have the blogging software. Your boss has agreed to let you blog. You even had the graphics department create some fabulous icons and headers. But each time you sit down to write a blog post, you find yourself wondering what to write about.

Since the goal of a blog is to help increase your profits and customer base, it is tempting to continually write posts about your own company.

But readers will quickly tire of reading about you, and your web traffic will start to decrease. The secret to a successful company blog is to write about your customers and what they want, not just about your own business or product.

Here are three simple ways to provide content that your customers will care about:

Solve Your Customers’ Problems

In a recent article on Hubspot Benefits of Educating Prospects with Free Content, Pamela Vaughan says when your content helps your customers solve their problems then you have happier customers, which in turn results in more repeat business.

Ask your customers and professional contacts in your industry what they struggle with each day. Is it retaining customers? Hiring quality employees? Or maybe many of them find integrating social media into their business to be challenging. Find out from the sales department and technical support what questions are most commonly asked by customers related to your product and any insider tips that they often give new clients.

Those are your blogposts. Your job is to write them and make your customers’ jobs easier, both overall, and in relation to your product.

Provide Information For Professional Development

While many company blogs focus on providing information that helps customers perform their job and use your products, people are also interested in reading about topics relating to their own professional development.

If your company makes software for insurance agents, write posts that provide information about upcoming insurance conferences. Then recap the lessons learned in those conferences for those who couldn’t go. Write about upcoming trends and products related to the field. Look for industry studies and write posts that invite comments and discussions. In addition to helping your blog become the go-to place for information, you will learn more about your customer’s field and needs.

Interview an Industry Expert or Author

A great way to spice up your blog is to interview an expert in your field.

If you are providing medical equipment, then interview a leading designer in the prosthesis field or a well-known doctor. Ask your customers what authors and books they read so you can include book reviews and author interviews on your site also.

To help find experts, look for the top conferences in your industry and see who the guest and keynote speakers will be. By including interviews and expert advice on your blog, you will increase your creditability and also increase your following because people interested in the other person’s work will find your blog.

Once you start thinking about ways to write about information that your customer cares about instead of writing about your own company, you’re off on the right track.

But it won’t always be easy to continually come up with awesome, compelling content. Check out Copyblogger’s 21 Ways to Create Compelling Content When You Don’t Have A Clue when you’re out of ideas.

Be sure to keep a running list of topic ideas when they come to you. And once traffic increases to your blog, be sure to keep an eye on comments for more ideas. The best blog ideas are often going to come directly from your own readers.