17 Tactics to Never Run out of Blog Content

We all know that blogging is an extremely useful way to rank your website better in search engines. But there is usually always two reasons so many businesses do not.

The first reason is due to lack of time. Writing out a good quality blog post takes time. There is no denying the fact that most businesses are extremely time poor.

Fortunately that is not what this article is about. I will let you work out how to manage your time better yourself. This article is about the second issue. That is the ability to create content on a consistent basis and not run out of things to write about.

There are so many ways to create content and so many different types of content that there is no excuse that you have ran out of ideas for certain types of content. Sometimes you just have to get creative. The best place to find inspiration is to turn to the resources around you. You can create exceptional content with what you already have at hand.

This is a list of my top 17+ content strategies that will mean you will never run out of content.

1. Create Lists

Lists are a super simple way to come up with a full blog post and you should be able to create dozens and dozens of blog topics just from this form. This blog post is an example of creating a list.

Lists can be compiled for any subject as well as any skill level.

Some great topic examples include:

• Top x tips to…
• x best products for…
• x things you didn’t know about…

Other types of lists can be reasons why you should or should not use a product/service.

If you are really struggling for content then you can search for other peoples content and create “best of” lists.

2. Answer commonly asked questions

FAQ’s or frequently asked questions come about all the time. People who are coming to you before, during and after you buy will always have questions about your product or service.

You should be asking them throughout the whole customer journey for feedback and if they have any questions. As soon as some gives you a question then you should write the answer in blog form.

Dont be afraid to go into depth about the single topic as it will serve as a way to show to your leads and customers that you are an authority in your niche.

Also, if you have already written about the question they have asked, it serves as a great way to also show you are an authority as you will be able to link them to your post. This also means that it will help free up your time for more important things.

If you do not know what questions you can write about or no one has ever asked you a question, then you can trawl the internet to see what people are asking online communities.

Some places to go to find questions is:

• Facebook groups
• Quora.com

3. How To’s

How to articles are an easy way to show customers as well as perspective customers how to use your product. It means you can show off your product and possibly show other products that they are yet to buy.

The more value you give the more inclined people are to buy from you. Because you are the expert in your field, how to articles are an easy way to create content.

Some examples in the web industry include:

• How to never run out of blog content
• How to rank at the top in Google search

The questions you need to ask to find how to topics can be found in your business. Ask what common roadblocks your customers have and how to overcome these.

You can get ideas from sitting in meetings in any department. There will sure to be questions that can be answered. You could even interview multiple people to obtain a set of exclusive interviews.

4. Review your product or service

It is said that a person will buy from you after at least their 7th interaction with your business. When someone hears about your product or service, they may want to know more. If they are searching online then it is a good chance that they will be wanting to see what other people are talking about it.

Reviews are a great way to show off your product or service without being pushy at the same time. Write honestly don’t be afraid to share what is both good and bad about it.

People connect with people and will be able to sniff out a fake review.

If you are reviewing your product/service and you have made your review compelling enough, make sure you make it includes a link to buy it. But remember no one likes to be forced to buy something so don’t be like a sleazy salesman. Simply make it easy for them to buy.

Feature individual products in separate blog posts. Center the topic around the features but most importantly the benefits of the product as well as what qualities make them great?

Captivating Visuals are key to showing off your products in action with photos, slideshows, and videos to help potential customers get a sense of what it’s like to own your specific brand.

Another option is to write about tools you use. This could be about video tutorials walking through how to use a specific tool. Or it could be how to use it in a special or unique way in conjunction with another tool or with your product or service.

5. Take a relevant photo and talk about it

I am sure there are plenty of opportunities while you work to take a photo of something special or unique and to write about it.

If you operate a service at a clients premise or if something out of the ordinary is happening at your workplace then you can take a photo to use as the basis for your post.

Im sure you are already taking photos with your phone for social media posts, utilise those photos a second way by turning it also into a blog post.

You could even highlight the employees in your team. e.g. their background, daily routine and knowledge they may have.

If there are interesting things that happen at your work, along with putting the photo on social media, you could tell a story about what is happening.

6. Current Events

This is similar to list item number 5 of taking a photo but differs in that you can write about the event and back it up with photos you have taken from the event.

If there are guest speakers at your event or even if you are running the event or speaking at the event, then you can take notes and write about it. If there is an event in your area, reach out to the speakers and see if you can interview them.

When you aren’t the one speaking, you can position the post as you keeping up with the latest industry trends or news.

Make a note of all the things you learnt and if you do not agree, then if gives you an angle to write that could cause some buzz.

Web3 has spoken and attended a number of events and we write about them from time to time. Here are some of the articles we have written about the WordCamp Events.

It is a good idea to write about what is being spoken about but expand upon the presentation in your own words.

Usually the presentations teach you something. You can go beyond the traditional route and create a case study of your results learned from the speaker.

Individual Achievement

Another topic for current events is based around individual achievement. If someone has transitioned to a new role in your company, a good topic would be to write about the transition and how they needed to adapt their skills to succeed.

There are many lessons that can be learned from doing something the hard way. Lessons learned shows your character and is useful for those who are just starting out.

The individual achievement doesn’t need to be specific to your team, it could be about a public figure or a mentor. It can be easy to write about how they have succeeded but be aware not to deviate to far in this area.

If you or your team have not achieved anything and you do not wish to write about a mentor/public figure then perhaps you wish to share your action plan for the future. This will let people know about what is to come and can really get people engaged in your vision.

7. Recommend steps/actions to fix a problem

People go onto the internet to find answers. If they have a problem they want to fix and do not know how to fix it then they will likely search to find their answers.

Writing steps on how to use a product in a certain way or if there is something that is of fault in a product you sell then writing the steps on how to fix it will not only solve the persons problem but they will have a good experience with your brand too.

Listening to your customers questions will open up many streams of topics for you to recommend steps to fix. Think of it like answering a frequently asked question.

8. Interview someone

Sure you probably have a lot of knowledge in your particular industry but there are lots of other people that have insights about specific things in your industry that are usually very happy to share.

It might be hard to interview your competitors especially if you have a rivalry but there are many other people who you can partner up with to create content.

Think about where your customers go before they come to you and think about where your customers go after they have bought from you. There should be a countless number of people that you could reach out to interview.

You can also find people at local events. Go to meetup.com and search for relevant meetups in your industry. There will be plenty of people who will be willing to share their knowledge and experiences with you.

Make sure you have thought out the questions you will be asking the interviewees or have an agenda before you interview them. This way you will be providing a good experience with them and not make them frustrated that you are wasting there time.

9. Poll’s

Polls are a great way to backup your writing with a general consensus or collective opinions of many people.

You can create online polls using software like gravity forms or polldaddy or you can ask the questions offline and collate the polls results into your post.

This is often a time consuming task and will work better if there is a following of people that you can ask right away.

You can ask your customers or people in your industry about certain topics and then write about the results to backup your statements.

An alternate direction would be to create a quiz or interactive lesson with steps how to complete it.

10. Contests

Contests when used effectively can result in huge awareness for your products and services. When creating a contest, you will want to have the biggest return on investment that you can so it is important to distribute your contest as much as you can. Writing a post about your contest is one way to benefit from your post being seen.

There is a multi-part strategy to contests and they should not just be posted on a blog post. They should be distributed from a central location (either blog post or page on your website) to social channels.

It is important for you to share your contest to as many different channels both online and offline so many people can be a part of it. Contests always work better if you have a following so you can reach the most amount of people.

Dont forget that you need to have an incentive for people to share your content too. So include in the terms of the contest that they need to share the contest to be in the running.

11. Podcast

Podcasting is an extremely effective way to reach lots of people. It is also one of the most underrated ways.

If you are keen to build your brand then podcasting is a very effective way to do so. There is however, a level of expertise that is required to get it started. You need a microphone, audio editing software and a way to distribute your content through your blog.

New smartphones are a good enough way to capture your audio though if you are serious then you can buy a better microphone. You plug it into your computer to get better quality results. We use the Rode NT-USB mic for our podcast.

as far as capture and editing software goes, you can use the free audio software Audacity. But there are a number of other arguably better pieces of software out there if you search.

We use the PowerPress WordPress plugin to distribute our podcasts to the iTunes Podcasts store. You simply upload it to your post and hit publish for the plugin to handle the distribution for you.

We have used podcasting to build our audience. Here are a couple of podcast examples we have created in the past:

• Attracting, engaging and converting more customers on your website
• How much does web design cost?

12. Video’s

Videos are a huge way to grow your brand and reach. We have used video throughout the years and have done a number of tests to find its effectiveness.

The results we came up with were staggering. We especially found the use of header background looping videos to be an amazing way to build engagement. This was at a time when the use of videos in the header was still in its infancy. People simply hadn’t seen this and was a huge success to overall engagement and conversions.

Using video is extremely powerful way capture peoples attention and hold it for a longer time. Creating video is the hard part. Some ways to find content is to film your team or yourself sharing information that you already have on your blog.

I recommend that if you use video that you invest in the best possible way to get good quality videos. This is primarily four things:

1. Good lighting – People need to be able to see you or the subject in the video. Having light to light up the scene is an extremely easy way to make the quality of your videos increased. If you do not have a light, then put the camera at a window and use the natural light to illuminate yourself.
2. Steady camera – Nobody likes a shaky camera. Either use a tripod or hold the camera up against something that is fixed to the ground. That way there wont be any unnecessary shakiness.
3. Good sound – Sound is always an overlooked but just as important way to make a good quality video. If you are filming outside then there is always ambient noises that can ruin your video. It is best to purchase a microphone that can attach to your camera or smart phone. Or use a lapel microphone if you are speaking from a distance.
4. Quality content – The final piece to the puzzle is making sure the content that you are creating is of interest to watch. It is a good idea to script out or make a brief guide on what you will be covering in your video. Try and avoid um’s and ah’s

Once you have created your video, the video needs to be edited and uploaded to a video hosting site like YouTube.

You can edit your videos using built in software on your computer. For older windows versions you can either use windows movie maker or the photos app on newer windows versions. On Mac you can use the built in iMovie application.

Once you have finished, upload to Youtube or Vimeo and embed it into your blog post. Make sure you accompany the video with written text about the video.

13. Quotes

Quotes are a simple way to find content when you are really struggling to find any other piece of content for the day. But dont get me wrong, it is a completely valid way to share your insights about something that is often well received.

If for example you are in the finance industry then you can find quotes from industry leaders.

Arguably the best investor in the world, warren buffet has made many quotes in his lifetime for example be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful. You can write the quote and share your opinion on what that means.

14. Guest Post

Guest posts are an easy way to get content on your website for free. Guest posting simply means someone writes a piece of content on another persons blog.

This is a strategy that is used to either gain a free link on someones website website (used to build page authority and rank your website higher) or a way for someone else to write on your blog to gain a link for the benefit of their website.

Whichever way you go, it is usually a win-win exchange as you will either recieve a free piece of content for your blog or a link on someone elses blog to grow page rankings.

To find people who accept guest posting opportunities then do a Google search of “your industry” + “guest post”. E.g. “web design Brisbane guest post”. If you add your locality then that is an easier way to reach smaller yet easier to get in touch with people.

If you are open to people guest posting on youre website then you should make a guest posting page so that people who are searching for guest posting opportunities will be able to find you. Here is an example of the page that we have created for people who want to guest post on Web3 blog.

15. Answer reader questions/comments

When you write content enough and gain a following, you will find that people start to get involved with your content and may start to ask questions.

This is a great way to gain more exposure to the topic in one of two ways. You can either reply to their topic on the page or create a new post going into depth about that particular topic.

If you decide to answer the comment in the comments section then it helps to build more content on the page and allows you to fill gaps in the content you have already created. You can either update your article to include the new content or leave it as a comment.

Be sure to let the person know that you have added or updated your article if you decide to add it to your main content.

If you think the question is big enough or different enough to be on its own page then create the article and also let the person know that you have created the content for them.

16. Find existing content and repackage it

If you go onto any of your competitors websites blog, chances are you will find something that is unique or missing from your blog. The idea is to get inspiration from them and then write something that is bigger and better than they have done.

Make sure you do not copy their article word for word but rather take the headings and re-word them in your own words. Then write your own take or answer. If you copy word for word, Search engines will see this and choose to only rank the original piece of content.

This strategy is also a good idea to see how you can make your existing content better. You do this by finding similar content to your own and then plugging in the missing gaps to make yours better.

The better your content is, the higher chance it will rank and the more likely people will find you.

If there are popular studies that have been done in your industry in the past, find them and update them for the current year. Do so by adding new research and fresh insights.

17. Find a publication in client industry

People are always competing to try and get your customers attention. There are so many different mediums that content is created too. A strategy you can sometimes use is to transfer the content from one medium to another in your own words.

If you are reading a book or a magazine/newspaper article then you may come across interesting articles that have been written by people in your industry.

You can use these articles to get inspiration to create related pieces on your blog. Sometimes you will quote their article and other times you wont need to and will be able to come up with your very own piece of content.

Conclusion

Those are the top 17 ways we are able to come up with an almost infinite pieces of content for our blog. You should be able to think of at least 10 different pieces of content for each type. If that is the case then right there you have over 170 blog posts that you can create.

Don’t forget that once you have made the content piece, that you can distribute it in several different forms through social posts, slide-shows, videos, podcasts and imagery. That allows you to get the most bang for your buck so to speak.

Can you think of any other topics or content pieces that you use to generate content on your site? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.