60 Blog Post Ideas For Entrepreneurs, Marketers, And Businesses
When you have a business blog, you know that sometimes the things you have to say or explain aren’t always the most enjoyable topics for your audience to read about.
But, as a business owner or marketer, you know how important it is to have a blog as a marketing tool.
According to HubSpot’s report:
- A blog can influence a reader’s decision to purchase.
- Companies with blogs have 55% more visitors than those without blogs.
- Blogs are part of the inbound marketing process, helping businesses attract and convert readers.
So, you can see that having a blog for your business helps you convert readers, grow a following, and build your brand.
But, if your business or product isn’t a sexy topic, how can you make it look like you’ve got a happening blog?
In this post, I’ve laid out 60 blog post ideas to help you liven up your business blog. Most of these ideas also have examples of blog posts from other companies or entrepreneurs to give you some inspiration for your blog.
1. Current trends
People love to learn what the current trend is this week. Whether they’re on Twitter looking at what’s trending or reading a post on the latest happenings in their industry, a current trend blog post is an easy addition to your content schedule.
While you can look at what’s hot now, a great way to use this idea is to predict what the trends will be in the future. For example, Shopify looked at website design trends for 2018.
2. Report current news in your industry
Depending on your business, there could be breaking news in your industry that might alarm or cause questions from your audience.
This is none truer than when Google announced their new mobile-friendly rules for popups to the masses. Since OptinMonster’s business revolves around lead capture and popups, there were some concerns from their customers.
The owner, Syed Balkhi, wrote a post on the blog on how this news affects OptinMonster.
3. Post a case study
Case studies are a great way to show how valuable your product or service is. They may be even more powerful than a testimonial since they show a real person having success with your product or service.
Woobox helps you run marketing campaigns through social contests, sweepstakes, and giveaways. They feature case studies on their blog of how using their service can help businesses reach their goals.
4. Interview an expert
For some businesses, interviewing an expert in your industry is a good way to give your audience true value. Industry experts usually have insider tips and strategies that they can share with your audience, providing them with valuable knowledge.
Pagewiz is a landing page optimization tool and part of their blog strategy is to do case studies and also interview industry experts.
5. Showcase a new feature
Part of having a business blog is to keep customers or clients updated about new features or services. While the blog post itself isn’t highly engaging, it is highly informative and valuable to your target audience.
Dropbox recently released Dropbox Paper, a way for your team members to have one central place for all their notes and work. Their blog post showed three ways their readers can use Dropbox Paper for their next meeting.
6. Point out common mistakes
People love mistakes. Not making them, but reading about them. In fact, the click-through rate for negative superlatives in your headline is 63% higher than headlines that use positive superlatives.
As an example, Hootsuite has a blog post on what social media marketers are getting wrong about SEO.
7. Write a how-to post
One of the most popular types of blog posts is a how-to. Why? Because people search online for answers to their problems. And a how-to post can provide those answers.
It also lets readers know that it’s a specific post that will dive into one thing. For example, on the Elegant Themes blog, they have a post about how to do advanced photo editing in the back end of WordPress.
This post is a comprehensive step-by-step guide on how to edit photos in WordPress.
8. Meet the staff
While your About Us page will hold the most information about the people in your business, writing a blog post about your staff can help your audience relate to your business on a more personal level.
This is also an excellent way to introduce your audience to one person on your team.
Starbucks does a wonderful job featuring baristas from all over on their blog and on Instagram too.
9. How customers use your product
People, generally, are nosey. We like to know what other people are doing or thinking. So, why not satisfy their curiosity on your blog? Report on your blog how customers use your product in their life.
Evernote has a series called, How Evernoters Use Evernote. They show how people use their product, which helps highlight a lot of little things about the product that may not have been mentioned in detail before.
10. Reports about your product
If you knew that your product was #1 or in the top 10, wouldn’t you want to scream it to everyone at the top of your lungs? Well, since you can’t do that online, the next best thing is to blog about it!
For example, the productivity app Any.do shared their excitement about being one of the most used apps in America.
11. Do a weekly roundup of relevant news
No matter what industry you’re in, there’s always a lot of news, as well as a lot of platforms to find these news stories. Doing a weekly or weekend roundup of the best and most relevant news for your audience would be very helpful.
Torque, a WP Engine publication, did a weekend roundup of the latest news about WordPress.
And WP Superstars publish a monthly roundup of the latest WordPress news.
12. Promote your webinars
For a lot of entrepreneurs, hosting webinars is a common marketing strategy. For some, notifying their subscribers is enough to ensure a high attendance rate.
But if you want to grow your email list and traffic, promote your webinar on your blog. Melyssa Griffin hosts webinars and video training series frequently, and she promotes them on her blog.
13. Feature guest posts from experts in your industry
Another way to feature thought leaders in your industry is to see if they would be willing to write a guest post for your blog.
This is a great way to grow your traffic since the guest poster will more than likely let their audience know about their guest post. And the more prominent the expert is, the higher the chance you have for generating more traffic and leads.
Leadpages has some influential guest posters on their blog – like Ramit Sethi of I Will Teach You to Be Rich – to give valuable tips to their audience.
14. Highlight customer stories
Another way to humanize your brand is to show customer stories on your blog. Feature one customer and have your audience get to know them.
For example, FreshBooks, a small business cloud accounting software, has long featured customer stories on their blog.
15. Tell the history of your field
A popular idea for business blogs is to do a series about the history of your industry or aspects of it. This helps your readers appreciate how far your industry has truly come.
It’s also another way to liven up your blog if your business is somewhat boring. For example, Timesheets.com is a cloud-based expense tracking, scheduling, and timesheets software.
Trying to write a blog post about that topic might be hard, but Timesheets.com has a long-standing blog since 2009. And one post they did was the history of timekeeping.
16. Host a quiz
A great way to make your blog more engaging and interactive is to host a quiz. Quizzes can also reveal information about your readers and customers, helping you adapt your product or service for your ideal customer.
On Grammarly’s blog, they frequently have fun quizzes like this one about studying grammar in school.
If you use WordPress, you can use one of these plugins to create your own ‘viral’ type quizzes.
17. Update your readers
A lot of brands have a loyal audience or even brand ambassadors. These readers are not only interested in your products or services, but also interested in the behind-the-scenes of your business.
This helps them relate to you on a deeper level and humanizes your brand.
For example, Nathan Barry, the entrepreneur behind ConvertKit, gives an insight into how he’s growing ConvertKit.
18. List things to avoid
A great business blog helps readers with their problems and challenges. They understand their target market has additional desires and problems that their product or service may not help. But, that’s okay, because if you can help your audience, they will forever be grateful and much more likely to become brand ambassadors.
Contently, a content marketing solution platform posted publishing tricks brands should avoid, targeting their audience and providing valuable information.
19. Create a roundup of experts in your industry
A very popular way to reach a new audience and network with more industry experts is to do a roundup post. Approach thought leaders, influencers, and experts that relate to your industry and pick their brain on one topic or question.
Sumo asked 35 key influencers how they’d grow traffic to a new blog from 0 – 10k visitors in 30 days or less.
This is a great post since their audience is made up of mostly bloggers in the beginning stage of traffic building. They need help getting that first 10k visitors and Sumo decided to round up the best of the best to talk about how they’d do it.
20. Run a survey and list the results
Another way to get interactive with your audience is to survey them. Ask your subscribers to do a quick survey and let them know that you’ll publish their collective results on the blog.
This helps you get some indication of how your audience is using your product. Peel – a smart remote app – ran a survey last year and realized that their customers are just warming up to the idea of smart technology, which may or may not have impacted how they approached their marketing strategy.
21. Answer frequently asked questions
As a blogger, entrepreneur, or marketer, I’m sure your inbox is flooded with emails from your followers asking questions. Instead of answering one at a time, why not pool the questions and create a blog series?
Harsh Agrawal of ShoutMeLoud used this idea and created a blog post answering a list of questions from his readers.
22. Create a seasonal post and relate that to your product or service
While writing evergreen content is a solid SEO strategy for your blog, creating occasional seasonal content can help you attract more readers at that time. People may be heavily searching for a seasonal topic and run into your post.
Seasonal copy also fits well with a lot of products or services.
The fitness app, MyFitnessPal has a great way to help their readers by taking advantage of seasonal food topics, like pies.
23. Do a “day in the life”
For the solopreneur, doing a day in the life or taking an office tour is a nice little treat for your followers. Part of the reason people buy from you is because of YOU! They can relate to you, or they enjoy your personality and the whole package.
Dr. Oz is a popular TV doctor, and for a lot of people, that’s all they see. So, when he takes a moment to show a down-to-earth Dr. Oz and his office, it only strengthens his brand.
24. Offer tutorials or step-by-step guides
Even though people may have bought your product, they may not be aware of all that it can do.
This is especially true for digital products like plugins, themes, or lead generation tools.
Mary Fernandez of OptinMonster wrote an epic, in-depth, step-by-step post on 22 OptinMonster hacks to boost conversions.
This is a post filled with powerful content and one that should be bookmarked.
25. Interview a thought leader
Thought leaders or influencers usually have a lot of knowledge and can offer insights into your industry.
As a business, making those connections with experts and influencers is key to growing your brand and getting noticed.
Smarp, an employee communication app for businesses, has an influencer insight series on their blog.
26. Thank your customers
A great way to thank your customers is to blog about it. Without them your product or service might not exist, right?
Keith, developer of the writer software, Scrivener, thanked Scrivener users on his blog saying,
[W]e’ve been blown away by our fantastic users. We have had numerous users on our forums helping other users out, helping them get set up. We have had countless users on Twitter, Facebook and our forums telling us how much they love Scrivener for iOS, and telling writers who have never heard of Scrivener all about it. We have had over 150 very kind users already give us great reviews on the App Store in different territories. Just: thank you!
27. Blog about an update or past problem
For new products, problems are going to come up, especially if it’s a product with a lot of moving parts.
ConvertKit exploded onto the web, and professional bloggers and small businesses are using this email service provider in droves.
ConvertKit has used their blog to communicate with their customers about certain problems, like subscription bombing. ConvertKit let their users know of their new captcha integration to combat this nasty problem in a blog post.
28. Review non-competitive products
Depending on your business, you can review non-competitive products. For solopreneurs, this might be an affiliate product like a course or eBook. For an app business, this might mean other apps in other industries.
Tekoia is the maker of a smart universal remote app and their blog caters to topics that appeal to their audience of app users. And since their product is a universal remote for home devices and appliances they can create content around that and integrate their product. This post on fitness apps is a good example.
29. Spotlight key people in your business
For a lot of business owners and marketers, invitations to conventions, summits or learning opportunities are par for the course. This is a great opportunity to blog about the event and how it benefited key people in your business.
This is what GoDaddy did with their post about the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. This post featured key people on GoDaddy’s team who triumphed over their struggles and are now successfully working in computing.
30. Highlight one customer and their problem
Instead of featuring influencers or staff, you can help your customers with their problem by featuring them.
Mint, a money manager, personal finance, and budgeting service, features one customer a month and helps them with their financial problem in their Mint Money Audit series.
31. Create a roundup for the year
Towards the end of the year or even every month you can do a roundup of the “best of the best” related to your industry or your product or service.
Leadpages does a monthly roundup of marketers and entrepreneurs using their landing page templates.
32. Talk about stats in your industry that relate to your audience
Part of a business blog’s purpose is to provide news and stats on topics that relate to your audience.
For example, a social media automation tool like MeetEdgar knows that news on what’s happening with social media platforms is helpful for their audience. This post talks about how people use Facebook differently now than before.
33. Run an experiment that’s relevant to your product or service
Redbooth, an online task and project management software for teams, decided to experiment with procrastination.
Since their software helps you stay focused and productive, on their blog they decided to see if procrastination can actually be productive. This is a great blog topic to use for your company blog as it’s engaging and can be exciting for readers to see the results.
34. Make a pros and cons list that’s related to your product or service
CreditCards by Offers.com helps you save money by finding the best deals and coupons for credit cards.
One of their credit card types is a student credit card and on their blog they looked at the pros and cons.
For product-based or app-based companies you can definitely use this type of blog topic idea for your blog.
35. Do a series on one topic
To extend your content schedule, consider running a series on your blog. This makes it easy to come up with topics, and since you’re focusing on one theme, it can help draw in an audience that’s interested in that topic.
For example, Spokal – a content marketing tool – has a startup spotlight series where they feature startups from around the world.
36. Answer a common problem
A great blog post is one that can help your audience and what’s better than having your whole blog post talk about one problem? If you’re a business or a marketer, take one problem that’s associated with your industry or product and dissect it and offer a solution.
Warfare Plugins’ blog answers an important problem for their audience – how to recover your social share counts if they’ve been lost.
37. Do a series on how you and others use your product
For your audience, it’s a neat thing to see how the creator of a product uses their own product or how the staff uses it. This gives some insight into how others use the same product differently.
Wunderlist – a planner and organizational app – did a series on their blog on how they use Wunderlist for recruiting.
38. Give away a freebie
A great way to increase your email list is to offer a lead magnet or freebie to your audience.
You can also offer it in a blog post. Zapier, an automation workflow app that connects your apps for better efficiency, offered their new eBook, The Ultimate Guide to Project Management as a freebie on their blog.
39. Do a roundup of your favorites
Whether you’re a bigger company, small business, or a solopreneur, your audience will appreciate you sharing your faves. These favorite items don’t have to relate to your product or service either.
MeetEdgar did an Edgar’s Fave Five post on what they were reading at the time.
40. Create a post about myths in your industry
A clever tactic entrepreneurs use when promoting their product is to create a post to dispel any myths surrounding their product.
This type of post speaks to the readers that aren’t fully invested in your service or product and can convince them to buy once they finish reading it.
This is what Caitlin Bacher did when she introduced her Instagram course called Wham Bam Instagram.
41. Show how you failed
Being transparent online can be a challenge for a lot of people. But the thing is, when you show a vulnerable side of yourself people will remember you and believe you more than if you painted a rosy picture of your business and blog.
Neil Patel of Quick Sprout wrote a blog post about why his first business failed. By publishing this post, he can help other marketers and entrepreneurs avoid any mistakes on their business.
42. Use annual events and relate them to your product or service
In November, men grow mustaches for Movember and writers participate in NaNoWriMo, which is National Novel Writing Month.
As an entrepreneur or marketer, you can use annual events like these as a topic for your blog and try to relate them to your product or service.
Or better yet, do what Headspace did and create a video that talks about the event while promoting your business.
43. Feature a success story
Show off how great your product or service is by sharing a success story from one of your customers. This can help your readers understand your product and see how transformative it can be.
For example, Mark Sisson of Mark’s Daily Apple promotes a Primal lifestyle with his blog and books. He shares a lot of success stories from people who adopted the primal diet and lifestyle.
With over 300,000 subscribers, he’s doing something right!
44. Write an open letter to your audience
An open letter usually refers to a published letter that either protests or appeals to one thing or to a particular audience member.
As a business owner or creator, you can create an open letter to your audience explaining your stance on a certain topic.
This is what Pippin did over on Pippin’s Plugins’ blog.
45. Welcome a new team member
For a lot of solopreneurs, adding that first team member is an exciting event. As such, it makes for an engaging blog post and it introduces your new team member to your customers or clients.
For Zao, a WordPress agency, this is what the owner did. He introduced new hire Justin Sternberg and cited a new chapter in his business.
46. Rant about it
Remember when Twitter dropped a bombshell and told everyone they were no longer supporting share counts on the Twitter buttons?
Well, Warfare Plugins had a thing or two to say about that news.
If your business is impacted by some big piece of news, go ahead and rant about it. If enough people do it, that news can change for the better!
47. Do a product review
One way to add more value to your blog is to review other products. And solopreneurs may wish to use affiliate links to generate an additional income stream.
By giving your own opinion on a product, you build your credibility and help your audience find products and tools they need.
WP Superstars provides a lot of reviews & tutorials on WordPress plugins and themes. For example, they recently published a review of Thrive Leads.
48. Create a content locked blog post
Do you know what a content lock is? It’s a way to increase your share counts or to capture emails by limiting access to your blog post content.
The reader must share your post, or enter their email address in the opt in form, and once they do, the rest of the blog post content is revealed.
For example, Photowebo, a site for photographers, used this method for their post on 33 Blog Topics for Photographers, and How Audience Matters.
To get started, you can use OptinMonster’s content locking feature, or the Thrive Leads equivalent.
49. Compare your topic with something that is totally unrelated
Use a pop culture reference, movie, TV show, song, or fashion trend and compare that to your niche or industry.
It makes for a great blog post as it’s completely unique and offers a fresh perspective on your product or your niche.
Bidsketch provides customizable proposal templates for freelancers and solopreneurs. On their blog, they compared growing your business to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
50. Do a behind-the-scenes post
For companies and entrepreneurs, doing a behind-the-scenes of what goes on is another way to show transparency and authenticity to your audience.
Flywheel, a managed WordPress hosting solution, recently revamped their visual brand. From showing their new logo to letting everyone know their font selections, this is a jam-packed post.
51. Create a list post of just stats
Instead of mentioning one or a few stats related to your industry, why not create an entire post made up of stats?
nDash, a content marketing platform, created a post on 50 content community statistics.
It’s a great way to increase your social shares, sell your services or products, and create a blog post for your content schedule.
52. Dive deep and tell a story
Pick a topic and tell a story about it, but dive deep. Tell it from the beginning and lead up to the present.
For example, Contently has a post on the untold story of Facebook Live. This story can help their audience understand the impact Facebook Live has had and how it can help their business or blog.
53. A call to arms post
When big news hits your industry sometimes having a call to arms is the best way to show where your business stands.
A call to arms post is a protest about what is going on in your business and this is a great way to grow your brand and let your fans know what your passions are.
Speaker Dirk Beveridge talks with the CEO of Graybar in his podcast, about the changing landscape of business model innovations.
The disruptive environment we find ourselves, in Kathy’s mind is nothing short than a call to arms. That as leaders we must create a sense of urgency throughout our organizations to rethink the business models of the future and find new ways of creating, delivering, and capturing value.
54. Do a comparison post
Following on from the idea of writing product reviews, you can take this a step further by publishing a comparison post on two popular items like themes or plugins. Or you can compare various items at once.
This is what WP Superstars did in their post comparing WordPress page builder plugins.
55. Do a video blog post
Video is all the rage now. With Facebook Live and YouTube, it’s a great channel to practice your marketing strategies for your business.
Why not incorporate video on your blog? Gary Vaynerchuk has a video series where he answers readers’ and followers’ questions.
56. Host a giveaway
Boost your email list, traffic and readership by hosting a giveaway. For solopreneurs, this is the perfect way to grow your blog!
Blogger Chantel Arnett hosted a giveaway after only publishing 11 posts. This is as great way to increase traffic and subscribers.
If you’d like to run your own giveaway or contest, check out my post on social media contest tools. There are a few free options in there so you can get started right away!
57. Create a cheat sheet
While cheat sheets often make for a good lead magnet, why not create a blog post around a topic and then condense it and make it a cheat sheet?
These types of post are highly useful for busy people and if it offers just the things they need, then they’ll be sure to refer to your post.
As an example, Crazy Egg created a cheat sheet for landing page optimization.
58. Do a project or challenge
Marketers and entrepreneurs can use their blog to show behind-the-scenes of their work. One way to show this is with a project or challenge you’re doing.
It might be a collaboration project or just a personal one where you’re trying something new in a different industry.
Neil Patel started the $100,000 challenge by starting a site in the health niche. Every month he shared the steps he was taking to reach his end goal.
59. Create a top-takeaways post
If you’re a solopreneur, your readers value your opinion and choices you make. A great blog post to have is one about the key takeaways from an eBook, an event, course or anything else. Let your audience know the key points you felt were important from something you did or read.
For example, blogger Amy Dowling from My Life From Home, shared her takeaways from her first blogging conference.
60. Talk about your competition
Many businesses or entrepreneurs don’t frequently mention their competition on their blog. But, Slack did!
Slack is a messaging app for teams and recently Microsoft announced they are working on a similar application and will be competing with Slack.
Slack decided to give their take on this news.
Conclusion
There ya go! A list of 60 blog post ideas for your business blog.
It’s worth mentioning that you should always vary the types of blog posts that you publish. This is part of the reason why creating a content calendar is so important.
If you need help with crafting headlines for your posts, check out my post on headline writing tools.
And if you need help coming up with specific topics to write about, this post will help.
The post 60 Blog Post Ideas For Entrepreneurs, Marketers, And Businesses appeared first on Blogging Wizard.
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Tuesday, February 13, 2018
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