Content marketing is a continuous thing. You never truly stop building up content, gathering ideas and communicating with your clients over social networks. With content marketing comes writing – and any blogger, novelist, social media marketer or journalist will agree that at one point or another (or perhaps at many points); they just had no idea what to write about.

This brings us back to the notion of a never-ending job. Without realising it, we have access to an unlimited pool of ideas. By this, we are not only referring to the oracle also known as Google. Every task you do during the day, every sentence you read, every person you come into contact with, can turn into a blog article or a handy tip to Tweet or Facebook about. The trick is to get out of that box which leads you to believe that articles and posts, especially those for corporate purposes, have a linear spectrum of approach. Jeff Bullas puts it this way: “The corporate blog should not be about “selling” it is about educating and solving your customers’ problems.”

Posts now include much more than text, we see vlogs (video blogs), infographics, and images, photographs, GIFs, audio clips and videos being incorporated on all platforms. So you are not at all limited to text, you can either use one of the above at a time, or incorporate multiple formats into a single post.

Where to source from

The news.
As a professional, you likely check up on trends in your industry – pay heed to any industry news you come across – therein likely lies an article idea. When you attend events, conferences or social gatherings, don’t be shy to whip out your mobile and record an on-the-spot interview to post to your blog. Mobiles are also good for note-taking, jotting down random ideas as they come to you throughout your day – or during your slumber.

Customers.
Take note of what your customers’ frequent queries or complaints are. You can write about these queries and problem-solve by using both successful and failed interactions for case studies. You can even do an interview with clients, recoding it to add an extra dimension to the blog’s platform. In addition, you can run a poll or add a survey to your blog to gather information for your next post.

Employees.
Schedule a brainstorming session for article ideas, or take down complaints that employees have (especially in a service delivery company) and turn them into blog articles. Sometimes these articles may even aid clients in their understanding of procedures for various services they request from you. You can always publish something on ‘what not to do’ as opposed to a ‘how to’ type of article.

Do not limit yourself to topics. With a little creativity, many ideas can be adapted to suit your company’s corporate culture.  If you have no idea where to start with this whole blog business, turn to competitors or fellow bloggers and see how they do things.

Mari Roelofse is a Digital Journalist & Content Editor for Sound Idea Digital | mari@soundidea.co.za | Sound Idea Digital | www.soundidea.co.za