11 Insanely Helpful Blog Post Ideas for Your Business Blog (With Examples)

Every marketer out there says to start a blog. 

 

And it's easy to see why with these stats from DemandMetric:

 

  • 70% of your consumers would rather learn about your products through articles than adverts 
  • Digital content marketing (blogging mainly) costs 62% less than traditional marketing
  • 68% of consumers spend time reading about brands that interest them
  • 80% of consumers appreciate learning about a brand through custom content

 

On top of these benefits, businesses with a blog receive 55% more traffic than those without and can expect to gain 126% higher lead growth. Clearly, having a blog is a positive thing for your business. 

 

But what the heck should you blog about?

 

Like most businesses, you might have a hard time coming up with blog post ideas that your audience will love, appreciate and value. But that's about to come to a stop now. 

 

In this post, we take a deep dive on where to find inspiration for your business blog posts and also share a couple of blog post ideas.

 

Let's dive right in.

 

6 Sure-Fire Ways to Generate a Constant Stream Blog Post Ideas

 

Creating quality content for your blog posts means having quality sources for your ideas. Here are 6 idea sourcing methods you can't get wrong. 

 

1. Ask for Customer Feedback

 

Do you know what the most valuable part of your business is?

 

 Your customers. 

 

And they are also a gold mine of ideas for your blog. You can pick their mind through targeted surveys to find out what issues they struggle with most. Their answers will then form the basis of your blog posts. 

 

The best thing about this approach is that you'll never 'hear crickets only' after publishing. After all, you wrote about your customers' most pressing needs and wants, so they'll want to read the post. 

 

In your customer surveys, you can ask about:

 

  • The aspects customers like most about your product
  • Other complementary services or products they use alongside your products
  • The features your customers want you to add to your product or services
  • The type of content they'd like to see from you

 

By asking for your customer's feedback, you can come up with unique blog post ideas every time, setting yourself apart from competitors.

 

2. Competitor Analysis

 

This technique is often an overlooked source of blog posts ideas. Most people reason that you wouldn't want to be a copycat of your competitor. But that's not what competitor analysis is about. 

 

Instead of regurgitating what your competitors already have, try to find the gaps in their content  whilst using great content as your inspiration. What themes and topics did they miss writing about? This approach ensures that you'll come up with unique ideas that your competitors overlooked. 

 

But if there are no gaps— which is hardly the case— try to find a new perspective or twist on the blog posts they've already published. 


 

3. Ask the Community

 

One of the most exciting things about technology is the instant access you have to a whole community of people interested in your product or industry. Even better, you can access these communities at the same time in one place. 

 

Communities like Quora and Reddit are a great start to finding your target audience's needs, wants, or questions. 

 

4. Find Ideas from Your existing posts

 

Sometimes, you don't have to drown in research to find blog posts ideas. 

 

The idea may be staring right at you in the form of your older blog posts. You can review your past and best-performing posts to determine which posts can form the foundation for new posts. 

 

For instance, if you had a listicle post covering best practices of employee management with list items such as:

 

  • Offer flexible working
  • Offer benefits employees want
  • Conduct more performance reviews
  • Create an effective employee onboarding process

 

…you could create blog posts covering each of these points in length. One of the blog post titles might read: How Flexible Working Boosts Employee Retention.

 

This is a great approach especially when you understand that there're many types of articles out there you can incorporate. 

 

5. Work With the Trends

 

There's always something trending in your industry. And these trends are a great way to get a headstart on what to write about in your blog. The four tools listed below and a bit of SEO can help you find trends and breakout topics you can cover in your blog. 

 

  1. Google trends— to discover search terms rising in popularity. You can filter the results to access the results of only a specific region, country, or industry. 
  2. BuzzSumo— to find which articles are ranking and the most popular in terms of social shares.
  3. AnswerThePublic— for plenty of popular questions and terms people are searching for.
  4. Exploding Topics— to find topics that are about to gain traction online.

 

But there's a downside with online trends: They don't last. And as we all know, evergreen content is better since your target audience will continue to find the content useful, even after trends have come and gone. 

 

To counteract this issue, tie the trends to an evergreen topic so that even when the trend dies, you'll still have a useful post standing. 

 

6. Create an Idea File

 

Let me let you in on a secret: the best copywriters keep what they call a swipe file. 

 

Copywriters use the swipe file to store copywriting ideas, hacks, and trends to help them create copy faster. 

 

Let's swap the term swipe file with an idea file. In essence, the idea file will be the place where you record all the ideas you come across. 

 

These ideas can be from conversations, a show you're watching, a book you've read, or even an observation you've made. With an idea file, you'll record ideas before they vanish and easily access them when you need to write a new post.  

 

A simple task management app can function as an idea file, but Notion will be a better choice if you want more flexibility. It's intuitive, simple to use, and they even have a content calendar template you can use for free. 

 

11 Blog Post Ideas for Your Business Blog

 

Now that you know where to source your ideas, here are some blog posts ideas to boost your inspiration. But before you scour any further, check out our detailed on article writing (call it article writing 101, if you may).

 

1. Get Inside the Experts' Brains

 

These types of blog posts are known as round-up posts. In essence, you reach out to 5-10 experts in your field and whip up blog posts with their quotes or opinions on a particular topic. 

 

The best round-up posts are detailed and not far stretched. We see '65 experts give their opinion on XYZ' type of posts on the internet alot. While the number of experts interviewed is impressive, these posts are typically shallow. They are also repetitive, which is annoying for most of your audience.

 

Instead, aim for a minimum of 5 and a maximum of 15 experts when writing your round-up post. The content will be diverse enough and yet in-depth. 

 

Here are excellent examples of expert round-ups with the perfect balance of diversity and in-depth content. 

 

Round-up posts can also take the form of resources, insights, and tips. In this case, you share a list of helpful resources that your audience finds valuable. These resources can be apps, blog articles, videos, webinars, events, etc. 

 

Examples of resource round-ups

 

 

2. Create Checklists that Simplify Tasks and Processes

 

If your particular product or service needs different processes, checklist type of blog posts are a good idea.

 

Basically, you'll formulate a checklist with all the necessary steps your audience needs to have in place. 

 

The good thing with checklists is that you can always convert them into printables or pdf checklists for your audience to download— which is a great lead magnet. 

 

You can create checklists for processes, tasks, troubleshooting, planning, and anything else your reader may find helpful. Another creative post idea is to create a checklist outlining how to perform a process with your product. 

 

 

3. Bust those Myths 

 

Myth-busting posts might be controversial, but it's an excellent place to start when generating blog post ideas. Ideally, you can create a post busting common misconceptions in your industry. 

 

These posts attract significant attention and have social media as the primary traffic source. You can bust a myth about:

 

 

4. Show 'em How to Do It 

 

These types of how-to posts take the readers on a step-by-step process of doing a particular task. They are usually the most common and valuable to readers and are often long-form in nature. 

 

If your goal is to build backlinks, publishing long-form content may aid in that quest. According to a study by Backlinko, long-form posts get 77.2% more backlinks than short-form content. So, what type of how-to content can you publish? 

 

 

You get the drift?

 

It's all about finding themes and topics your target audience is most interested in and then creating posts that teach them how to accomplish that particular task.

 

5. List it Out

 

Listicle type of posts are a favorite among marketers. They are also a customer favorite since they are easy to scan through, and most are usually actionable. In fact, it's almost impossible to go wrong with listicles— unless you're publishing pure fluff. 

 

Listicles can be fun and humorous, or serious and all about business. The key to nailing listicles is to provide as much value as possible while keeping it interesting. Here are 3 listicles that do both. 

 

 

6. Explain How Things Work

 

This is an explanatory type of post that shows why things happen or how they happen. They can also be a combination of why and how things happen. These posts are great at showcasing your expertise as a brand while solving a customer's problem. Below are 3 explanatory articles exploring why and how or a combination of both.

 

 

7. Answer Customers' FAQ 

 

Just as the name suggests, FAQ blog posts explore the common questions your target audience has. 

 

So, where do you find these questions? 

 

You can find questions to cover in your FAQ posts in community forums, Google searches or simply ask your customers what questions they'd love to get answers on. This article by Data Bricks is the perfect example for FAQ-type of posts. 

 

It's in-depth and covers most questions that their buyer personas— data analysts, CIOs, CDOs, and data engineers— would want to learn about. 

 

8. Make It a Personal Affair

 

Ever thought of showcasing the personal side of our brand?

 

If not, that's a great blog post idea to explore. Sharing a story is all it takes to build that connection many businesses wish they had with their customers. Studies show that when we hear or read inspiring stories, our brains release oxytocin, a hormone that makes us feel connected to the storyteller. 

 

If you want to connect with your audience and still have a ton of business blog post ideas, share personal stories. You don't have to reveal your entire life, but you can always share:

 

  • How your business came to being.
  • Something unique about your business, for instance, 10 Things You Didn't Know About Starbucks.
  • The challenges you faced with a particular process, technology or methodology.
  • The meaning behind your company's mission, vision, and value statements.

 

Progress reports are also another way to become personal with your audience. You don't have to share your revenue, but you can share the goals you've accomplished, the number of customers using your products, and how your products continue to fare in the market. 

 

When you share personal stories, you remind your audience that there are people behind the corporate veil. The result is more connection and trust, which are all ingredients for successful selling.

 

9. Take the Lead by Offering Insights

 

With insights-type of posts and feature articles, you cover the trends, technology, and changes affecting your industry. Your customers will love that you are keeping them in the loop, and over time, you'll take the top spot of industry thought leader in your niche. 

 

These 5 topics can give you a headstart when thinking of your next insights post. 

 

  • 10 trends to expect this year in the XYZ space
  •  5 technologies changing the way XYZ do business
  • Will XYZ be the same in the next few years? Here are 4 reasons why it might change
  • We analyzed 100 XYZ companies on Y, here's what we found
  • New research: XYZ is not the solution to Y

 

10. Let Your Audience Peek Behind the Corporate Veil

 

This type of post introduces personality to your blog. With a behind-the-scenes type of post, you can introduce your team members to your audience, document a day in the life of one of your team members, or share updates each time you welcome a new team member. 

 

New employee welcome: Welcome to our newest team member! 

Day in the life: A Day In The Life Of A Business Manager 

 

11. Share Success Stories

 

These are like mini-case studies you can share on your blog, highlighting how your product has helped clients. Not only are these blog posts engaging, but they can also serve as a lead magnet. These three brands are winging success stories on their blogs.

 

BigCommerce; SkullCandy Website Relaunches on BigCommerce

Slack: Stripe's sales reps forge meaningful client relationships with Slack Connect 

Microsoft: Microsoft Customer Story-An ambition to advance healthcare through AI

 

Finding the Blog Post Idea is Just One Step of Many

 

There you have it— 11 blog post ideas and a couple of ways to maintain a constant supply of ideas. But that's only one step in the bigger picture. You still have to think about keyword research, writing the actual content, and distribution.

 

Here at Zoey Writers, we excel in the second (creating content that your audience loves.) 

 

Write us a quick message to find out how we can help ease your content marketing load.

 

Photo by Eva Elijas from Pexels: Thanks Eva : )