As you do your content planning for the new year, it’s a great time to breathe some life into your business blog with some completely new types of content. Here are 150 post ideas by style (and some examples) to inspire you to succeed with your content marketing in 2023! Bookmark it or save it to your favourite tool so you can refer to it regularly (also see my blog ideas board on Pinterest for future inspiration).
FAQs, Myths, Pitfalls
- FAQ Post: Detail the Frequently Asked Questions for your company or products and answer them. You can do individual posts for more essential FAQs.
- Myths Post: Present the myths for your industry and write an article to debunk them. See an example here: 6 Small Business Blogging Myths Debunked
- Industry Secrets: Write about secrets that people don’t typically know about
- Common Pitfalls: Talk about common pitfalls and how to avoid them
- Common Misconceptions: Talk about common confusing topics for beginners
- Industry Definitions: Define the key terms in your niche. Example: What is a Gantt Chart?
- Beginner Advice: Write advice on topics that seem obvious but aren’t too absolute beginners
Timely / News
- Industry News (original): Break news or cover a hot topic in your industry in your own way
- Curated News: Assemble relevant industry news and include snippets or summaries on your site (properly linking to and referencing the source)
- Weekly News Wrap: Do a weekly news wrap-up relevant to your customers
- New Idea: Write about a new or unique idea related to your niche.
- Service or Tool Review: Introduce people to a new helpful service or tool
- Meme or Trend: Write your own take on a popular meme, trend or hot topic
Series or Regular Post
- Weekly Series: Do a weekly series of posts.
- Annual Post: Do an annual top 100 list or yearly wrap-up.
- Weekly or Monthly Themes: Do themes for a given week or month.
Research / Reviews
- Research Assessment: Highlight, summarize and write about the key research findings relevant to your industry.
- Best Practices Post: Compile a set of best practices for your industry.
- Curated Content Post: Collect resources from around the web and highlight them in a post. Ensure to include only “snippets” or summaries of the articles and links to the source. See an example here: PMP Certification? Use this List of Helpful PMBOK Guide Resources.
- Compare and Contrast: Compare and contrast your market to markets in other cities, nationally or in other countries.
- Book or Video Review: Review an article, book, PDF, video, training program, or service.
- Advice Post: Write about the current market environment and how that impacts people or what they should do.
- Different Methods Post: Compare and contrast one way of doing something with another way
- Two Sides of Issue: Compare and contrast two sides to an issue.
- Experiment: Do an investigation and talk about the results.
- Two Options: Compare two options – choices potential customers need to make.
Thought Leadership/Opinion Posts/ Inspiration
- Future Trends: Discuss future trends or predictions. See an example here (that is also an infographic): 6 Major Marketing Trends for 2022
- Opinion Post: State your opinion on a topic and explain.
- New Practice Post: Introduce a new practice or way of doing business.
- Write an inspirational post.
- Push For Change: Organize a drive for something and involve other people.
- Industry Changes: What would you change about your industry? Post about that.
- Motivate Action: What helps people move beyond their fear – how people can be more confident to take action.
- Industry History: How your industry has changed over time, key milestones.
- Counterpoint To Common Belief: Challenge a commonly held belief in your industry.
- A Manifesto: A manifesto is “a public declaration of principles and intentions, often political in nature” (Wikipedia). Write a manifesto about your industry and something different you’re going to do about some alarming industry trends (for example).
Stories, Metaphors
- Story Post: Tell a story as part of the post that delivers a particular message or makes a certain point.
- Talk about how you came to be involved with your industry.
- Include a personal story in a post.
- Write about something unique that you’ve done or are doing (e.g. living in china, running a marathon).
- Company history (especially if interesting).
- Tell a story of a challenge and how you or your company overcame it.
- Customer Case Study: A day in the life of a customer or your company.
- Good or Bad Experience: Talk about a good or bad experience you recently had and what it means (e.g. how your experience at McDonald’s highlights customer service tips).
- Analogy or Metaphor: Draw an analogy or use a strong metaphor in a post.
Niche Celebrities, Brands or Movies
- Speaker or Keynote Highlights: Summarize and highlight critical points for a recent celebrity speaker relevant to your industry (can even be a past video or audio recording).
- The Mad Men Guide To… Make a connection between a famous person and your post (e.g. How Lady Gaga would… or The Sopranos Method of Couples Counseling). See an example here: 10 Reasons the Death Star Project Failed.
- Big Brand Examples: Use famous brands, products or marketing campaigns as good or bad examples of practice.
- Highlighting key points from a longer article: Summarize or give key points for someone else’s long post or article.
- Compiled Tips Post: Compile input from several knowledgeable industry sources – one sentence or paragraph per expert.
- Interview Post: Interview an influencer or expert and document the interview or critical points (including video or audio).
- Promote Other Blogs: Highlight several blogs you follow and why – this can help give you some social capital with the other blogs.
Customers / Clients
- Case study post about a customer.
- Answer Questions: Take reader questions and answer them on your blog.
- Address Blog Post Comments: Write about a topic or question raised in the comments section of your blog.
- Biggest Problems: Ask clients, Twitter followers or others about their most significant problem related to your industry
- Best Readers: Connect in some way with your best readers – e.g. thank them, interview them, have them write a guest post, etc……
Your company/products – use sparingly (people care more about your products than you do…)
- Company Differentiators: What makes your company different from the others?
- Service Philosophy: What is your customer service philosophy?
- Specials: Monthly specials, deals, promotions, close-outs.
- New Project: Talk about a new project and invite input or invite people to participate
- Company Involvement: Talk about a publication you contributed to or a project you or your company was part of.
- Related Industry Post: Create a post for a related industry. The customers for both sectors should be the same. Potentially involve or interview partners or complementary companies.
Tips / How To / Why / Tutorial posts – written, audio, video
- How To Post: How to build something, make something, buy something
- Detailed Tutorial: Write a tutorial on a specific topic not usually covered in that detail.
- Curated Tutorial Post: Compile a set of the best tutorials on a specific topic and briefly describe each and what they should use them for.
- Teach Via Your Experience: Teach people how you overcame a common hurdle.
- Pottery-Making 101: Do a “101” (like a fundamentals course in college) post or series of posts (e.g. pottery-making 101).
- Beginners/Advanced Tutorials: Do a beginner’s tutorial or advanced tutorial.
- Break Down Complexity: Simplify a complicated topic. For example, take a technical issue and break it down or make it simple.
- Why You Should… Why the readers should do something.
- Time savings: Write about how you save time doing something in your area.
- Curated or Compiled Tips: Assemble a variety of tips and compile them. It can be from within your company or other people or resources (credit appropriately).
- How To Start: How to get started in something.
- Common Hurdles: How to overcome common hurdles.
- What To Do When You… Common triggers for action – write about that and what to do. For example, “Three Essential Things You Need To Do When You Get Laid Off”.
Pictures/Graphics
- Infographic: Create an infographic that graphically explains a complicated topic using pictures or graphics: See this infographic as an example: Social Media Decision Tree
- Pictures Post: Create a post mainly pictures related to your industry.
- Single Picture Post: Post one striking picture that conveys an important message.
- Charts & Graphics: Use tables, pie charts or other graphics to tell a story.
Fun/Humor
- Game/Contest: Provide a game or run a contest for potential readers
- Animation or cartoon
- Funny Comparison: Compare your company to something famous, different or in the news (e.g. Why Learning a Language is like Baking a Pizza).
- Satire Post: Satirize a popular movie or commercial (e.g. Apple iPhone commercial satire, Star Wars satire).
- Humour: Add humour to spice up a dry topic.
- Something Unusual or Unique: Write about something unusual or unique in your industry – website, blog, book, etc.
- Quiz: Put a quiz for your readers.
- Quotes: Pull together quotes that inspire or relate to your industry.
- Award: Create a trophy for customers, readers or other industry players.
- Top 10: Rank 10 people in your industry along some criteria (positive is better than negative!)
- Curate Funny Pictures or Videos: Provide funny or exciting videos or pictures (make sure to use and credit appropriately)
- Humorous post: Write a funny post or include a joke.
- New Word: Create a new word and define it.
- Online fun resource: Highlight or include something fun, like a free online game.
- Favourite Thing: Ask people what is one item, tool, gadget or productivity item they can’t live or work without.
Interviews – Written, audio or video interviews
- Influencer Interview: Interview famous people in your industry.
- Customer Interview: Interview your customers.
- Employee or Executive Interview: Interview people in your company.
- Get Interviewed: Have someone interview you – preferably an industry influencer!
- Partner Interview: Interview partners or potential partners.
Polls/Surveys
- Twitter Question: Ask a question on Twitter related to your industry and write about the input (e.g. what would you change about making vacation plans online?)
- Survey/Poll: Run a survey or poll and analyze and write about the results.
Events / Holidays
- Press Without A Pass: “Be the press without a pass” at an industry convention – writing, interviews, short video clips, and pictures (check convention policies). See this example: 10 Social Media Lessons Learned from Ford.
- Live-blog an event: Create a blog post in real-time for an event. There are also specialized live-blogging tools if you want it to appear online as you type (search for “live blogging tools”)
- Event/Holiday Posts: Write posts about upcoming holidays or events (Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Super Bowl, World Cup). See this example: New Year’s Resolutions are Worthless Without These 4 Things.
- Stages of Life: Write about stages of life or triggers – weddings, new babies, funerals, etc.
- Events List: Document the events relevant to your audience – local events, conferences or webinars.
- Deadlines: Key deadlines or information about training in your industry
- Event Takeaways: Write about the key lessons you took from an event.
Video:
- Product “How To” or Review: Record a product review or “how to” video.
- Curated Video Post: Embed one or more relevant YouTube videos and describe the text’s key points. 3 Lessons on High-Performing Teams from TED Talks
- Get to know your company: Film a day in the life of your company over video.
- Convert a blog post into a video: Create a video of a popular blog post and post it on YouTube and on your site.
Local:
- Local Area or Local Topic: Talk about a local topic or area that would interest people who are your target market. It doesn’t have to be about your industry.
- Local events: Highlight or list local events.
- Local Companies: Highlight local partners or other local companies of interest
- Local guides: Provide a guide to a local area.
- Comprehensive Guide: Comprehensive information about a particular region from various angles.
Short List Post
- Short List Post: Write a short list post. Examples include:
- “5 ways to..”
- “7 Tips For….”
- Ten things you can learn by watching…
- 6 ways __________ can make you ___________
Tools post
- Tool Review: Detail a useful online tool that customers in your industry could use.
- Ultimate Tools List: Develop the “ultimate list” of all the best online tools for your enterprise.
- Crowdsourced Tools List Post: Ask your readers or ask on Twitter/Facebook for the most valuable tools or resources.
- Tool of the Week (Month): Share a new tool or website each week that people will find helpful.
- Tool “How To: Do a “how to” post or video for a useful tool (or a handy feature.
Comprehensive List Post (e.g. Ultimate List of …)
- Ultimate List Post: Develop “an ultimate” list of resources for your customers or others in your industry to reference.
- Top Blogs or Websites: List and describe your industry’s leading websites or blogs.
- Comprehensive Guide To… Write a comprehensive guide to a topic including data, companies, trends, and sales (or if in travel – top restaurants, how to get there, weather, top hotels, etc.)
- Best and Worst Lists: Like the “Best Dressed People of 2010” post.
- 20 Free resources: Find free things that your readers will love.
- Curated Video Post: Post (embed) several relevant YouTube videos on your site for a particular topic or product. Make sure you describe or summarize the contents in the text to help the audience decide what to watch and for SEO purposes.
- Curated Post: Provide a list of the top articles or blog posts in your industry or on a particular topic. Summarize or include a snippet from the post and link (and reference) the source.
- Beginner’s Guide: Make a guide for your niche or industry. (e.g. “the beginners guide to refinancing your home”).
- Resources Post: Ranked list of must-read journals, magazines, books or blogs.
- Ideas List: Brainstorm a list of ideas on a topic and publish them for input, feedback and additions (e.g. “50 eco-friendly vacations you can take this summer”).
Guest Post / User-Generated Content
- Get Guest Posters: Identify fans, partners, industry influencers or others to guest post on your blog.
- User-Generated Content: Create a contest or request readers to submit content (articles, pictures, video).
- Collect Input: Ask other industry influencers the answer to a question and collect the response from several people into one post.
Social Values post
- Charity Post: Write about a charitable event, contribution or volunteer effort.
- Issues Post: Write about a current issue and how people can help.
- Cause Post: Write about a particular cause you believe in. Find a way to help non-profits in your industry, write about it, or use the blog to forward it.
- Eco-friendly / Green Post: Talk about eco-friendly or green steps you’ve put in place
- New Uses Post: Fun or exciting ways people can reuse items instead of throwing them away.
Negative (use with care!)
- A Rant: Write a passionate post about a frustration – about something that is bothering you
- Satire: Write a satirical post about something.
- Response Post: Disagree with another blogger or other well-known person
- Counterpoint: Do a counterpoint to someone or some trend in your industry.
What are your favourite post ideas? Let us know in the comments.