A dynamic blog can be a fantastic way for brands to connect with their audiences in authentic and entertaining ways. Of course, this is easier said than done. Your blog is a space where you share your brand’s values, show your audience that you’re reliable and trustworthy, and create a sense of community.
You must keep your brand’s blog fresh and diverse to avoid boring your audience. To do that, the first step is research. Finding ideas that resonate with your audience requires an understanding of who you’re catering to. Once you have that knowledge, you’ll be able to captivate your audience quite effortlessly.
In this article, we’ll look at some interesting ways to come up with fresh ideas for your brand blog. Taking your blog to new heights will be much easier once you know how to brainstorm topics that will resonate with your target audience.
1. How-to guides and tutorials
How-to guides and tutorials are one of the most popular content formats you’ll see out there and with good reason. They’re a great way to engage your audience, especially when you’re covering topics that are important and incredibly relevant to them. However, writing this kind of content can often require extensive planning and creative thinking to ensure it doesn’t translate as boring or dull.
When you want to explain a detailed process that calls for readers to follow step-by-step instructions, you must keep the structure and writing clear and easy to follow.
Here are some tips for that:
- Start each instruction with a vibrant verb and use active voice at all times.
- Organize the steps with as many details as possible without rambling.
- Use subheadings when needed to keep the readers hooked.
- Don’t nest too many numbers in your subheadings to avoid confusion.
- Use visuals — images and videos are great complements to your words.
- Use subtitles for your videos.
Tutorials make for great content as well, so long as you remember that this type of content can easily become way too technical. As far as possible, keep your tutorials simple and free of technical jargon.
Save your readers from frustration and also declare the required skills right from the start. Spice up your tutorial with screenshots, accompanied by clear captions. Sometimes, a visual tour is worth a thousand guides. Be mindful, though; too many visuals can turn your tutorial into a photo album – keep it lively but not overwhelming.
FactoHR wrote a tutorial on how to write a work experience letter. The article is basically a tutorial on what to include and how to make sure you write yours perfectly, but also discusses why an experience letter is important. It offers lots of value to readers while looking good at the same time.
2. Listicles and roundup posts
Roundup posts and listicles are very popular because they’re easy to consume and pack a lot of interesting information. With that said, it’s easy for a roundup post to be useless as a result of poor planning and execution.
A good roundup creates a sense of expertise – the reader needs to trust every opinion shared in the article and use it as a piece of trusted advice.
Although roundup posts and listicles can be fun, they need to have a strong foundation, which equals lots of in-depth research so you know exactly what you’re talking about.
Listicles worth reading have engaging headlines that can entice your audience to click and good enough content to read the entire article. You should also use numbers in your listicles; it’s an expectation that you shouldn’t disappoint on.
As far as you can, use strong adjectives that can make all your headings more interesting and eye-catching. It’s also important to keep your listicle’s headings short. You shouldn’t go over ten or 15 words.
For your listicles to be effective with an audience, make sure they’re a combination of three things: easy to read, entertaining, and informative. When possible, add multimedia elements like images or fun and interactive GIFs to add interest to your listicles.
Pro-tip: Aim for a total word count of 500 to 1,500 words so it’s not too lengthy or draining to read.
3. Opinion pieces and thought leadership content
Writing opinion pieces is a great way to show your audience that you know what you’re talking about. Most thought pieces are about 900 words (longer than that will feel boring just by looking at all that text) and serve as a way for brands to discuss their opinions.
With good opinion pieces, you can make it clear to your audience, and your competition, that you have expert views that matter. These forms of blogging can be used to advocate for change within your industry or share new technological advances, showing your passion for your chosen niche.
You can bolster your opinion pieces by adding links to your social media content or email newsletter to improve your brand’s overall engagement.
Just make sure that you do enough relevant research so you’re addressing topics that currently matter to your audience. Also, be sure you actually know and understand the topics so you don’t sound like you’re ‘faking it.’
Here’s an example of an opinion piece about the author’s idea of the best Christmas film — clearly, you can write about your opinion on just about anything.
4. Interactive and multimedia content
Multimedia content dominates most of the internet these days. If you want to boost your marketing efforts and find effective ways to truly connect with your audience, multimedia is a must in your blog. There are four types of multimedia content used the most (because they work). These are video content, podcasting, visual content, and interactive content.
Using these four types of content can help your blog unlock greater engagement levels, nurture leads more effectively, and get more shares. With multimedia content, you’re not just telling your brand’s story. You’re also showing it and inviting your audience to be a part of it.
Images and videos can help keep your blogs fresh and interesting. Traditional blog writing with walls of text is uninteresting no matter how captivating your topic is; adding a few images or videos will keep readers hooked.
Podcasts can make your interactions with your audience feel a lot more ‘real’ and personal. Hearing the voices of those associated with a brand can help audiences feel actual connections with that brand.
Using interactive can get your audience to actively engage with your content. Adding features like quiz marketing, assessments, and calculators to your blog will make it feel more ‘alive’. Your audience will feel like they’re not just spectators of your content, but participants, making them want to come back for more.
5. Case studies and success stories
A great way to earn the trust and respect of your audience is by showing that you are an expert in your field. You need to show that you are reliable and worth your audience’s time.
One of the best ways to achieve this is by offering your audience a good and compelling case study on your blog.
Case studies can be complicated and take a long time to complete and compile in a way that will make sense to your audience. But all that work can be worth all the effort if you want to teach your audience about a specific topic. Case studies start out with discussing a problem and then goes into focusing on finding a good resolution.
You can present your case studies as blog posts, white papers, or even videos. The medium you choose depends on what makes sense for your brand.
A case study that shows off a partnership between your brand and another business or client will be great at convincing your audience to invest in your product or service. Going into detail in how your brand changed the lives of clients is a good idea—this gives your audience more information about what it’s like to work with you.
To make sure your case study speaks to your audience in your brand’s ‘voice,’ make sure to have your logo front and center. Use the same overall theme as you have for your brand on your blog, and use the same language and tone. Add images, and never use poor-quality images, they’ll reflect badly on you.
This case study is attractive, organized, clean, and easy to read.
6. Interviews and Q&A sessions
Interview articles can help you convey specific messages or concepts to your audience without sounding too stiff or formal. If done right, interview articles can be really entertaining too.
You’ll need to plan your article well so you get all the information you need and then some. Editing your article will likely result in many things getting cut, so make sure you have enough to work with.
While you’re interviewing the thought leader in your industry (or someone of similar standing), give them all the time they need to answer in detail. When converting the raw interview into an article, do your best to let that interviewee’s personality shine through.
Don’t neglect the writing aspect of your interview article, if it’s written well, you’ll be more effective at entertaining your audience.
7. Trend reports and predictions
A trend report is all about monitoring changes in a project’s pre-established metrics over a specific amount of time. The aim here is to find patterns in customer or user behavior, and use that data to better understand the user experience. The gathered information will also make it easier to improve marketing efforts in the future.
In most cases, trend reports are presented to readers in the form of a graph or chart that is visually pleasing and makes the data easy to digest. Of course, these charts and graphs must be planned well so they can be used to compare data points.
The effectiveness of trend reports depends on accurate research and analysis to be worth the time of your audience. Predictions that are factual and informative can perform well as long as they’re researched thoroughly, like this one by Pinterest:
8. Seasonal and event-based content
Content marketing is defined by change, with trends coming and going as quickly as the seasons in the year. As such, it can be quite tough for brands to keep up. For best results, don’t chase every trend that comes around. Instead, focus on the ones that have the best results and make the most sense for your brand and audience.
You need to have dynamic blog content if you want your blog to be fresh, so ignoring trends isn’t an option either. You’ll have to invest time and effort in your content strategy and find ways to make the most of these trends.
Another great way to keep your blog fresh is by focusing on time-based content. This kind of content will typically align with the passing seasons, keeping in mind factors such as the weather and how people feel about current events.
You can focus on specific dates, such as building a campaign with an emphasis on holiday marketing. Events like Christmas, Halloween, and Thanksgiving are the best options for event-based marketing.
Marks & Spencer built a unique Christmas ad campaign focused on two fairies spreading love, joy, and Christmas joy around the world. At first, people didn’t even know that the company had been involved in the kind acts associated with the fairies. The campaign was a success even before a brand was linked to it.
Wow, @thetwofairies, you've really made our day, by sending these delicious, tiny cakes our way! #followthefairies x pic.twitter.com/9S0UlUG8A5
— Libby Rhodes (@libbyrhodes) November 6, 2014
These ideas are all capable of elevating your blog content to the next level, but your work won’t end there. You can integrate website feedback tools to know how well your newly-written are performing and make sure your effort is paying off. Learn from what works and what doesn’t and build future content marketing strategies based on your new knowledge.
Fueling future success through dynamic blog content
Your brand’s blog has the potential to become a brilliant space where you can forge deep connections with your audience and build a strong, loyal community. You need to approach your blog content creation the right way, though. The ideas we looked at in this article will help you take a step in the right direction. Use what you’ve learned here to breathe new life into your blog.
If you need assistance in taking on this task, try out Planable for free. We’re awesome at inspiring brand bloggers to apply innovative content ideas and can completely change how you keep your blog alive and engaging.
Mark Quadros is a SaaS content marketer that helps brands create and distribute rad content. On a similar note, Mark loves content and contributes to several authoritative blogs like HubSpot Sales, CoSchedule, Foundr, etc.
