When you start a small business blog that centers around your business, you can stumble and falter when it comes to knowing what to write about. One of the secrets to a lively blog that develops your search engine ranking is consistency. But that can be problematic when you have no idea what to write about.
Let’s say you are Jim and Dave’s Auto Body Shop and your marketing consultant (aka “me”) has suggested you start a blog. How are you going to write 2-3 blog posts per week (or more) of 150-400 words and not run out of content? Here are some suggestions:
1. First, go to Google’s keyword tool and enter your business type, eg. “heating and plumbing”, “office supplies”, “auto mechanic”, “hair stylist” and copy/paste every single one of those keywords into a spreadsheet. I used “auto body” and came up with 100 phrases.
2. Comb through those for ideas. Auto body results include paint, estimates, fiberglass, restoration, supplies, DIY, dent repair, collisions, classic cars, detailing, technicians.
3. You can reenter some of these terms to fuel even more topics, but in using JUST Google keyword tools, a small business owner could write about:
- the different paint options for vehicles
- how do auto body shops estimate their services
- how to find a reputable auto body shop
- best resources fo classic car restoration
- how to DIY for small dings, scratches (video would be great for this)
- trendy paint colors
- what to do if you’ve had a collision
- how to detail your own car
(I could keep going)
4. The next helpful step is to set up Google Alerts for some key topics like “auto industry”, “auto repair”, “highway safety” and have results sent to you daily. Google will comb cyberspace for the most relevant news stories and blog posts about your topics. These will invariably spark some ideas for blog posts of your own.
5. Do a Google blog search for blogs about your target words. You can check out auto body results here. I use Evernote and Google Reader to track posts/articles of interest online.
6. Keep notes of your customers FAQ’s (frequently asked questions) and write blog posts with the answers.
There’s no doubt that there are days you are going to feel more challenged to come up with content. Writers with the world at their feet struggle, so why shouldn’t you when you are dealing with a niche’ market? Use these tools and you will find it much easier to stay consistent with your blogging.
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