Looking to beef up your blog content but need some fresh ideas to add to your content calendar?
Here are five of my favorite types of posts that can help jump-start your creative juices:
1. Q/A . Who can you reach out to, to do a quick interview or ask 5-10 questions? How about someone in your industry or someone locally to you? Especially if you are just building your online presence, interviewing someone and then tagging them in social media updates when you promote it can be a great strategy to providing good content and most likely – that person will share on their social networks too!
2. Checklist. Everyone loves a checklist. What types of checklists could you create for your industry? How about a moving-day checklist if you are a Realtor? Or a packing checklist is you are in the travel industry? Or a checklist for the don’t-miss wineries in Napa if you are in the wine industry? Checklists are simple to create and easy content to digest and share!
3. A collection. Why not do a weekly or monthly round-up of some of your favorite articles you’ve read? Make sure to include links back to the author and publication and when you are promoting this blog post on social media – don’t forget to tag them too! This is a great way to build relationships with the local media, be perceived as an expert and bring great content to your readers. Looking for inspiration? Social Media Examiner does a great weekly round-up!
4. How-to. Are you an expert on something? Why not write ‘how-to’ articles as part of your blog content? For me, I get asked about the ins and outs of social media, so crafting ‘how-to’s’ for specific things within social media makes sense for me. One of my most-read blog posts in this how-to LinkedIn article about organizing LinkedIn contacts. I love using Jing to capture screenshots – which are hugely important for how-to articles.
5. Infographics. Are you in an industry that is heavy data driven? Perhaps you are in the financial or mortgage industry? For many people, data is very dry – so how can you spice it up for social media? Sites like infogr.am or visual.ly offer great tools to create infographics!
For a free copy of my content grid, please go to KatieLance.com and sign up for my email newsletter. It’s free, and once you sign up, you will be able to download my content grid and strategy guide for free! This helps tremendously in planning your content calendar 30, 60, even 90 days in advance.
I’d love your thoughts on this – what are your favorite types of blog posts? Leave me a comment below or on my Facebook Page!
