We’ve all been there. It’s time to develop new content for your website or blog. You know you need to do it, and you started strong, but you have hit the content writing wall. You have nothing left to say.
Or so you think.
Creating Something from Nothing
While it may seem like you’ve just run out of ideas – that is usually not the case. Good content writing is about consistently developing unique content about a wide variety of topics – the wider the variety, the better! So while everything should relate to your business in some way or another, some “outside the box” thinking is sometimes required to develop new content. Today we’re going to talk about the fine art of creating something from nothing, and we’ll share some tips to help you tap into the nooks and crannies of your brain and find those few remaining sips of creative content writing juice.
The FAQ
This is one of the easiest ways to spin your content writing in a new direction when you’re out of creative fuel. If you run a business, you get asked questions all the time, and it could be that your website already has a FAQ section to field these – but even if it does, no guide is comprehensive, and you can use your blog as a place to fine-tune your FAQ. A post on “The Most Often Asked Questions about International Postage” or “Answers to Your Questions on Tropical Fish” can be more specific than your general FAQ, but still easy enough to write. Pick a topic that your audience seems to have frequent questions about, and lay out the answers.
The Digest
Another method is to choose a theme of topics you’ve written about before, and do a “digest” style post addressing those topics. Now, be careful: don’t copy text from the other articles for the new digest or review post. You’re going to have to write unique summaries for this new article or you’ll fall into the trap of duplicate content. Still, if your problem is lack of ideas rather than lack of time or motivation, the review style post can keep your current content fresh, and even refresh some of your aging content thanks to link backs.
The Product Review
Your customers are ostensibly interested in your products, so give them all the information they can stand. We’re sure that you have a basic product spec sheet somewhere on your website already, so don’t just regurgitate that. Pick a specific product and do an “in-house review” style post for it. Examine and thoroughly describe all aspects of the product. How does it work? How easy is it to operate? Offer some simple instructions, and consider adding some video content for more interaction and social sharing. Extrapolating on the features and specs of a specific product can be very informative and popular with readers, and if you have multiple products, that’s even more articles you can write – no creative topic wrangling required!
Humor
A lot of times we forget that our readers are human, and humans like to laugh. We don’t really care who is making us laugh, whether it’s a comedian, blogger, YouTube star, or even a major corporation. Sharing a humorous story is a great way to break up the strictly-business sections of your blog, and an opportunity for you to get out of your writing rut as well. Write about the funniest thing that’s ever happened to you at work. Write about the greatest prank you ever pulled on a co-worker, or indulge in some lighthearted self-deprecating by sharing your most embarrassing moment at work. It’s doesn’t necessarily have to relate, but for the purposes of SEO, it should at least be something that happened to you at work, so you can easily add in your standard work-related keywords.
The Thank You Post
When you don’t have anything else to say, sometimes it’s best to just let your customers know how much you appreciate their business. Couple this post with some stories of the best or most memorable customers you’ve ever had (this can cross into humor territory as well, but it’s important to never poke fun at your customers, even in the spirit of levity, as it can be grossly misinterpreted), some photos illustrating the way your business has grown over the years (don’t forget to add descriptive alt text to the photos, as it’s the only way search engines see images), or even a memorial section for a regular customer who is no longer with us. These sorts of posts are always easy to write, simply because they’re the things that we think about often, but seldom or never put it all out there in writing. The heartfelt thank you post is a nice distraction from the business talk, and will give your readers a smile. When your customers feel appreciated, they feel better about doing business with you, and that’s how you make customers for life.