Many business owners, marketing and sales professionals say to us, ‘I know I need to write regular articles, but I don’t know what to write!’ Coming up with interesting topics may seem like a dark art, but it’s actually a surprisingly methodical process.

So if you’re struggling to decide on topics, or you just want to be more strategic with your business’s blog, we can help. Follow these three steps and you’ll have a healthy pipeline of articles in no time:

Step 1. Imagine your average reader; what do they need to know?
Whatever your target audience, your articles should give the reader the information they want or need. Do they struggle with a certain process, for instance? Can you help them make an important decision? Save money? Make life easier?

To find out what your audience wants, talk to your sales and customer service teams about the questions they get asked the most. Check out your social media feeds to see what your customers are talking about. Or jot down questions from prospect meetings and networking events. This stage is all about the three Rs: research, research and, you guessed it, research!

Step 2. Create a content schedule
You should by now have a pretty good list of topics that map to your customers’ needs. Now you can translate this list into a content schedule – essentially, a timetable showing what articles you’ll publish and when.

At OCTOPUS, we typically map out three months’ worth of articles on a spreadsheet, but you can use whatever timetable or format works best for you. The main thing is to plan out your publishing in advance, so that you’re never scrabbling around for a topic at the last minute. If it helps, use calendar reminders to tell you when a post is due.

Step 3. Do more of the good stuff
Did your audience love last week’s article? Did one particular post get lots of engagement on social media? By tracking views, shares and comments, you can build on your successes. In other words, if you know what your audience likes best, you can do more of it.

There’s no doubt that maintaining an interesting, regular stream of articles can be time consuming. That’s why many businesses prefer to outsource their articles to OCTOPUS. We’ll work with you to create a content pipeline that’s perfectly targeted to your audience, and take care of the scheduling, writing and publishing for you. Learn more.