December 20, 2019
If you’re a regular on SiteProNews, you may have already stumbled upon one of my articles saying that you should never blog just for the sake of blogging. You should blog only when you have something to say.
Better yet, you should blog when you know with absolute certainty that what you’re about to write will help your audience with a real problem.
However, writing only on meaningful/helpful topics doesn’t mean you have to wait for inspiration to strike whenever it sees fit. Muses are whimsical like that so don’t wait on them.
We already know that companies that blog regularly have more indexed pages which means better SEO. More importantly, B2B companies that blog get 67% more leads than those who don’t.
When it comes to tech companies, blogging is even more important. Blogging gives you a chance to explain your solutions in ‘human’ language, to educate your audience on brand-new technologies and to generate leads in the process.
I know firsthand about how important blogging is for tech companies. My recently launched digital marketing agency, Copywritech, helps tech companies get better rankings and more leads through SEO content and copywriting.
I know that blogging works for tech companies – I’ve been there for the whole process, from mapping the SaaS content strategy to evaluating its results.
But I also know that sometimes it can be hard to come up with the right topics for your tech blogging strategy.
For both my businesses and our clients, we make sure the editorial calendars are buffed up for months or even years to come. However, that entails a significant initial effort.
Here’s how we make sure we come up with topics that are relevant, easy to SEO, and evergreen:
1. Ask your audience
This is my favorite kind of idea: the kind that stares you right in the face but it’s simple enough to be ignored. Why complicate your life when it can be that simple?
All you have to do is send a simple survey (there are plenty of free apps for this) over to your email list, post it on your social media channels or in the social media groups you are part of.
Ask questions like:
- What is your number one challenge in SaaS marketing? (Replace SaaS marketing with your industry/expertise)
- What are your business goals for the upcoming year?
- What is the top reason why your business is not growing as much as you’d like it to?
Questions like these can generate a ton of blogging ideas. All from a simple email.
2. Customer support questions
One of our XaaS clients managed to double the leads they generate through content written by us. One of the key ways to do this was topic selection.
We asked them to review the most frequently asked/most relevant questions their support department receives. Most of them were easy to turn into blog posts.
The best part of this strategy is that it goes straight to user intent and buyer persona compatibility. By tackling topics their existing clients needed clarification on, we were able to answer the needs of very similar people – precisely the kind of people that could turn into paying customers.
3. Competition research
I don’t like to admit this but here it is: sometimes your competitors may have better (or more) ideas than you do.
Ouch, that hurt a bit.
But you know what I’m saying.
Make sure to keep an eye on your competitors’ blog – they’re definitely scanning yours!
However, don’t go there just to steal all their topics. Be smart about it.
The fact that they published a new blog post this week doesn’t mean that it’s the right post to publish. Plus, you want an identity of your own, don’t you?
So, before you decide to tackle topics your competitors already have, ask yourself:
- Is this topic relevant to my business goals?
- Does my audience have anything to gain from it?
- Can I do a better/more in-depth job than my competitors did?
(In fact, you should ask these questions about any topic you plan to write on, irrespective of where the idea came from.)
If you can answer yes to all these questions, go ahead and show your competitors that you’re better at everything than they are, including blogging.
4. How to guides
Everyone loves a good, in-depth guide. These guides can be about how to use your solution.
But they can also be comprehensive guides that solve your audience’s problems and don’t try to hard sell them anything. Buffer is one tech company that aces this angle. Take a look at their Tips/How To blog category.
5. Answer The Public
Answer The Public is a FREE tool that generates questions based on your core topic. In the example below, I only input three letters: VPN. If you’re selling VPN services, this is a wealth of topics to choose from:
All these are questions that people may be asking about your service or product. This tool is especially handy for tech companies who have a lot of educational blogs to write.
6. Google related searches
Here’s another straightforward idea: type in your core topic or industry in the Google search bar. Then scroll down to related searches. In the example below, my query was ‘SaaS strategy’.
My query was rather broad. If you started the same way, click on any of the results in related searches to replicate the process.
Found a topic you like?
Excellent!
Now use the rest of the related searches in your blog as subheadings – never forget SEO best practices!
Also, you can always take a look at the ‘People also ask’ section – I’ve found quite a few topic gems this way.
7. Google Trends
Need traffic more than you need evergreen content? Google Trends is your best friend.
Repeat the process described above: input a broad query and check out the interest over time. This way, you can see if the topic you have in mind can be narrowed down to a more specific one and if people are really interested in what you have to say.
8. Expert/blog round-up
People love comprehensive resources and being given many choices.
So why not round up experts or blogs in your industry?
I’m not talking about promoting your competitors for free, of course!
Here’s an example of a great round-up by Agorapulse. Agorapulse sells a social media management SaaS, so rounding up social media experts doesn’t shed light on their competitors.
What it does is create a HIGHLY successful blog post.
Think about it: all the experts you mention will share the post on their social channels. Some of their top fans will share it too.
Plus, you will be naming top experts and linking to their high-DA websites, so the SEO gains are also immense.
Bonus: need more ideas? Check out my article on tools that help you generate blog titles easily.
Wrapping things up
Sometimes coming up with new blog topics is just as easy as getting out of your head. And preferably getting into the head of your customer/audience.
Tech companies tend to get very…technical in their blogging – no surprises there. But if you take a close look at your audience you’ll find that they usually need simpler language and easy to understand articles – unless you’re writing for other engineers, which is a whole different story.
Need help with blogging for your tech company? This is exactly what my newly launched agency specializes in! We’ve already helped companies in XaaS or networking rank in top 3 positions on Google or generate 50% more leads – all through blogging and copywriting. We’d love to help you too! Let’s talk about tech content writing!
Adriana Tica is an expert marketer and copywriter, with 10 years in the field, most of which were spent marketing tech companies. She is the Owner and Founder of Idunn. In October 2019, she also launched Copywritech, a digital marketing agency that provides copywriting, SEO content writing, and strategy services to companies in the tech industry.
