It’s the biggie.
The main thing that puts you off blogging in 2022…
WHAT THE HELL DO I WRITE ABOUT!?
Strap yourself in for the next few minutes while we blast through my bronze, silver and gold framework for limitless blog content ideas 2021 style.
Let’s gooooooooooo.
Bronze
Like the Olympics, you’re still a winner if you get bronze, but it’s not as good as silver or gold, is it?
Bronze, in blogging content ideas, is this:
Tell people something you’d like them to know.
You’re an expert in your field, so you’ll have a decent idea of a topic you find interesting that you’d like to share.
Plus, if you’ve done enough customer research, you should have an idea about the information your customers need.
This method of content idea generation is fine, but what you’re doing is guessing as to whether people will be interested in it or not.
And since we’re going to spend a decent amount of time writing your blog so you can repurpose it for your social media, video and email marketing content, you want to make sure you’re writing about something people care about.
Which brings us onto silver.
Silver
The next way for limitless blog content ideas 2021 (ooooff that shameless SEO keyword drop hurt, didn’t it? I promise I’ll drop yours in more subtly than that) is to research what industry leaders are doing and do it better.
Now, don’t just flick through their blog section and pick a few topics you think will be easy to write about. Dig a bit deeper than that:
- Take note of which blogs have the most blog comments and likes.
- Go through their social media channels and see which blogs get the most engagement (even if people are disagreeing with what they say – this is good).
- Spot trends in your competitor’s content: are multiple businesses discussing the same thing?
How do you do it better? You write a more comprehensive list, go into more detail or structure it in a more engaging way.
Now, like bronze, this method isn’t perfect.
Why? Because unless you hack into your competitor’s system and see their stats, you don’t know for sure how much traffic the blogs are bringing in and if they’re working well for their overall lead generation.
So what can you do to make sure you’re picking a topic people care about?
Go for gold, baby.
Gold
The BEST blog content ideas 2021 technique is, without a doubt, this:
Find content people are paying for.
How do you do that? Here are five good ways:
Amazon best sellers
This method is simple.
All you have to do it sesearch which books are trending in your industry, read the contents page, and steal ideas from there.
If you want to dig a bit deeper, read the reviews and see if any specific chapters are mentioned regularly.
Then you KNOW that’s content people want.
Training Courses (online and offline)
No successful trainer sells any course without giving you a detailed breakdown of exactly what you’re going to learn.
Take to EventBrite and see which workshops and training days are popular, and take a peek at their agenda.
Log onto Udemy and see what modules the most highly rated courses cover.
Look up accredited or ‘famous’ training courses in your industry and download the module breakdown.
If people are paying good money for these courses, the course content MUST be valuable.
Giving you a goldmine of content ideas.
Podcasts
Now, I know podcasts are free, but people are paying to listen to them with their time.
Research the top ten podcasts in your industry and see what topics they cover.
Webinars
Similar to podcasts, people pay for more webinars with their time.
However, some webinars are paid. If they’re successful, people are paying with their time, money and commitment to be somewhere at a certain time.
The content of that webinar must be desirable, so write a blog on the same topic.
BONUS: Double Gold
I toyed with the idea of calling this ‘platinum’, but this method of finding blog content ideas is equally as good as taking inspiration from paid content.
Answer the most common questions your prospects have that they need an answer to before they’ll buy from you.
Marcus Sheridan’s ‘They Ask, You Answer’ is one of the most famous marketing books (and with good reason).
He used this method of inbound marketing and lead generation to turn a pool company into a multi-million dollar tour de force.
How he did that was to create blog and video content answering every single question his customers asked him and his sales team.
This blog you’re reading right now is using this principle. One of my services is copy-editing, where I charge around £200 to proofread and edit a blog someone has written in their niche industry.
One of the biggest obstacles to me landing more of those clients is they don’t know what to write about.
A question this blog has just answered.
So, blog content ideas 2021, that enough for you?
That should give you plenty to work with.
If you’re sold on why you should start blogging in 2021, and you now know what to write about, the next step is to make sure you’re maximising the effort you spend blogging.
That takes a little bit more explaining, but the concept is still super-simple.
Pop your best email address (not your 26th spam email address) in the box below now and I’ll send you my “UK Gold” framework for monetizing your blog.
And if you have any questions about anything here, leave a comment or email me at alex@actcopywriting.co.uk.
