Content – or unique and interesting content, rather – is the single-most important thing when it comes to a good blog.
Think about it: what makes interesting blogs interesting? What makes you want to go back to those blogs again and again? What makes you return to these blogs? What keeps you hooked to them?
Almost every single time, the answer to all those questions will be content. We make it a point to read certain blogs on a regular basis, bookmark said blogs and keep visiting them again and again because of the quality of their content.
Good blog content needs to be unique, highly-interesting, engaging and valuable to your readers. Here are ways you can do just that:
1. Look at content on other similar blogs
Don’t blatantly steal content from your content, that is the single-worst thing you can do to your blog. But instead, look at the type and kind of content other blogs are putting up, and think of ways you can replicate some of their best-practices on your own blog.
Scouting your competitors for ideas is never a bad idea. Perhaps you could take a really interesting or a popular blog post from another blog, and give it a completely different spin. Having said that, avoid making other blogs your primary source of ideas and/or content generation.
2. Look at what you can do apart from simple text-based posts
Text posts are good, but let’s be honest, they can be boring. You can spruce things up on your blog by doing more than just simple text-based posts. Perhaps you could include multimedia, such as videos, images, pictures and images, GIF’s and so on with your text.
Or instead of just plain text, you could represent all information through graphs, charts, infographics, and other such visualizations. Try being creative with your content.
3. Be more personal
Start off a blog post with a personal story from your life. Personal stories are interesting, and your readers and visitors will immediately be interested and hooked in what you have to say – they’ll be able to connect with you and relate to what you have to say.
Doing so will breathe life into what might otherwise have been just another blog-post. Be candid and open. However, at the same time it is important to be relevant, and give your readers value – something that they’re interested in reading.
4. Provide help through your blog
The best thing that you can use your blog for is to provide help and assistance to your readers. Not only will your visitors absolutely love these, but you’ll also have a higher chance to rank better on search engines as Google absolutely loves such posts.
Try identifying what your readers or your customers want, and be the resource that they want you to be. Doing insightful and useful posts, such as how-to blog posts on your blog not only makes for some excellent content, you’ll be killing two birds with one arrow this way.
5. Scour social mediums for content ideas
Facebook, Twitter, Reddit (a good one!), and other popular social networking websites are a great place to look for content ideas, and you can get some excellent ideas for creating unique and valuable content for your blog from these places. People always have something interesting to say or share.
If you’re following people in your niche, you’ll always find something interesting. One excellent place which I’ve regularly started using to generate content ideas is LinkedIn. The kind of quality content being shared on that site is just staggering!
6. Be an expert in your niche
When you’re an expert in your niche, you’ll have tons to write about. Without having substantial knowledge about your subject, you will never be able to write deep, insightful and highly-interesting posts for your visitors. You need to be an expert in your niche or industry in order to create engaging content for your blog. So work on improving your knowledge in your subject or field, and make an effort to keep yourself updated about things happening in the industry.
7. Differ from the rest of the pack
Controversial posts tend to do well, because people are always interested when someone differs from their opinion (or the opinion of the masses), and looks at things in a different way. This is precisely why some of the most unique blog posts – ones that tend to get a lot of visitors – are the ones that provide a completely differing opinion, an opinion that goes against the conventional wisdom.
Try doing a blog post that provides a perspective that differs from the rest of the world. Take a stand, stir up some controversy, be unique, stand out from the crowd.
8. Brainstorm
Last, but definitely not the least, use brainstorming as a technique to generate unique, interesting, and engaging content ideas. Brainstorming can be an incredibly powerful technique to generate excellent content that gets tons of visitors and ranks well on Google. Sit down with, or speak with people in your industry/niche, team-members, or colleagues to brainstorm content ideas.
Final Thoughts
What content development strategies do you use for your blog?
How do you come up with unique, interesting, valuable, and engaging content? How do you keep things interesting on your blog.
If you need an additional resource, check out EnticeHq’s curated list of 21 blogging courses that are designed to help you build an audience, grow your email list, and help you create a profitable blog. Or take a look at WeMail’s content marketing strategies for some additional ideas.
Would love to hear from you so hit us up in the comments section below.
