Hello November! Welcome birthday month. I can not believe my birthday will soon be here again but for now let’s chat about you, your blog and your awesomeness. I want to thank those who joined me last month in the blogging challenge and I have some more blogging tips for you today. If you are stuck in coming up with blog post topic ideas for your blogging library folder, here are some post ideas to help you stop having writers block and to start blogging. I also have 16 blog post ideas for photographers freebie at the end of the post. Other industries may also enjoy this freebie and get some ideas rolling for their holiday blog posts.
- Events. If you really want to be found locally, number one is you should really at least once a month blog a local event or conference in your town or area. If you’re in the digital marketing, like I do DIY SEO, so I could make a list of the top 2016 conferences that I would like to attend. Then if I attend them, I could do a blog post and recap it, and then that blog post will come up.
- Feature vendors or people in your town. There was a tip I learned by a photographer named Mike Colon, called “you have to own your zip code.” You have to know who’s who in your industry in your area. If you’re in weddings, who are the makeup artists? Where are the venues? who is the top planner, who is the top florist, what’s the best salon or local hotel for guests, even? You have to know all these people who are related to your industry. If you’re on line, think of who’s who in the same way. And then you’re going to feature them and talk about why they’re great. If you want to get into new venues and you don’t know how to approach them, featuring them on your blog is the best way. So you say “hey, I don’t have a photo of you. Can I stop by and take some photos?” That’s if you’re a photographer. If you’re not a photographer, take your point-and-shoot and do the same thing, or ask for some images from their site. Then you feature them in a blog, you tweet them the feature, and you Facebook them the feature. Because Feuza has a saying: If you compliment someone online, they can not ignore you. If you promote somebody online, they have to at least say thank you and they have to retweet you.
- You can do an interview instead of a feature. The difference is: a feature is how much you love them and you’re telling the world why, but an interview is a list of questions that you actually ask them.
- Guest writer. Can you get a guest writer in your field? Like, I do SEO, but my stuff is less technical and more simplified. So when I want something more technical, I look for someone like My Frugal Web Guy. “Hey, can you write a blog post for me breaking down some more of these techy things in Google Analytics?” Derek Halpern from Social Triggers uses this method a lot and states that it is a great way to promote content you have and get your brand in front of a whole new audience. This will also bring them back to your blog so they can check you out.
- Best-of blog posts. What are your best top 5 or 10 articles on Subject X. For example, I talk a lot about keywords, so I would create a blog post with my top 10 tips for keywords. Or the top 10 blogging tips for creative solopreneurs. We’re near the end of the year, so it’s really the perfect time for a post about your “best of” from your own content. Do an intro text then list the links to your blog post articles on Topic X.
- You can also do a best-of of blog posts by someone you admire and who you think your audience would like. In this day and age, people really value and pay attention to convenience. For example, I love Smart Passive Income podcasts. If you did a post on the top 10 SPI podcasts and what was great about them and put it in a blog post, I would love you. You just did some work for me, right? Do ten things you learned from your mentor or from attending an event. Or, the best articles found on the web for your audience. Be a curator. Come up with your own Pinterest board of color inspiration for your industry. Maybe it’s food inspiration. Curating just means pulling together external sources into your own collection and maintaining the way to go find out more. Provide information for your target audience relative to your industry.
- Another type of post that works well are challenge posts. Like right now I’m doing a blog detox challenge. If you talk about lifestyle and healthy living, how about 12 days of Christmas toward healthy eating during the holidays? 12 days to detox your kitchen cabinets. 14 days to looking fabulous for the holidays. 7 days to getting all your cocktail party dresses for holiday parties. (I’m just throwing out ideas here for you to springboard off of.) And when I say 12 days or 30 days, that means all those things are in one blog post. Then, you can have extra freebies if they sign up to your list. So you’re increasing blog traffic and you’re also increasing your email list. It works really well because you’re being a resource and offering things for free. (Downloadable PDFs are great.)
- Tutorial posts. You guys are creative! You all have something unique and different to offer. For example, I’m not the greatest designer, but I learned how to use Canva, and I did a scope and a blog post about how to create Canva graphics because I was just so excited about learning it. Maybe there’s an app that you guys know how to use. Maybe there’s something you learned that you didn’t know before, and you can blog about that. You don’t have to be an expert. Even if you’re just two steps ahead, you can blog about that! If you previously had doubts, and now you have the answers, other people behind you are going to have those doubts too, and you can provide the answers. Blog those tutorials. This really goes back to being a resource, which is the foundation for SEO, for building your tribe, for getting found, for getting booked, and all that jazz.
- Personal posts. Do you have a personal story? For my photography blog, I do share more personal stuff. For example, I just did my son’s decor, so I’m going to do something like “DIY comics superheroes.” (And I’m going to pin that because I can get a lot of Pinterest traffic on that.) But on my blog, people really resonate with me sharing personal stuff. You just want to make sure it relates back to business… a business lesson, a life lesson, but loop it back into your business somehow.
- Vulnerable posts. This is related to the personal post. I don’t mean barf your whole life story out there, but for some people, that might work! I was just listening to Stephanie Tait who is a photographer turned author/speaker who’s doing podcasts and one of those was on a podcast called She Percolates. I recommend you listen to Stephanie’s story. She shared a lot of her personal story. She was on bed rest and had miscarriages, and it was so very tragic, but she shared her entire personal story, and it worked for her. One of the most valuable things we have to share is our story and our background. How did you get where you are now? My story involves being a mom of two small kids with no money to market myself, and that’s how I got into Twitter, blogging, and later, SEO. People love hearing that story. They want to know about how I started and how I learned, and why I’m inspired to equip others with this information in a simplified manner. When I say be vulnerable, I mean, really be you. Nobody likes perfect people, am I right? We can’t see ourselves in that. People relate to real people. I even did a post about mom guilt and working from home once, and another post about how I developed depression through too much time on social media. And while I was just trying to help someone, those posts got a lot of hits and even a lot of personal messages because these are real things that resonate with people.
- Recipes! Maybe you’re not even a cook, but maybe your family has some great recipes. Maybe you’re not a food blogger, but perhaps you talk about lifestyle and living and being the mom. This goes back again to being a resource in a different way.
- Blog a DIY project that you worked on. I am not even a furniture person and I did a DIY furniture project that went wrong, and my friend messaged me a big list of things to do to fix it. But see how that ties in with being real and vulnerable and showing a process? How many people would relate to doing a DIY project wrong and how they can get it back on track?
- Behind the scenes is very popular. Why? We love reality TV and we want to put our noses in other people’s business now like it’s normal. How do you make people curious? Show them behind the scenes. Show them where you work, your office, your environment, a project in process, even a best-of behind-the-scenes post at the end of the year is possible if you do this one throughout the year. Show us your process. If you’re a designer and an artist, show a sneak peek of the materials you’re using. Are you curating an art gallery? Making a new shoe? Show a design sketch. Show your process, whatever that is. So your readers and viewers will feel a part of that process and invested at a certain level. They have seen a glimpse of your life and they shared in that. Sometimes that’s enough to make people want to buy.
[bctt tweet=”The secret to not having writers block for your blog is to put your audience first and think about how you can help them find something, fix something, solve something or feel something. Be the Resource.”]
If you are a photographing wanting some blog post ideas for this holiday season? get my 16 Blog post ideas PDF – click here .
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