Business blogging basics: finding inspiration

Often times with blogging for business, getting started is the hardest part. Many businesses and marketing teams are plagued with writer's block at times. Finding inspiration and confidence can be a common task for teams charged with content production.

Ideas for finding a subject for business blogging

• Take a break - Perhaps you are just burnt out. Let's start with this simple solution. When was your last break? Have you taken a walk recently? As difficult as this is to believe, sometimes taking a break is the best way to generate ideas and rekindle your creativity
• Read for inspiration - Writers and creatives of all ages have sought inspiration from their peers and predecessors. Pick up a good book or magazine and focus on some distinct part of it... perhaps the sentence structure, build-up of the narrative or the concept presented. Additionally, you can cite references in your copy that can help legitimatize your premise or provide context to your story or blog post.
• Get data - Often times wadding through survey data, whitepapers, analytics, polls, business records or other accessible forms of data can be a great starting point for business blogging. What data do you have available to you? Do you or your team use data to justify your actions? This may be a great starting point for a blog post.
• Request ideas online - Solicit your very own readers and have them request subjects. For one, this can get your readers more involved in your blog. It can give them a sense of personal ownership or evangelism.  Employ social media or a blog poll to solicit concepts.
• Set up a strategy session with your marketing or sales team - Group brainstorming can be awkward at first (sometimes), but it can be very rewarding. You may be surprised by the insights of your sales team. Or if you over-caffeinate your marketing team, you may get some real gems! Getting your team or employees involved in content creation (or at least idea generation) can expand your company's ability to connect with customers, leads and new prospects. Additionally, by getting their involvement, you may help them discover new ways to communicate with clients, empathize with clients and creatively solve problems. The research and thought involved in blogging can help strengthen employee and team member responses to client problems.
• Review client questions - Often clients ask the same questions, which can make for great blog content. Try documenting common questions asked by clients, and use these questions as the foundation of a helpful article.
• Set up an industry RSS feed can be highly rewarding. For of all, it can be illuminating to see what is happening in the industry day to day. Also, this is a great way to find great subjects for your business blog. Explore company news sections, press releases, whitepapers and trade magazines. The subjects and writing styles can all be helping in generating an Inbound marketing strategy. Consider using an RSS feed reader like feedly.com to organize topics.
• Look at your blog's analytics to understand what content is being shared and promoted already by your readership. This will give you a clue about what kind of content to focus on. Track the number of shares, likes and the bounce rate of your content over time to optimize your content strategy.
• Twitter can be a great place to engage users and find inspiration. Study the types of hashtags other Twitter users in your industry employ in their tweets. Using hashtags will help your content get discovered and connect you with like-minded users.