Coming Up With Blog Topics that will Grow Sales

I was speaking with a marketing consultant recently who rattled off ideas for generating more leads and sales from a company blog. She touted linking strategies, SEO tactics, social media apps, coding tricks, to name a few.

All great ideas.

But there’s one thing she didn’t mention that surprised me…

Topics!

Surely, the topic of a blog post — or any type of content, for that matter — plays a pivotal role in whether or not it helps bring in more business.

After all, if the topic isn’t interesting to customers, few will read the post. Or, if the blog post does get attention, but doesn’t ultimately pique interest in your products or services, it’s still a dud. (And all the SEO/coding/linking strategies in the world won’t save it.)

So, coming up with blog topics that attract readers and drive leads and sales is crucial.

The good news is, there’s a simple way to brainstorm and strategize blog topics.

But before I walk you through that technique, keep in mind that a good topic for a post must meet two criteria.

  1. It must be of high-interest to your customers.
  2. It must position your company as a go-to provider of what you do or sell.

If your blog post doesn’t check those boxes then it’s just words on the screen. You might get some SEO value out of the post, but that’s it.

Of course, you want your blog to do more than just please the Google bots. You want it to help get leads and sales.

So, here’s the technique…

First, think about your customers. If you have a Buyer Persona handy, pop that up on your screen.

Next, think about what that customer’s world is like right now. What challenges are they facing? What goals are they eager to achieve? What pressures are they under? What’s on their front burner today?

Then, brainstorm a list of topics likely to be helpful to them. Think about tips you can share, stories that might inspire them, insights they can take advantage of, information they need, lessons you can teach them, ideas they can run with, how-tos you can walk them through, and so forth.

Make a long list. Don’t stop until you have a few decent ideas.

Once you have those, go through your list and cross off any topic not related to what your company does or sell. There’s no sense publishing a blog post on how to make the ultimate blueberry muffin if your company does big data consulting!

Finally, go through your list and circle those remaining topics that are of high-interest to your audience. Notice I didn’t say merely say “interest”. High interest. Zero-in on those topics likely to gain the instant attention of your customers and get them clicking and reading.

This brainstorming technique only takes a few minutes. Yet, chances are, you’ll come up with at least a couple of topic ideas that are golden.

And keep in mind you can use this technique for other types of content, such as newsletter articles, white papers, ebooks, and even webinars.

Give it a try. If a better blog topic can get just 50% more customers reading the post and becoming more interested in your offerings… well… you decide what that’s worth to you!


This article was originally published in LinkedIn Pulse here.

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