By bbr

by Kelly Lucas, marketing and social media manager

We routinely espouse the benefits of blogging to our clients – it’s great for SEO, it shows off your expertise, it highlights the personality of your organization. And while many often agree that it would be great, they often say they are at a loss as to what to blog about. This is a common problem, but it doesn’t have to dash your hopes of becoming a brilliant blogger. Today, we’re going to show you a few surefire ways of coming up with great blogging topics.

What are the top five questions you are being asked by your clients? A great way to get started brainstorming blog topics is to look to your clients. If you find that you are routinely being asked certain questions by your clients, consider writing a blog post on those topics. Odds are, if several of your clients are having this conundrum, there are probably others seeking answers on those same issues. Be the one who provides that answer and becomes their known expert.

Look to the latest laws and regulations that affect your clients. Anytime there are sweeping changes to rules, laws and regulations, people run to the internet to see how the new guidelines may affect them. How will sequestration impact me? What are the implications of Obamacare for my business? Take a moment to help dispel rumors or clear up current miscommunications and educate your clients as well as prospects in your target industries.

Summarize a conference or presentation you attended. If you’ve attended a presentation or conference and gleaned some very valuable information, write up a summary post about it. Tread carefully, you don’t want to just rehash everything from the presenters – they probably wouldn’t appreciate that. However, it’s okay to talk about a few key takeaways as long as you properly reference the presenters and link to them if possible.

Create a write up about an interesting article you’ve read. Blog topics don’t need to be only original ideas. If you’ve read an interesting article and think your clients and prospects would enjoy learning about this same subject, blog a summary of the article or expand on the premise. When you do this, be sure you provide proper attribution to the original article with a direct link to it and add in your own two cents on the subject.

Is there a lesson in one of the latest news stories? If there is a hot topic and you can relate it to the types of services you provide, blog about that hot topic. Not only will it show your ability to think strategically, the fact that it is a hot topic can do wonders for your SEO. If everyone is searching on that subject and you come up in those searches, the additional impressions and clicks can only help your search engine ranking.

What do you currently disagree with? Are there certain standards or concepts to which some businesses adhere that don’t make sense to you? Are there current trends that you wish would just go away and you have a valid argument on why? Not every blog post needs to agree with a topic or be just a basic update. Sometimes you go against the grain when it comes to your stance on something. Create a blog post providing an intelligent disagreement on these sorts of topics. When done appropriately, these blog posts foster great discussion and show how you can think outside the box.

This is only a start, of course. There are dozens of ways to come up with blog topics, and once you begin you’ll most likely find that ideas come to you throughout your day. Get started by experimenting with some of these suggestions, and then let us know what works for you. We’d love to learn about your special techniques for generating posts in the comments section.