Business Blogging Ideas â Use the News!
Business bloggers frequently run out of ideas. While contemplating this point, it seemed a good idea to write about ârunning out of ideas.â
In every case, blog operators and website owners have covered all the ground and written about every service topic, feature, advantage or attribute. Coming up with new articles or topics just seems impossible. At every site though, âthe show must go on!â Your readers want fresh material. The search engines want fresh material, too.
How best to do this? Utilizing local events or information important or of interest to your city can not only make your product/service features relevant, but can be used in such a way as to attract local internet reader traffic.
The landing page of your local television news website might provide all the idea information you need at the start of each day. Topics such as utility rate hikes, road construction, subdivision approvals, crime rate news, local business news â all might be configured into a relevant local story for you. If properly constructed â particularly in your article header â your piece will be configured to appear as a result for web users researching local stories. It just takes a little creativity.
Is there anything in the news that is useful today? Look at your leading news providerâs page or newspaper front page and for each local story, assess:
Local Impact Potential Impact on Customers Potential Opportunities
Local Impact:
Local events always impact a neighborhood or city area. Assessing what that impact is and acknowledging the importance of the event is a good first step to using a story to keep your company and product in the consumerâs mind. Issues such as sales tax changes, new restaurant openings, and school issues â are relevant to your readers as you share the same community.
Understanding what is important to your community is also understanding what is important to your customers. Posting articles about it confirms your commitment to be part of that community. Because âpeople buy from peopleâ no matter what the product or service, showing understanding  and your concern for these issues is important in making future local sales.
Customer Impact:
Issues such as sales tax changes have an immediate impact on your customer base and on the community directly. Tax rate increases drive overall consumption levels lower. What does this mean to you and your customers? How can they plan for this? What are some good ideas to prepare?
Crime stories also change a neighborhoodâs behavior patterns. Neighbors might be (or should be) replacing locks, initiating âwatchâ program or taking some other actions that might impact your customers. Even consistent traffic problems can present an opportunity. If you sell the new auto navigation systems or deal in tires, you can certainly compose a post that notes these events and acknowledge the effect on local customers.
Not only can you prepare useful information about these events, you are in a position to comment on the local news blogs as well. This puts you out in front when others read your comments. Just remember to use a keyword or a geography name in the title of your comment. Something like Dayton Tires lets the user know that you provide tires in the Dayton, OH area.
Opportunities:
It requires a bit more creativity to identify an opportunity and turn it into a âpositiveâ on your website. As most news is âbad news,â discovering opportunities for you or your customers is a little more difficult.  How could customers take advantage of the current news event you are writing about? Orâ¦how could they avoid negative impacts? All of these issues are opportunities for you to present your site as the âgo toâ page for local business impact. Sometimes, just posting something positive about a negative story is reassuring to your community.
Form:
To take advantage of local impact stories, title your page or post using the name of the event. Use something like âI-85 Closureâ or âMinneapolis School Bondâ in the article title and refer to it again within the body content. Folks looking for more information on these topics may see your page and pay a visit. And once there, you have an opportunity to provide value and build your local reputation. Search engines can also see that your piece is somewhat relevant to the I-85 closure and when users search for information about it, they may be presented with a link to your page.
Use the News!
By focusing on current events that are obstacles to achieving any of these objectives, customers will see you as their advocate; your reputation will be enhanced and you will enjoy the fruits of being a leader in your community.
For more blogging tips or tips to improve your page display rank on major search engines, please visit Denver SEO Consultants home page!
Spending eight years in software development really inspires creativity – especially for things other than software development. Thus, I embarked on my new underground career as a humorist. Now.. if others think I am funny, I am in good shape.
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