Chances are, if you are reading this, you know you should be blogging but have no clue what to write about? Or maybe you are just burnt out and running out of content ideas? These concerns probably led you to type “what should I blog about?” into Google and land on this post! Don’t worry, you are most definitely not alone. Especially in this entrepreneurial world where we have to wear all the hats. Constantly crafting new and unique content is a challenge. Plus, the added pressure of knowing what your audience is searching for! Cue the nervous laughter. Don’t worry friend. We are here with some blog ideas to help make content creation easier than ever so you can get back to crushing those goals!
Why Your Creative Business Needs a Blog
Before we get into it, let’s chat about why your creative business needs a blog. This is one of the most common questions we get because the added work of managing a blog sounds exhausting. But we promise, regardless of your industry, a blog will help increase your visibility! Still need some more convincing? Here are 5 reasons you need to add a blog into your small business arsenal:
- Ranking: With a website you have the ability to rank for a handful of keywords, but with a blog you can rank for hundreds of thousands of keywords specific to your niche & industry. The best part of this is that you create so many additional avenues for your clients and customers to find you online.
- Crawling: Every time you add a new page or piece of content to your website, you are letting Google know that you are an active business, dedicated to creating content for your audience. This means your content will get crawled more often and you’ll have the potential to sit a little higher on those search engine result pages (SERP).
- Authority: By writing long-form content (more than a thousand words) you are telling Google that you are an expert on that subject and therefore you will have more authority than your competitors who are not writing content.
- Link Building: When you write really good content, your audience may start to put it on their website to reference or quote you as an expert. Google and search engines notice this! Be sure to encourage this as an action in your post, sometimes we all need a little reminder to share.
- Traffic Opportunities: The best part about blog content is that it creates a substantial amount of content across every platform. This means a single blog post can drive website traffic beyond just search engines by repurposing the content into social media posts, a podcast episode, video content and so much more.
These are just five of the many benefits of blogging. Whenever we are working with new SEO clients we like to think of SEO as a two step approach. Step one is to have a solid SEO foundation with an optimized website. While step two is to drive traffic to that website with a blog that leverages strategic keywords. That my friends is where the magic of SEO comes full circle!
Why Blogging And SEO Are The Perfect Match
Google doesn’t just look for keywords, she wants to see new, fresh & updated content that she can put in search results. That’s why blogging and SEO go hand-in-hand. Did you know that the more often you update your website could lead to a better SEO authority in the eyes of Ms. Google? She wants to see that you’re constantly providing valuable information that people are searching for. Blogs are the best way to consistently add content to your website, and Google loves to see it.
One of the most common questions we hear from our clients is, “How often should I blog?”. This question is very similar to the frequently asked “How often should I be posting on Instagram?”. Unfortunately, it’s not that easy, there really isn’t an exact number. Instead you should consider two things; your competition and consistency. Pick a blogging schedule that works for you and then be consistent with it. At the end of the day, the more you post the quicker you’ll grow. But be realistic and make sure to balance content creation with actual work inside your biz.
Learning the ropes of SEO is a long game, especially when it comes to blogging. So don’t feel frustrated if you don’t see huge jumps of organic traffic right away. It take time to learn how to write for SEO and we are here to teach you the tips and tricks as you go. So let’s start at the beginning with content creation — what the heck should you blog about?
5 Blog Ideas for Creative Entrepreneurs
Let’s dive right into five blog ideas for creative entrepreneurs to kick off your journey and help you be more consistent for our friend Ms. Google.
1. Share The Tools You Use
Let’s start with something simple like products and resources you already use and love. Similar business owners are always looking for ways to make their lives easier that are tried and true. One of our best performing posts is all about how we use Asana to run our small business. Why is this a good post for our audience? The keywords we chose are searched often on Google. Plus, our audience and clientele are also creative business owners who might seek this information to help simplify their lives. Although it’s not directly related to a service we offer, it’s a piece of content that can bring the right audience into our inner circle. So your first blog content idea is to share the tools that you use to stay productive in your business or make your work life easier to help others do the same.
2. What Do You Offer?
This one idea is actually dozens of ideas. Let’s consider each of your services and offerings. How can you highlight them? Don’t think of this like a sales post, instead consider how you can share educational bits and pieces of your offerings in blog post format. Share your processes. What are the benefits of the service you offer? Share case studies of the different people you’ve worked with. What is an exact problem and solution you helped solve for X client? With each of these posts you can link to your services or contact page as a call to action for your audience who is craving more. This is a great way to promote your business without being salesy while creating tons of content!
Here’s an example from the Duo Collective Blog — a 6 step guide to creating a social media strategy. Social media strategy is something we offer our clients and something they might be searching for or attempting to DIY before making an investment with someone like us. So, why not help them along this journey!
3. List Posts
We love a good list post for so many reasons. One of the biggest reasons is because it’s an amazing way to secure more backlinks for your business. A topic for another time. Did you know that headlines with numbers are more clear and receive 327% more clicks than question headlines? People love a good list. Here are a few examples of that:
X ways to grow your business
The X tools I use to run my business
Here are X of my favorite products for [fill in the blank]
Lists like these are captivating and draws you in from the search engine page. Plus, as consumers, we crave variety. When we are searching for a solution, we know we wont all fit into a one-size fits all plan. We need to see all the options so that we can find the one that resonates best with us. That is the power of a list post! Here are a few headline ideas to get your brain churning with content ideas for your business:
- Top 3 ways to…
- 5 ideas…
- 7 tools…
- 4 ways to…
- 5 of the best…
Need an example? Here is one of our favorite lists post: 38 Instagram Reel ideas for business owners.
4. Step-by-Step Tutorials
What comes after a numbered list post in popularity? An easy to read, step-by-step tutorial. Tutorials are one of the best ways to answer questions your audience is searching for on Google. They are easy to skim which is something we do often. Did you know that in that same Moz article above, we learned that 80% of readers never make it past the headlines? Yikes! This means that staring simple steps as the headlines of your posts can help drive deeper engagement amongst your readers, increasing time on site.
What are some ways you can leverage a step-by-step blog post? Consider sharing how to use a tool or platform you recommend. Share steps to a strategy you follow that coincides with one of your offerings. The key with these tutorials is to make them simple and easy to understand. Readers don’t want to consume a blog that complicates the topic and is hard to read and skim! Here are a few blog post headline ideas for step-by-step tutorials:
- X steps to XYZ
- How to do XYZ
- The ultimate guide to XYZ
- XYZ tutorial on
Our blog post and video on how to create a custom Gmail signature in Canva is our best performing blog post that ranks on page one of Google and drives oodles of traffic to our website. It’s also a great blog post example on repurposing content because it lead to a quick video tutorial on YouTube.
5. Case Study
Our last idea to answer the question ‘what should I blog about’ is all about your clients and customers. It’s a fun way to showcase your work and showcase case studies from past or current clients. Our friend and copywriter Sara from Between The Lines Copy does a phenomenal job at this. Take a peek at this case study on yours truly!
These posts give you the chance to show off the amazing results and helps to answer how you solved a problem they had. These problems may resonate with someone else too therefore helping drum up new inquires! You can also use this space to explain how valuable your offerings are. Here is a common way to structure a case study for your blog:
- Share an overview of your client’s problem
- What solution did you offer?
- What was the outcome and the actual result of your partnership?
- Finally, include a testimonial from the client themselves!
These blog ideas will help you not only create more content for your blog, but also help you improve at blogging for SEO.
The most important takeaway when starting your blogging journey is to remember to stay consistent. Even if you can only do one or two posts per month. Consistent quality content is always better than pumping out 10 low quality posts one month and then disappearing for the next five months. So simply start by creating a schedule that works for you and stick to it.
If you are struggling with a consistent blogging strategy that not only drives traffic but also creates new inquiries and leads, let us help! We’d love to build you a strong blog strategy alongside doing SEO keyword research that allows you to create content people are actually searching and clicking on!
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Great ideas! I really like the idea to write more in depth about services, not having to worry about it being a sales page but being able to share more about the thought behind the service – and then linking from the sales page too!
Exactly! That is a great example of a way to share value and sell your services at the same time. 🙂