4 Places to Find Blog Writing Inspiration

You've taken the plunge and committed to writing a blog for your company's inbound marketing campaign as a way to attract visitors.  And now, like writers the world over, you are staring at a blank screen, fingers poised above the keyboard, wondering "What in the world am I supposed to write about?"  You need blog writing inspiration.

If that has never happened to you, count yourself among the rare lucky ones, because the rest of us who write on a regular basis have experienced that same idea drought.  Luckily, as a business blogger, you may have more resources than you realize for finding blog content.

You've heard the phrase "There are no new ideas?"  Well, your blog doesn't have to be all new ideas.  One of the simplest ways to start generating content for your blog is to repackage material you already have on hand.  Let's look at a few ways you can create blog posts from existing resources.

Internal Publications

Start with something simple.  Do a thorough audit of existing content or internal communications.  Many times, you can take something that was published internally, remove some proprietary information, and turn it into a great blog post that helps showcase your brand and organization.  Repacking materials as a blog post gives your readers an inside look.

Here’s an example: Perhaps your grocery store chain recently published an internal email about proper handling of perishable foods. Repackage that as a blog post about how grocery stores ensure the freshest, safest handling of foods, along with notes about how the customer can preserve freshness and maintain food safety at home. While Festival Foods doesn’t give specifics about their own policies, this blog does describe the internal policies in general, then goes on to provide tips for customers to use in their own homes.

Content Offers

If your company has already produced ebooks, white papers, case studies or other resources for web visitors, mine them for ideas and material. Just as an example, let’s say you have an Introduction to Business Blogging ebook, and one chapter of the book is about finding content. (Sound familiar?) And one page of that chapter is about repackaging existing materials. (spooky music) You can take that one page and expand on it with more specific examples, images, and witty commentary. (Ta-dah!)

Just like I’m doing here. And then be sure to link back to the landing page for the original content offer, because that is what your blog is meant to be: a content hub for inbound marketing.

Other ideas:

• Condense a case study, or highlight the most significant success.

• Explain how to use a template offered on your website.

• Add details explaining why a checklist includes the items it does.

FAQs

Does your company have an FAQ page on its website? Typically, FAQ answers are meant to be quick and brief, often leaving room to expand upon them.

You could turn an FAQ into a blog post by providing more technical background on a question or suggesting new ways to use a specific product feature.

For example, Verizon’s Business FAQs include several topics discussing international travel and roaming charges.

Flip on over to their Solutions Lab blog, and you will find a post centered around affordable options for international communications. While this specific blog is fairly heavy on links to Verizon’s own products, it still features enough non brand-sensitive tips to be useful to readers.

If you do expand on an FAQ topic in your blog, be sure also to include an internal link from that FAQ page to the blog post with the enhanced information.

Front Line Discussions

Don’t forget to consider the questions your front line staff are fielding every day. Reach out to others in your organization to find blog content. Give a pad of paper to your primary lines of communication with the outside world — whether that’s customer service or sales — and ask them, for one day, to write down every question someone asks. That should provide a rich list of ideas for blog posts that actually address the things your customers want to know.

If you blog for an insurance company, for example, that serves an area recently troubled with repeated heavy rains, your customer service representatives may be inundated with questions about water damage claims. That would be your cue to write a blog post about the difference between flood insurance and homeowner’s insurance, along with a step-by-step guide to filing a damage claim and how those claims are assessed.

This has a double effect of answering the questions your customers want answered and hooking into the current news of the day.

With these tips for repackaging existing material into your business blog posts, that blank screen shouldn’t be quite as intimidating as before. Write on!

What other ways have you found to repackage existing material into great blog posts? Share your successes with us, because we can all use new ideas!

And, if you were wondering about the other places to find content mentioned in that ebook, download it now. Introduction to Business Blogging also talks about optimizing your blog posts, promoting your blog and more. And it’s free.