If you own a manufacturing plant and you are not aware of the Rocky Mountain Trade Adjustment Assistance Center, you should be. Call eGrowth Marketing office (402) 884-0030, and we will assist in an introduction to our area representative.

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eGrowth Marketing Blogging Series Article 3: 20 Ideas Where to Find Content Plus 20 Ideas of Content Suggestions

In this blog series we’ve already discussed the Why, Who and How. Now it is the Where and What of blog content.

Content, content, content is like location, location, location.

A good mix of content leads to a long term and well followed blog. Long term leads to well indexed by Google. Long term leads to more prospects finding your blog.

Where to find content:

1. Brainstorm ideas.
2. Retool newsletter for blog use.
3. Pull archival information. Old newsletters, articles, etc.
4. Make a seasonal calendar of what to search for.
5. Search Ask.com and Wikipedia.
6. Read competitor blogs and websites.
7. Trade blog content with similar companies in other markets.
8. Listen to the customer service phone calls.
9. Look at your bookmarks you resource answers from.
10. Buy content.
11. Follow government agency websites.
12. Testimonials.
13. Post FAQ’s on the blog and website.
14. Post awards, and certifications.
15. Create an award. Employee of the Month, etc.
16. Ask employees for content ideas.
17. Ask vendors for content. Vendors from other industries may have articles of interest to your audience.
18. Ask manufacturer/distributor/supplier for content. New products, research, etc.
19. Check with Associations you belong to. See what content you can use.
20. Search free article sites for content. Watch the contributor requirements.

What are Different Content Suggestions?

1. Current Topics
2. Seasonal Information
3. New Products or Service
4. New Research
5. Government Information
6. Trends
7. Lists
8. Tips
9. Surveys and Polls
10. Contests
11. What are callers asking about? FAQ’s
12. Case Study
13. Sales. Closeouts. Promotions. Coupons.
14. Testimonials
15. Employee recognition or good deed
16. Why do you belong? Explain certifications and industry memberships
17. What are you, the expert, doing at home next? Be Prepared For….
18. Cautions. Warnings. Dangers.
19. If you could make one change in your industry, it would be….
20. What are you, the expert, reading? Book, article, certification….

There is a tremendous volume of information listed here to tap. Think about your audiences. Think about what business problems do you want to solve with your blog? Decide what defines success for your blog. Determine what tracking tools you have to report that success (or failure). Set a time frame – not less than 6 months – to evaluate the blog effort. Retool. Reset goals.

And – these blog articles do not even go in to the power of feeding the blog information out to other social media channels. This is the driver for other channels to include: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.

Need more inspirations:

1. 55 Post and Topic Ideas for Your Business Blog
2. 101 Great Posting Ideas That Will Make Your Blog Sizzle
3. 20 Ideas for Writing a Blog Post

Guidelines For Getting A Good Web Developer from NxBizSuccess on Vimeo.

Since SEO has always been geared to national companies and tracking tools have had trouble delving to the lowest level of local companies, FourSquare has hit a nerve. People do want to find things globally but they also want to brag about what’s in their backyard.

Foursquare is in tune with the neighborhood. It also has exceptional mobile capability. This also reinforces what we’ve been recommending – AT&T Yellow Pages (especially paid) are out. Foursquare and Yelp are in.

The last and most impact portion of the article:

I think the following stats about the number of business profile pages reported indexed in Google over the past 24 hours pretty much says it all.

• Yellowpages.com: 219
• Superpages.com: 553
• Yelp.com: 928
• Foursquare.com: 11,300

Now this comparison is a little unfair because 1) Foursquare is global and 2) Google’s site: query is not necessarily accurate, but it’s indicative of how quickly these services can start to fill up Google’s index. If your business relies on organic local search for a significant amount of traffic it may indeed be time to get your own location war on.

1. Use the “Custom Name Feature” so your Bitly link is now a branded tool for you.  Right on the Home Page when you enter a link.
   1. Example – http://bit.ly/eGrowthMarketing
   2. Use the Bitly statistics to track your traction. Easy to read and tracks each use of the same URL over and over again. Great way report on the ROI of social media efforts. Find this feature on the Home Page as you are looking through your links. Click on “Info” and it takes you to the statistics of each shortened link.
   3. Competitors getting the jump on you in social media? Check out their traffic, reamplifiers, time of day posted, etc. This will also show you what is working for them. To find this, click on “Tools” at the top menu bar.