Coming up with blog topics is often the bane of any blogger’s existence. Coming up with content for a blog for the same niche day after day and year after year can seem impossible. But, the truth is, it’s not really that difficult if you plan ahead. You need to focus on your niche and your audience with each piece of content, as well as understand the purpose of the blogging content.

* Read about Your Industry – Keeping up to date about your industry will go far in helping you have ideas about what to write about. Information that experts talk about in magazines and in the news is wonderful fodder for future blog posts.

* Read Competitors’ Blog Posts – Choose a few high-powered competitors in your niche to read what they have to say. Sign up for their newsletters, and read on a regular basis what they have to say about your niche. You will come up with ideas from reading.

* Brainstorm Each Day – Take a few minutes each day to put pen to paper (or keyboard to document) to write down any idea that comes to mind. Just make a list as fast as you can about different topics to write about on your blog.

* Ask for Guest Bloggers – Keep your blog open for guest blog posts. If you bring in other experts, people will actually view you as even more of an expert. Establish rules or originality and uniqueness for guest bloggers.

* Come Up with a New View – As you read what others are saying, or even what you’ve said in the past, try to come at the subject matter from a new angle. Perhaps if you wrote “10 reasons to Blog Daily”, you might pick just one of the reasons to expand on.

* Repurpose Older Content – Older content likely needs to be updated, but instead of updating it where it stands, why not write a new post about it, link to the old post from the new post and vice versa. Explain how the posts differ today and why.

* Ask Readers for Questions – Readers and your audience are the perfect people to get content ideas from. Blog posts are the perfect place to highlight a reader’s question and answer them. You can then also add them to your FAQ.

* Keep a Notebook Ready for Inspiration – You’re going to think of things to blog post about during the day when you’re not able to write. Find a way to keep track, either on paper or via a recording device on your smartphone or both. Don’t think you’ll remember later. You won’t. Even if it’s just a small inkling of an idea, keep track of it.

* Consider the Minutia – Sometimes bloggers get carried away with the big picture. However, you can take it down smaller than that and focus on the minutia, the things beginners want to know, in order to come up with more blogging topics.

* Change Formats – If something is a textual piece, you can change it to a podcast or a video. If it’s a “how to” piece then you can change it to a more informational piece instead of a how to. Switching up the format of a past blog post can help you create a new way to tell your audience about something important.

* Curate Other People’s Content – This is mining for content that your audience would enjoy that is relevant to your niche, and then sharing it with your audience via a link on your blog. But, there is a little more to it than that. Be sure to add your own thoughts in your introduction to the information you are sharing.

When it comes to coming up with content on a regular basis for your blog, you cannot wait for or rely on inspiration. You need to keep records of ideas, develop a publication calendar based on the products and services that you want to promote and create a regular writing schedule. Believe it or not, a regular planned writing schedule will produce better work than just waiting around for motivation. Using these suggestions should give you endless content ideas.

You’ve likely heard the rumor. Guest blogging is out; it’s dead. Reading that out loud is a little jarring, but don’t worry – it’s not true. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

What is out is republishing the same work in multiple places. What is out is generic keyword-rich blog posts that have nothing to do with the website, being posted by people just trying to get backlinks. What’s out is lame and boring articles and blogs that don’t put the audience first. What’s out is blanketing the web with short blog posts that are either identical or almost identical, and never following up.

If you really want to guest blog, this is how you do it.

* Know the Audience You’re Writing For – There is no point posting a blog post just anywhere, or writing it for an audience you don’t know about. Know the audience and write directly for that particular audience. They should know that they’re still on the blog they went to when reading your guest post. Try to match the style that the blogger uses to make your blog fit in.

* Write Only Original Blog Posts for That Particular Blog – Don’t regurgitate anything for a guest blog post. Write something new and original for that particular blog. The readers of that blog are used to a certain personality. While you want to be yourself, you should do things the way the owner of that blog wants them done.

* Publish a Blog Post Only Once – Don’t reuse the content elsewhere. It now belongs to that blog, forever. If you want to write about that topic again, of course you can, but you need to keep that blog unique to avoid duplicate content issues for you and the blog owner.

* Guest Blog Only Where Your Audience Reads – Don’t put guest blog posts anyplace just to get backlinks to your website. Put guest blog posts in places that your audience reads. Make sure there is a real reason for the guest blog post.

* Write Posts That Are Not Sales Pages – A guest blog post is not the place to pitch your offerings and make a sales page. It should be an informative, educational and engaging blog post that provides value to the reader and the blog owner.

* Promote the Blog Post – Once you’ve written it you must also promote it. You should inform your list, inform your blog about the post, and also promote it via social media as hard as you would anything else you have written.

* Answer Comments on the Blog Posts – When someone comments on your blog post, you should respond to them. The more you respond, the more the viewers will appreciate your post and you.

* Follow Up with the Owner of the Blog – Give it a week or two and then follow up with the blog owner to find out if they were satisfied with the results of the blog post. If they are satisfied, would they like you to contribute regularly? If not, why not, so that you can do better?

If you really want to guest blog, do it strategically. Find blogs that have a rating higher than or equal to yours, which cater to your audience but which are not direct competition to you. Offer the blog owner an opportunity to join your affiliate program, or make one, so that they can get credit for traffic sent by their blog from your post.

Content marketing is a very important method of getting the word out about your products and/or services. Content marketing is the best way to inform, educate and engage your audience while building authority in the eyes of your audience. However, there are some common content marketing mistakes that you’ll definitely want to avoid.

* Avoiding SEO – Search engine optimization involves both on- and off-page actions that you can take to ensure that search engines find your website, blog or product. SEO uses certain techniques and tactics to help your audience find you. Don’t think that it doesn’t matter. The more you put these improvements into place, the better your results.

* Not Using Automation Wisely – Automation can be misused, but it needs to be used to help make everything possible. You’re only one person. A good rule of thumb is that you should personally respond and interact with people on social media and within comments of your blog, but you should use automation for everything else.

* Not Promoting Your Content – When you create any type of content that you want people to find, you should promote it via your social media networks and email. You can even promote it via pay-per-click ads. If you don’t promote your content, you’ll get a lot less positive results from it.

* Forgetting to Optimize Your Headlines – Part of search engine optimization involves headlines, but it deserves a special mention. There are some ways to ensure your headlines are optimized. First, put the keywords in the first three words; secondly, test out more than one headline to see what gets the best response.

* Creating Poor Quality Content – Your audience doesn’t want a ton of content under all circumstances. If you cannot create quality content on a daily basis, don’t. Create quality content on a schedule that works for you. If it’s high quality, answers questions, and solves problems, it will be welcomed.

* Not Reworking and Rewriting PLR – Private label rights content offers you a good way to get content fast. But, to use it properly you need to learn how to update it, change it, and make it your own. You want to avoid duplicate content issues, and you want all your content to speak in the same voice.

* Not Publishing Enough – This may be contradictory, but you do have to publish enough to get noticed and keep the interest of your audience. Don’t get so bogged down in perfection that you neglect creating new content at least weekly.

* Concerning Yourself with Quantity over Quality – By the same token, you don’t want to post daily if the content doesn’t somehow add value to your audience. Just having something up, especially if it doesn’t match your niche, won’t get the results you want.

If you can avoid these content marketing mistakes, you’ll have a lot more success with your content marketing efforts.

You know you need to create content for your website or blog in order to help promote your products or solutions, but you’re stuck because you can’t write. Well, don’t give up yet, because you don’t need to know how to write to create effective and amazing content.

1. Hire a Writer – Go to Upwork.com to hire a writer to do the work for you. Not only can you hire writers, you can even hire an entire content company to help you with content ideas, content creation and publishing.

2. Talk Your Content – Even if you can’t write, you can probably talk. Get a voice to text software program and talk your content. Simply go through and edit it a bit so that you ensure that everything was spelled right, and you’re in business.

3. Buy PLR – Private label rights content is perfect for people who can’t write. Because even if you can’t write, you can likely edit well-written and researched PLR, to make it your own. Add in your own voice, keywords, and reorganize the PLR, and you’ll have the right content in no time.

4. Create Videos – You don’t have to write to create awesome content. Instead, create videos or vlogs. You can then have them transcribed by a professional transcriptionist who can then turn it over to a hired writer tasked with creating content from the video.

5. Make a Podcast – A podcast is a lot like a video even though it’s only audio, and it can be very powerful. You can also have the podcast transcribed. You can use the transcription as is, plus turn it over to writer to make some text content out of it.

6. Curate Content – Other people create content for your niche. Why not collect it all in one spot, and then offer only your thoughts about what you’re sharing as if you’re telling a friend about it. You can become a one-stop-shop for your audience.

7. Attract User Generated Content – Some of the best content is created by your audience. User generated content can be in the form of forum posts, social media comments, blog post comments and more. If your audience participates, the discussions can make for some excellent and effective content marketing.

8. Ask for Guest Bloggers – While guest blogging has changed over the years, it’s not dead. Ask for guest bloggers to write about various topics. Just remember that what they provide must be original and unique and not published elsewhere ever.

You really don’t need to be able to write to create perfectly good content. You can talk your content, or you can edit PLR to make it your own. You can even hire people to do it all for you without ever having to even give it much thought other than creating the ideas.

You’ve heard it said that you need to have unique content on your blog, but did you know that you need unique content on guest blogs too? Unique content is essential to any blog’s wellbeing and popularity. Google sends traffic to websites it views as authoritative, and today that doesn’t include websites that have duplicate content.

* Content Is Still King – Not only is content king, it’s queen and all the pawns too, and it works together in concert to make a wonderful and enchanting kingdom. Okay, seriously… all the types of content you put on your blog, or someone else’s as a guest, needs to be considered unique by the search engines for Google to care about it at all.

* Understand what Google’s Job Is – Googles job isn’t to send you traffic. Google’s one and only job is to deliver relevant content to their audience. They don’t want to send them to the same article, spun in various ways until it looks and reads poorly. It’s their job to send their audience the correct information. When you get that, you’ll soon understand that your job is to provide your audience with unique and relevant content so that Google can do its job.

* To Get Variety Focus on Formats – There are many forms of content such as videos, articles, blogs, images, and so forth. Focus on providing a variety of this type of content so that you can repurpose your content without making duplicate or spun blog posts.

* Quality and Relevance Matter Too – As you focus on unique content, remember that quality and relevance matter as well. When you focus on those things, the uniqueness is almost built in automatically.

* Deliver Value – Google wants each webpage where it sends its audience to be valuable, if not highly valuable. If you can focus on providing high value to your audience, you’ll be much more likely to get in Google’s good graces.

* You Could Look Like a Plagiarizer – It’s important to focus on unique content so that Google doesn’t think you’re ripping off other people’s content and scamming people. When Google crawls a site and sees duplicate content, it penalizes the site because of that potential.

* Provide Your Unique Perspective – Don’t worry if you want to tell the same story someone else is telling; that’s not the problem. You simply need to add your unique perspective. For example, if you purchase PLR about do-it-yourself home repairs, add in your own pictures, and your own keywords and examples.

* Create Your Own and Pay for Some – Getting enough content under these circumstances can seem like a hard thing to do. But, you can combine content you’ve created with content you’ve bought, such as PLR or ghost-written content, to make something completely new.

Creating unique content doesn’t have to be difficult, but it is super important – not just because you want the search engines to recognize you as authoritative, but also because you want your website visitors to find value in your work.

One of the hardest parts about video blogging is coming up with topics appropriate for video. But, it’s likely you already have plenty of good topics; you just haven’t thought about it properly yet. Coming up with video topics really isn’t much different from coming up with text blogging topics.

* Know Your Audience – Everything starts with your audience because without them you have no business and no blog. Think about them first in everything you do. Will they want to know this information? Do they need to know what you want to tell them? If you can identify problems for your audience, these can be topics for future vlogs.

* Know Your Niche – Aside from being able to help your audience, you need a wide variety of knowledge about your niche. Read about your industry every day, take notes, and figure out how you can give the information to your audience in a new and interesting way.

* Understand Your Products or Services – Only you, the creator of your products and services, can know the true value of your products and services. Be able to explain your solutions inside and out and always mention them when relevant in your vlogs.

* Brainstorm – Take some time each day to brainstorm topics. Write everything down without any thought. Simply taking five minutes to write down whatever comes to mind, another fifteen or twenty to flesh them out, and perhaps thirty more minutes to organize them and match them with products and services is all you need.

* Create a Content Calendar – Using the information you gain from above, create a content calendar to ensure that your vlogs match your product promotions as well as sales you have scheduled.

* Start with the Minutia – If you’re still stuck, you can always start from the beginning. What are the first things your audience needs to know about your niche? What are the very small topics that you can answer such as definitions, terms, and jargon?

* Repurpose Old Blog Posts – If you already have blog posts, go through them and consider turning them into video blogs. Keep the original on your blog, and make a new post with a vlog instead of text.

* Answer Questions via Video – When you are reading social media, look for questions that your audience has that need answers. Answer on the social media network, but also make a vlog about it and answer it that way too.

You can have a never-ending list of ideas and topics for videos so that you’ll be able to put out regular videos that are on topic and directed toward your audience. It just takes a little brainstorming and planning and you can be very productive and successful with video blogging.

Publishing content these days isn’t enough. There is no such thing as “build it and they will come.” In fact, if you really want a successful blog, you’re going to have to spend time promoting each piece of content that you create. There are several ways to promote blog posts and for best results, be sure to try all of them.

1. Write Awesome Blog Posts – When the content you create is awesome, you’re going to be much more likely to want to promote it. Work on each blog post to make it the best that you can. These days, in-depth authoritative content is more important and “Google worthy” than shorter “keyword” blog posts.

2. Don’t Leave SEO Out – While the most important part of the blog post is the content, you should still concern yourself with using keywords properly and naturally. Do keyword research occasionally to find out which keywords you should be using. Remember to look for low-competition keywords for best results.

3. Include Relevant Images – They say an image is worth 1000 words, and that’s likely very true. Therefore, include relevant images in your blog posts that help advance your meaning and purpose of your blog.

4. Build Relationships – Believe it or not, part of your blog’s mission is to build relationships with your audience. Ask questions at the end of each blog post, give them something fun to do, ask them to share something with you, or conduct a poll. Find ways to build your relationship with your audience.

5. Build an Email List – One of the most effective forms of marketing is email marketing, and bloggers should build email lists too. When you have an email list it’s a good way to inform regular readers about your new blog posts, promotions and events.

6. Be Courteous – A really good way to promote your blog posts is to promote other people’s blog posts too. When you share other people’s content, they will return the favor and share yours too.

7. Use Social Media – Create varied blurbs introducing your new blog post for different social media accounts to help them click through to read the blog post. A good way to do that is not to finish your sentence in the blurb; instead put dots to get them to read more.

8. Know Your Audience – It may sound like old news but it’s very important that you know your target audience, including where they hang out, what they like to do, and when. That way you’ll know where to promote your posts for maximum impact.

If you’re not proud of the content that you’re creating, why would anyone want to read it or share it for you? Share it first, yourself. Tell everyone about it. Be proud of the blog posts that you publish so that you want to share them with everyone, and you’ll be a super successful blogger.