So you've created a blog for your business, now you have to fill it. Are you dreading posting to your blog simply because you're terrified of typing something ridiculous? Do not be a slave to fear. The simple act of writing a post puts you one step ahead of the competition, right now. Give your audience the information they crave. Take a deep breath and follow these steps.
1) Create a spreadsheet with the header columns of: Competition Name, Blog URL, Topic, Date, Facebook Likes, Twitter Tweets, LinkedIn Shares, etc. Your social media columns could even include YouTube, StumblUpon, or Tumblr if you like.
2) Research your Competition's blogs. This could be your direct competition or “big box” competition. Frankly, I like a mix here. Need to find out who your competitors are, go to Google under the More tab click on “Blogs” and type in your search query. For example, my search is “Marketing Small Businesses” and if I want to get local I add “Dallas.” It's usually easier to see what's hot on the big box blogs as they will definitely have their social media share numbers listed. As you navigate to each blog, scroll through their posts for the past week or so and see which posts have the highest share numbers. Plug this information into your spreadsheet.
3) Look over your spreadsheet and discern what topics for your particular field are hot. These are the topics your audience is craving to read. Now go write a post on that topic taking a different angle or presenting a contrary position on a subject–which is always good to spark a debate. In the post, encourage comments and shares. Include share links at the bottom of each post.
4) Share your new, sparkly post on your social networks and start to track your own shares. Be sure to track and measure your topics to see which ones are trending on the high side, and note which topics are on the low side. You can use this data for topic testing.
Keep in mind this should be a weekly exercise to stay on top of the wave of what's being shared. If this was useful information to you, please comment below or share with your colleagues.
