3 Ways to Spice up Your Boring Blog Posts

You need to get a post out for your company blog today. And, you are struggling with what to do. Ugh!

So, like McCauley Culkin in “Home Alone”, you send out a primal scream and look for something... anything to do instead.

Does this sound like you?

It is easy to put off this important but not urgent task by occupying your time with other more important to-dos.

Look at your emails...Check.

Have that important conversation about last night’s Walking Dead episode...Check.

Learn how to juggle by watching that awesome YouTube video...Check

THE PROBLEM? It’s not easy to create entertaining and educational blog posts about hazardous waste, toner cartridges, prison uniforms or a host of other difficult business topics.

Many companies begin a content marketing strategy only to abandon it after the initial excitement wears off.

Let’s face it ... it takes a lot of discipline and some hard work to come up with interesting and targeted material, especially if your business is by most standards considered BORING!

So why blog? Because people are doing internet searches every day for a whole host of topics including searches related to your business. This means the key to capturing their attention involves blogging, creating eBooks and other relevant content that educates your visitors, entertains your prospects and nurtures them until they become satisfied customers.

No matter what business you are in, inbound marketing is here to stay and people are using search engines like Google and Bing to find relevant information about topics related to your business. If you are not creating material because you think it is dry, you can bet that your competitors are. And, they are gaining market share as you read this.

Here are three ways to spice up your boring blog posts and help get the juices flowing:

1. Investigate your prospects.
2. Think like a teacher.
3. Tell a good story.

Investigate Your Prospects

It’s time to put all of those hours you spent watching TV detective shows to good use. If you want to be a great content creator, you must first understand your target audience … your current clients and your future clients. 

This takes time.

Begin with creating a buyer persona, a representation of your ideal customer based on real data about demographics and online behavior, as well as speculation about their personal histories, motivations and concerns. 

Launch your own investigation into understanding what troubles your clients have so that you can better gauge how you can help ease their pain. 

But, to solve a case, your investigation must be thorough. After all, the most thorough investigations bring with them the most likelihood of success. 

Use your client list, your social media feeds and your blog to ask questions. Then, ask some more questions, and more after that. Keep asking questions until you truly understand what your customers are looking for and where their problem lies.

Here are some questions to ask when you are developing your buyer personas:

• Who are your ideal customers? In other words, you should be able to identify their:
• Background, including job and family
• Demographics, such as male or female, age, income and location
• Details of their company, including their industry, size of company, role in the company and the chain of command
• Identifiers, such as their demeanor and communication preferences
• What are their goals and challenges they are are currently experiencing - and may experience in the future?
• What do their online preferences look like? What social media channels do they use, personally and professionally? What type of online content do they use to educate themselves? Content they may use includes:
• Blogs
• eBooks
• White papers
• Social media
• Why should they buy your product? This may be one of their greatest challenges. How can you help them overcome this?

In the end, the description of your buyer persona should be able to answer these questions:

• What do they fear?
• What do they need?
• What is stopping them from being successful?
• What information can you give to help them?

Once you have this information, you can combine it with keyword research to write a blog post that speaks directly to your target audience’s fears, needs and obstacles to success. To understand more about how keywords play an important role in your digital marketing strategy, check out our article, how to improve your local SEO ranking .

Think Like A Teacher

Once you understand what their pain is, find your inner John Keating from “Dead Poets Society.” Jump on the desk and teach the poor souls who are desperately searching for an answer to a problem what the solution is.

Every day, people are looking for information in an effort to solve problems. This is why you have a business. At some point, someone (it may have been you) recognized that there was a problem that needed to be solved. You had THE solution.

Building a great lesson plan - or in this case, a great content marketing strategy - is key to providing that solution and growing your business. 

A great content strategy will include a winning combination of a high-quality social media strategy and engaging content, such as:

• Blogs
• How-to videos
• Buyers’ guides
• eBooks

Combine content marketing and social media to ignite lead generation, and pour every ounce of your energy into helping businesses or individuals get past their problems, pain or fear.

By providing a solution that helps your blog readers solve their problems, you build authority and trust. And ultimately, you gain the right to earn their business.

Tell A Good Story

To grow your business, you must understand and solve your customers’ problems. The best way to get them in the door is through a story. If you have been in business for any length of time, you have a lot of material to work with.

Somewhere along the line, a customer had an interesting problem that you were able to solve. If one person had the problem, you can bet 10 have the same problem.

Share your other customers' stories! (Without mentioning their name, unless they give you permission, of course!) You can share these stories on social media, in your blog articles or as proof of a successful implemented strategy in your eBooks.

Here are some additional strategies to improve your storytelling abilities through blogs:

• Address common pain points: Identify common challenges or problems faced by your target audience and create content that offers solutions or insights to address these pain points.
• Share industry trends and insights. Keep on top of the latest developments, trends and news in your industry. Share your perspectives, analysis and predictions on relevant topics to demonstrate thought leadership.
• Educate through content. Offer valuable educational content that helps your audience learn new skills, gain knowledge or understand complex concepts related to your industry or niche.
• Use FAQ and how-to formats. Compile frequently asked questions (FAQs) from your customers or audience and create detailed how-to guides or tutorials to provide answers and guidance. These types of blog posts generally do well and can help readers quickly locate an answer to their questions.
• Highlight product or service features. Highlight specific features, benefits or use cases of your products or services. Showcase real-life examples, case studies or success stories to demonstrate value and inspire confidence in your offerings.
• Incorporate guest posts. Guest blogs are a great way to collaborate with industry experts, influencers or customers to co-create content. Their perspectives and experiences can provide fresh insights and diverse viewpoints for your audience, while providing you with an opportunity to reach a new audience.
• Try interactive content. It’s OK to switch things up. Experiment with interactive formats like quizzes, polls, surveys or contests to engage your audience and encourage participation.

No matter what strategy you use, the content that you create should attract your customers and keep them coming back for more. The stories you share are a great way to let your customers know that you truly understand their pain, and more importantly, that you have a solution. 

As a bonus, the more they love what you are providing, the more they are likely to share it with their friends, family and co-workers. After all, they probably know other people that can benefit from what you have to offer!

Investigate, teach and tell not only a good story, but their story, and you will keep them coming back for more.

A Note About AI

An increasing number of businesses are leveraging AI, or artificial intelligence, to automate the process of writing blogs. As AI technology continues to improve, it has become easier to use this tool to help you write content quickly.

In fact, Hubspot reports that nearly 43% of content marketers use AI to help them generate topic ideas. Yet only 3% use it to write entire articles. 

There are a few reasons why you should carefully consider how you use artificial intelligence to spice up your blog posts.

First, AI pulls information from data, and we all know that not everything on the Internet is true. AI writing is still in its infancy, which means it makes mistakes. If you want your content to be accurate, it’s important not to rely on AI for information solely and to make sure you do a “human check” on any information that is pulled.

Second, AI has come a long way in tone. At one point, it truly sounded like a machine was spitting out information in a robotic voice. Yet, it’s not exactly conversational. AI-written posts can be wordy and repetitive, and if your readers feel they aren’t getting something of value from reading your posts, they’ll move on.

AI also lacks personalization. AI generates content based on information gathered from millions of sources on the Internet. Yet some of your best sources who can help you generate personalized content are your customers themselves. 

Finally, it’s important to be careful with plagiarism. AI relies on content that already exists. Even if AI is pulling together information from multiple sources, it’s important to make sure the tool isn’t “parroting” content. This could impact your SEO activity and ultimately hurt your credibility with search engine algorithms. 

In the end, using artificial intelligence can help you develop blog post ideas and even pull you out of writer’s block when you aren’t quite sure what to say or how to start writing. However, relying on AI solely for blog content creation can lead to a lack of human authenticity, ultimately diminishing your unique voice and connection with your audience.