In this blog post i’m going to break down what to blog about and how to serve up content to your audience that generates more traffic, leads and sales.
Resources Mentioned:
- Free Training– How To Start A Profitable Blog eCourse
- How To Start A Blog Step-By-Step Tutorial
- Get Your Blog Setup For You For Free (Limited To 25 People)
Before I jump into teaching you what to blog about we first must talk about the real point of a blog…
It’s Not About You, It’s About Them!
Most people make the mistake of blogging about anything and everything.
The problem with this is that people are signed up for WIIFM. (What’s In It For Me)
In other words they don’t care about you they care about themselves.
So in the early days of growing your blog nobody gives a f^ck about what you did on the weekend, the things you care about or your interests.
What they do care about is how can you help them solve their problems.
This is why everything I do and base my business on is all about creating content that delivers value to my ideal customer.
I’m going to guess your end goal is to make a sale right?
In order to do that you need have a healthy balance of content that attracts your ideal customer and content to sell your products.
I spend more time creating content to attract my audience.
Why?
Simple…..without the audience you will never be able to sell your products.
You want to create content that shows empathy for you audience.
Most people spend all of their time creating content to promote their products and services, but they overlook creating content that shows their potential customer that they understand their situation and can help them solve it.
When you focus your efforts on creating content that answers the solutions to their problems they will subscribe to your email list, digest more of your content and will be interested in purchasing your products without needing to convince them they need to buy it.
When you understand your customer on a deep level and you write content that speaks directly to them, you will have a very large business on your hands.
So you’re probably thinking “thanks captain obvious, but how do I figure out what content I should be creating?”
Well i’m glad you asked… there are 3 types of content you should be creating.
1.) Content people actively search for in Google or Youtube
Now as I mentioned earlier, in the early days you have to focus 90% of your content on topics people are searching for.
There is a time and place for the content about you in the future once you have an audience.
I find what to blog about by reverse engineering my competitors.
Most people use keyword tools, spend hours trying to find the perfect keywords with low competition and really geek out on this stuff.
Not me… I prefer to let my competitors do all the hard work for me.
Before we get started you will need Google drive.
This is free, you just need a gmail account. I use Google drive to make spreadsheets and keep a list of keywords, topics and the links to my competitors content.
From there the next step is to do a little research. I first start with Youtube by typing a broad keyword I would think someone would search for.
In this case it’s “how to setup a website”.
Notice how when I type that in more search phrases drop down. Youtube knows what people are searching for. I would note these down for searches you can try later.
The next step is to find a channel that looks like they create lots of videos in the niche.
Once I find a channel that seems to be doing well I will click on videos to see what topics they’re creating content on.
The next step is to click on the dropdown and select most popular videos.
Once you click most popular videos you can see all of the persons videos that got the most views and went viral.
You want to note all of these video topics and links to the Youtube video down in your Google Drive folder for possible future content to create.
Now I like to do this for the top 5 competitors in my niche. You can find different competitors by playing with different search terms and finding more popular channels and using this same process.
Now the next step is going to Google and using a broad keyword “how to setup a website”.
Just like the process above we will apply a similar process with Google.
Once you type in a keyword you will see recommend search phrases drop down.
These are all searches Google knows people actively search. You should note these keywords down to do research for future content.
With each search you can find the top 2-5 sites and go through their websites finding topics they’ve created content on.
You will be able to tell which websites know what they’re doing by content with lots of engagement(people commenting, liking or sharing) and content with search phrases(keywords) in the titles of the blog posts.
For the content you like make sure to save the blog post in your spread sheet in Google drive for future content ideas.
Now the next step you can do with each Google search is to scroll down to the bottom of the page and look at the related searches. These are search terms Google thinks you also might be looking for.
Each search term should yield different content and websites you can get ideas from.
Now my final step to this process is how I go about creating this type of content:
1.) I read the comments on the videos or the blog posts to see what people do and don’t like.
You will get tons of feedback from your target audience as to what they like and what they think could be better about the content. This gives you ideas how to make your content better.
2.) Research the top 3 videos or blog posts around your topic and take notes about what you do and don’t like.
3.) Create a better piece of content from your research.
I generally like to make my content more step-by-step, more detailed and add in my personality.
Now the next type of content is valuable once you start to get an audience.
2.) Survey Your Audience About What They Want
Now once you have an audience it’s good to survey them often and just ask them what they want from you.
I survey my audience almost on a monthly basis to make sure i’m creating content they want to learn.
You can do this with something like survey monkey or you can do what I do and just ask them on your social media channels.
There are many different ways you can do this:
1.) Send an email to your subscribers and ask them what they want to learn or what they need help with.
2.) Ask your followers on Instagram to comment.
3.) Ask your Youtube subscribers to comment below your video on what they want to learn.
You can do this on any social media channel you have and you could even tell your blog readers to comment as well.
Now keep in mind some of the requests will be content ideas you wont want to do, but often times your readers will tell you exactly what they want.
By surveying my audience often it saves me from creating content they don’t care about.
3.) Mix It Up And Have Fun
Now the 3rd type of content should be used once you’ve built a bit of a following.
Once you have an audience they will actually want to know more about you and they will care about your opinions because they know you and trust you.
This is the time when you can write fun posts, really inject your personality and let people into your world.
This type of content is what creates raving fans and lifetime customers, but it should only be created once you have traction.
Here are some ideas for content you can blog about:
- What do you like to do for fun?
- What is your life story?
- Write a post about all of your failures, self doubts and struggles you went through.
- What is something you stand for or what do you hate in your industry? I hate the laptop lifestyle crowd who sell hopes and dreams of making money on the beach with no work.
- What are you future goals, plans or aspirations?
- Weird facts about yourself that no one knows.
- Write about lies, myths or deceiving things in your industry that you feel is hurting your tribe.
- Write about your hobbies and what you like to do outside of your blog.
- Interview experts in your industry.
These types of posts are good to mix into your content plan so your readers get to know you on a deeper level.
This strengthens the bond they have with you and helps your readers trust you more.
I would suggest to only do these types of post with about 10% of your content. I still to this day focus on content that will grow my business(searches).
Well that is a wrap. My content process is far more simple than most people. I choose to do things the easy way over working harder than necessary.
If you enjoyed this post you will love my free course on how to start a blog below.
