Dallas Social Marketing Consultant Lee Thurburn, President of NetOffer, Inc. provides a variety of ideas for BLOG Content.

One of the challenges that many business people have when they consider starting a BLOG marketing campaign is deciding what to write about. I think that a good starting point is to consider what NOT to write about. The first thing that most business people think of writing about is to create a sales pitch and place it in a BLOG. That 180 Degrees off target.

The best topics to write about are topics that contain story based information about how the products and services that you offer can benefit people, but not in a sales-pitchy sort of format. Some good alternatives are:

1. Case Studies - a case study about a client is a great way to showcase your knowledge and expertise in a real life manner that demonstrates both the power of your products and or services, but also showcases your creativity and commitment to successful results for your clients. Additionally, case studies have the benefit of also offering your clients a platform on which they can be shown to be utilizing the services of an experienced vendor to assist with their situation. If you insert into the case study some background information about the client you get the double benefit of helping to market your client while you are marketing yourself. As a ‘bonding’ tool for client retention and referrals marketing your client is a good move.
2. Educational Information - when you truly attempt to educate your reader about your products and services, without making a sales pitch, you have the very best forum to exhibit your authority and expertise. Think back to when you attended school and your teachers or professors tried to increase your knowledge. In most cases your perception of that teacher or professors knowledge level was very high and your perception of their expert opinion was similarly high. This is more true when you are providing the educational information in an unbiased format.  Presenting information in an unbiased format means that if you can also present your products and services in a fair and honest comparison with other options that exist your readers will be more likely to ask you for your opinion. The honesty and integrity that you demonstrate will help your reader increase their level of trust regarding your ability to address their issues.
3. Industry Information - the industry in which you operate may offer a chance for you to provide more global information that your readers can use to understand the context in which you provider your products and services. In many industries, such as real estate, insurance, and financial services, there are macro-economic and regulatory developments that affect your readers. Becoming an authority on the current events in your industry and relaying them to your readers will increase the chance that some of your readers will ask you for guidance.
4. Business Strategy - the difference between you and your competitors is usually not a great as you think it is. The differences that your clients and prospective clients perceive is also usually not as great as you think they think it is. One of the main things that most business people answer when they describe their competitive advantage is the quality, service, and reliability that they offer. The fact is that almost every one of your competitors think that they rank better on those scores than you do. One good way to help your prospective clients understand the differences is through transparency. Transparency means that if you share your inner thoughts on things like marketing strategies, employee management policies, training policies, etc. you are sharing how you approach the everyday business challenges and issues that all businesses confront. By exhibiting to the reader how you handle those kinds of things you are automatically elevating trust because this is almost certainly something that your competitors do not exhibit.

The above list of topical concepts for BLOG articles is a general overview of the things that you could write about. Break each article down into about 300-500 words. This article is about 700 words… too long. It really should be two articles, but, I could not find a convenient break point.