Be the boss when it comes to choosing topics.

Occasionally, with slow news weeks or when we have come to the end of a series of topics I find myself having to rack my brain for blog topics to write about.

I thought I’d do a quick search on Google for some inspiration and that didn’t throw up many gems.

Then it dawned on me that other people might be having the same problem for their own blogs; and with blog writing being an integral part of any online marketing plan these days, I thought it deserved some attention of its own, so here goes…

Blog Purposes And Targets

Don’t forget that one of the main purposes of blog writing, apart from its SEO value, is to demonstrate your expertise in your area.

You will likely be sharing your posts across social media sites like Facebook, Google Plus and Twitter, so you can get great exposure for your posts. That makes it doubly important to find subjects that talk to your audience and engage them.

Of course, if you have been following our posts over the past 12 months or so, you’ll be fully aware that before you start writing your blog you should already have clearly identified who you’re marketing to; so then it’s just a case of finding interesting, compelling content and putting your slant on it.

Your blog is the place for opinion, ideas, discussion of news and developments in your industry – there is a wide scope of subjects for any online business to get their teeth into.

How To Choose Blog Topics

Taking Melbourne SEO Services as the example, we are an SEO company first and foremost so our blog touches on many of the key areas such as On page SEO, Off page SEO, Video SEO, search engine algorithms and changes, copywriting, social media, traffic conversion and so on.

As well as this we have products that focus on best practices for online marketing generally, online video, outsourcing and so on – so this opens up many other avenues for passing on tips and prompting discussions.

What are the core competencies of your business? Expand outwards from there and embrace all the topics that your audience will find useful, thought-provoking and will get them coming to you to ask questions as an authority on the subject.

It’s All In The Angle

You can write about the same subject from many different angles.

Changing the title can provide new ideas for your blog writing; they are doubly important because without the right titles your posts may not be found by people through the search engines– or they may choose not to read because the title doesn’t inspire them.

For example if we take the subject of On page SEO, we could choose a title such as:

On Page SEO For Your Website
On Page SEO For Your Online Business

The problem with these is that they don’t really have an angle to them. It’s better to provide that angle and include in the title to get people to sit up and take notice. For example:

The 5 Biggest Mistakes Website Owners Make With On Page SEO
7 Steps To On Page SEO That Gets You To Number 1 On Google

Some other great “angles” to use in your titles are:

• “Top 10 ways to ….”
•  “How to Increase/Decrease …..”
•  “7 Tips for….”
•  “The Best….”
•  “Discover the Secret Of…”

There are many more variations on these themes but you get the general picture.

There is no hard and fast formula on blog topics but, once you have developed the knack of creating great, catchy titles, you open up many doors to writing better and more varied blog posts for your business, no matter what it is.

In case you want to learn more about internet marketing and search engine optimization in particular, take a look at our DVD course by clicking here.