Business Blogging to Build Trust and be Seen – 4 Tips for Topics

Why would a small business owner write blogs?

I’ve talked about this before – both in Help Your Audience By Blogging and 7 Reasons Why Blogging is Important for Your Business. We write blogs to:

• Raise our profile – getting our voice heard more often.
• Help our audience – because supporting our network is a great thing to do.
• Be seen as an expert – showing people what we know clarifies how we can help.

All this is great, but to regularly produce content we need to have things to say while many people I meet say they don’t know what to write about. Today I’m going to give you some prompts to start those ideas flowing.

Look at each of these four areas below and brainstorm the ideas which come from them, by the end you’ll have a list of topics you can write about.

Blog Topics – Know What to Share

1. What are people asking?

This is where I always start when talking to clients about blog topics. If people are asking you a question then they are likely to be asking search engines, so use these questions to suggest topics for blogs.

• What are people asking you?
• What are people asking search engines? Answer the Public provides some good insights, as do the “Related Searches” and autofill features on Google.
  If driving people to your website is the priority, there are many tools for keyword research which might inspire posts too – to start with though, these two will help.
• One question or many? You can write posts which present individual questions or group them together as Frequently Asked Questions.

2. What are you offering?

While your blog is not necessarily a place to sell, what you write about should be directed by the products or services you offer – it is, after all, a place to talk to your potential customers. So, think about the people you are selling to and what they need to know about your products.

• Tips or lists from your area of expertise
• ‘How to’ pieces, solving your customers’ problems
• Reviews of products or services you and your readers use
• Interviews with others in your industry, your business or clients
• Case Studies to show examples of your service and how it helps real people
• Versus – you could compare your products or services to help people choose, or compare the tools you use.
• Product development stories showing your audience how and why you do what you do.

3. What are people talking about?

This is slightly different to our first list, focusing instead on those things which are topical or timely.

• Hot topics, your opinion on relevant things in the news
• Round-ups – pulling together content from other people which your audience might be interested in; for example, you might pull together the best examples of website photography or list sites to buy gifts for film fans.
• Awareness days can be useful if they’re relevant to your business – check out AwarenessDays.com.

4. What about you?

There are other specialists in your area, this is a place where your individuality matters. While it’s important to consider topics which will resonate with your audience, these don’t need to focus on what you do but do need to reflect your brand and what you stand for. I talk about words and running a small business because these are things my audience is interested in and I can offer my perspective.

• Share your opinions – if it’s something you’d talk about in a networking group, you can do it here.
• Tell stories – your story, your business or your client stories, even stories of seemingly unrelated moments which inspired you.
• Share ‘a day in the life’ – you, your people, your office, your product.
• You can share hobbies, interests or community projects if they will be interesting to your network.

I hope this has helped you identify topics you can share with your audience.

Blogging will help you show your reader how much you know while giving them a chance to get to know you too. It’s a great way to build trust and be seen.

How do you know what to write about? Let me know if there’s anything missing? I’d love to hear your ideas too.