Content Creation
Clichés are often based on fact – but that doesn’t mean you should always take them at face value. For example: “content is king.” That’s only partially true; these days, content is “king” only if it is valuable to your readers and generates response on social media platforms. It’s easy for experts to say you should regularly create quality content for your blog. But doing it week in and week out can be an enormous challenge. If you are finding it difficult to come up with content creation ideas, the following strategies can help get you out of the rut.
Debunk
The Internet is not only a terrific source for information. It’s also a wonderful place to find misinformation. That creates a major opportunity for creating content which will get a big reaction on social media, and generate links and visits to your site.
Do a quick search on a topic which you find interesting and is germane to your business, and find a few articles or statements on the topic which are widely assumed to be true but are actually incorrect. Then create some well-researched articles explaining why the assumptions are false, complete with controversial titles. You now have a collection of interesting content, which should generate major viral reaction when you post it to your blog and distribute it through Twitter, Facebook and Google+. The more you defend your position on social media, the more buzz you’ll create and the more attention your site will get.
Crowd-Sourced Questions
Every niche has generic, evergreen questions which generate differing and heated opinions. For example: “Is Obamacare good or bad for small business?” A simple strategy for content creation is to identify those key questions in your niche, and then solicit email opinions from leading authorities in the field. Create a blog post presenting the question to your readers (even better, tease the subject on social media a day or two in advance) and detail the answers from each of the experts who responded. Make sure to send your request to at least 25 experts; many will not respond, so you want to ensure enough content to create your blog post.
News Alerts
There are certainly a lot of negative aspects to Google, but the company does offer some great free tools. Google Alerts is one of them. Through this system, you can ask Google to send you daily or weekly emails listing all of the stories associated with a keyword of your choice. You can then look for interesting developments in your field and create content discussing the implications. The timeliness of this content, coupled with social media posts alerting your followers, will add value to your blog and generate social interest.
To set up a Google alert:
1. Do a search on Google for your keyword phrase.
2. Click “News” in the links running across the top of the search results.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the page of news results and click the “Create Alert” button.
4. Follow the instructions and enter your email address.
If you create links for multiple keywords in your niche, you should have plenty of valuable topics to cover on your small business blog.
Quora Questions
Quora is a question and answer platform. The questions tend to be a bit more sophisticated than what you normally find on Q-and-A sites. This gives you an opportunity to find many topics which probably hadn’t crossed your mind but lend themselves to interesting blog posts. Just visit Quora.com and do a search for your keyword phrase, scroll through the results and you should find plenty of ideas for posts which can add variety and depth to your blog.
Depend On Others For Ideas
Content creation isn’t difficult for a month or two when you are full of ideas and opinions you’re anxious to present to readers. However, you will eventually exhaust your initial list of topics. When you do, online searches, news alerts and Q-and-A sites like Quora will help you recharge your creative juices, allowing you to generate quality content for your small business blog month after month.
