How to Get Unstuck for Social Media or Blog Ideas

Some marketing clichés are rooted in unassailable truths. The one we’ll discuss here is “Content is King.” For all the attention paid to SEO, link strategies and so forth, the bottom line for promoting your ideas is to provide great, fresh, sought after content, that is well-organized and well tagged and plenty of it. Google search rankings are heavily influenced by quality content laced with high-rated keywords. And don’t try to hard to lace those keywords, since naturally flowing, innovative text will have them anyway.  In fact, you may even pay a ranking penalty if you try too hard, since Google’s algorithm may pick up that you are in fact, “trying too hard”.

Content includes writing, photographs, videos, pictograms, infographics, charts and other forms of information. One of the greatest threats to meaningful content is writer’s block, in which you sit in front of the keyboard, eyes glazed, sweat pouring out, with a rising sense of panic as the clock ticks.

Don’t panic, fight back. There are a number of strategies you can deploy to get unstuck and get those blogs rolling again:

1. Understand your audience: Who is your audience, what do they need, what confuses them and what are their pain points? Businesses often engage in customer polling to identify their problems, enthusiasms and concerns, which should help you nail down topics for your writing. You can check social media for hot trends to see what your audience is thinking about. If you’re stuck, imagine yourself as a potential customer and ask yourself what information you’d like to receive. Comb through customer reviews to see what’s bugging consumers in the market for your offerings.

2. 

   Brainstorm: Economies of scale are key – brainstorm many topics at once and create an editorial calendar. There’s nothing worse than having to continuously put out content without suitable organization and preparation. You can develop many ideas by going through each page on your website and identifying all the factors and features that make your business unique. Inventory topics you’ve already covered and present a new take on them. A fresh point of view is almost as good as a new idea. You can also find pertinent topic ideas by doing Google searches about your offerings, including search terms that include “blog topics.” Also check how your competitors exploit social media to find fodder for fresh angles. Your competitors are probably brainstorming just as you are, so don’t be shy about uncovering great ideas that you can re-cast for your own blogs.

3. Community outreach: Don’t hide your company’s good deeds under a bushel basket. You can write about charitable contributions, community programs and other activities that shine a light on how your company is helping the public.
4. Tactics: Once you have a list of topics, it’s time to produce new blogs and associated material on social media. The general rule of thumb is that at least 80 percent of content should be useful to your prospective clients, leaving no more than 20 percent devoted to marketing your company. Writing for a blog is specialized. You need to catch your audience’s attention in the first couple of sentences or the chances are that they’ll move on to another site. Short, punchy, even controversial prose supplemented with eye-catching visual elements give you a fighting chance to hold your audience. Don’t expect readers to commit to thousand-word articles – 800 words is about all you can reasonably expect on a page. You can break longer topics into multi-page content that gives readers the option to continue reading. Use the most valuable keywords in the title, headers and body of your content. Decide on whether you want an inverted pyramid style, in which you expose the who, what and why of the topic in the first paragraph, or the narrative style in which you lead off with an interesting story.
5. Back links – Embed links from your blog or social media posts to the most relevant pages on your website (not just the home page), preferably using a sought-after keyword as the anchor text.  These links count as back links for search ranking and over time, could boost your website in organic search listings.
6. Coordinate: Every article you write should be accompanied by social media content that links back to the article. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many other sites are suitable repositories for comments and articles that highlight material on your website. You can start a Facebook group, deliver tweets, and consider video blogging and podcasts.
7. Never plagiarize: It’s simply suicide, don’t even think about it. Sites like Plagiarisma and Copyscape will quickly uncover stolen material. Google will downgrade your search ranking if it discovers plagiarism. You can borrow ideas, but never copy content.
8. Hire a writer: New blood can help any website. You don’t need to commit to a new employee, as there are high-quality freelance writers out there.  The professionals at Leading Edge Digital can help you to coordinate your blog strategy along with all other web-based marketing.

A number of our clients experience up to 30% of their organic (non-sponsored) website visits directly to their blogs, which is staggering.  For many people, Facebook is the “Internet”, so it’s probably worth participating in the world of blogging and social media for business.