Content Creation Case Study: Blog Topics for an Interior Design Business

August 9, 2012 by · 1 Comment

This is the second in a series of Content Creation Case Studies, where we explore a few dozen blog topic and newsletter ideas for small business bloggers in the creative space.

(Marketing online with killer free content is one of the most effective ways to up your business visibility, increase your search engine traffic, and establish yourself as the go-to person in your niche. All of which, if done correctly, will result in more sales. To do that well, you need to add fresh new content to your blog at least weekly, if possible. And to do that, you need topic ideas. That’s why I’m adding these content creation case studies to the blog on a regular basis, to get you, my creative friend, to start creating your own killer content. Check back frequently for your creative biz type – I’m sure to be covering it in a case study sometime soon.)

Last case study I laid out my system for easily and consistently coming up with dozens of content ideas, and put a clothing and accessories boutique through a brainstorming session, generating 34 potential topics this business could blog about.

Today we’re going to apply the same brainstorming & content creation system to an interior design business.

(Check out the links at the end of this blog post for more information about the system I use. Also note, the topic ideas here are slightly generic; you would obviously trick these ideas up to gear them to your specific audience.)

Amazon is a great place to start the brainstorming, so let’s begin there. What you want to do is search for books in your topic area, then look at book chapter titles. Next take a look at magazines on Amazon in your topic area, and note article headlines.

From these two resources I noted 28 blog topic ideas someone in the interior design business could write about.

From Amazon Book Chapter Titles, these ideas surfaced:

How to Decorate Like a Pro, Even If You’re Design-Challenged

How to Define Your Interior Design Style

How to Set a Decorating Budget

3 Investment Pieces Everyone Should Own: Which Pieces to Spend the Big Bucks On

Design Basics: What You Need to Know Before You Get Started on Your Next Project

Guide to the Best Decorating Resources Online

How to Build a Room Around a Signature Piece

How to Tie a Room Together with Color

A series of Home Design 101 and How-To Shop posts would make a great category for a weekly blog post (again, using Amazon book chapter titles):

Using Color 101

Lighting 101

Rugs 101

Room Layout 101

How to Shop for Furniture Online

How to Shop: Dept. Stores

How to Shop: Vintage and Second-Hand and/or Consignment

How to Shop: Catalogues

How to Shop: Yard Sales and Flea Markets

Ideas Generated from Magazine Headlines:

How to Create the Perfect Beach House Décor on a Budget

How To Do Rustic

50 Best Kitchen Ideas

50 Best Bathroom Ideas

Little Changes for Big Impact

How to Perk Up Your Rooms with Color

How to Create the Perfect Outdoor Retreat

Transform Your Home with Details

10 Picture-Hanging Tips

How to Create Big Style in a Small Space

Best Buys for Every Budget

The 28 ideas above came from 20-30 minutes of brainstorming on Amazon, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg, as there were over 33,000 books listed in Amazon in the interior design category alone. **I don’t suggest using the headlines you find on Amazon verbatim; instead, use them as writing prompts — you’ll want to tweak them for your specific business and target audience.

After signing out of Amazon, I came up with a few ideas of my own:

* How to Hire an Interior Designer: 5 Must-Know Tips (other variations on this idea: When to Hire an Interior Designer, Why Hire an Interior Designer, etc.)

* Essential Design Principles Every DIY’er Needs to Know

* How This Home Got Style: A Before & After Story (turn this into a weekly or monthly series on your blog and use it to show off your kick-butt design skills)

* One Couple, Two Very Different Design Aesthetics: How to Combine Your Styles for Maximum Impact (and Happiness!)

* From Ho-Hum to W-O-W: How to Use Luxe Accessories to Spice Up a Boring Room

 

And there you have it – 33 blog topic ideas from 30 minutes of brainstorming.

Now it’s time for you to give this brainstorming technique a try and let your creative freak flag fly, baby!

—–
**The Amazon generated ideas are somewhat generic; if this were a real client of mine, I would suggest much more specific blog topics based on their particular brand personality and target audience.**

For blog content brainstorming and content creation, I use the process I outlined in “3 Content Creation Hacks That Work Every Time,” and “How to Generate Blog Post Ideas, Part 2.”

[Hey there, gorgeous. Did you know you can get my FREE weekly newsletter, with actionable tips, techniques, and how-to’s for marketing your business online, delivered straight to your email inbox each Tuesday? You betcha! Go ahead and enter your name and email address at the top right hand side of the blog now, and let’s get you glowing online.]

Filed Under: Blogging, Content Strategy Tagged With: , ,

Content Creation Case Study: Blog Topics for a Clothing and Accessories Boutique

July 3, 2012 by · 6 Comments

Fashion - Clothing and Accessories Boutique

If you’re dipping your toe in the content marketing water, then you know that marketing online with killer free content is one of the most effective ways to up your business visibility, increase your search engine traffic, and establish yourself as the go-to person in your niche.

All of which, if done correctly, will result in more sales. And who doesn’t want that?

To make content marketing work for you, however, you have to commit to creating original content on a regular basis. Yet I see so many blogs and websites out there that I know must have started with the best of intentions, but at some point ran out of steam.

You know the ones – blogs that were posted to twice a week for a few months, then once every other week, then, oh, about once every other month, until the sad day when you visit the blog and you can see the blogger just gave up. Because all that’s left is the ghostly shadow of a blog that hasn’t been posted to in months.

Ahem . . . is that you?

Of course when you’re trying to run a business, creating killer content on a weekly basis can seem overwhelming. The complaint I hear most often is, “but I don’t have enough ideas to write about every week.”

Today I’m going to take you through the exact process I use when working with a client to brainstorm blog topic ideas and create a content plan, using a fictional Clothing and Accessories Boutique as an example.

**The examples below are somewhat generic; if this were a real client of mine, I would suggest much more specific blog topics based on their particular brand personality and target audience.**

For blog content brainstorming, I use the process I outlined in “3 Content Creation Hacks That Work Every Time,” and “How to Generate Blog Post Ideas, Part 2.”

Essentially the steps are:

1. Keep an “Ideas” file and set aside an hour or two each week to brainstorm topic ideas

2. During that time, go through the resources below and “idea gather,” adding the best ideas to your ideas file

3. At the beginning of each week/month/quarter or whatever time increment works best for you, review the ideas in your file and plan out your content for the week/month/quarter, etc. How you plan out your content will depend on your goals, products or services you’ll be rolling out in the coming weeks and months, and any sales, events, promos and so on you have planned.

The resources from which you will gather ideas are: magazine headlines, Alltop, Amazon, Google Alerts, blogs in your niche, and HARO queries, to start. (For more information on these resources and how to use them to generate blog topic ideas, read the blog posts linked up above.)

Let’s take this fictional Clothing and Accessories Boutique through the paces, using just two of the resources above:

From Magazine Headlines in the fashion industry, I noted these ideas for blog posts:

The Best _________ for Every Body Type (swimsuit, dress, etc.)

How to Look Like You Hired a Stylist (Even When You Didn’t)

Best Colors to Wear Now

Hot Trends and Amazing Accessories for Every Budget

5 Minute Styling Tricks

The One Accessory Every Woman Needs Right Now

How to Dress for Your Body Type/to Flatter Your Body Type

From Amazon Book Chapter Titles, these ideas surfaced:

How to Shop Like a Stylist

Top 5 Fashion Misconceptions

10 Glamour Essentials Under $100

How to Shop for Vintage/How to Wear Vintage

How to Go from Demure to Daring with a Signature Wow Piece

15 Must-Own Accessories

3/5/7 or 2/4/6: Guide to Understanding Clothing Sizes

How to Personalize Your Look with Vintage

How to Camouflage with Color

The One Must-Own Item That Complements Every Body Type

10 Wardrobe Staples Every Woman Should Own

(That’s 18 blog topic ideas, and that bit of brainstorming took me less than an hour to do. Once I used the magazine headlines and book chapter titles shortcuts, the ideas below also came to me. )

A series of Fashion 101 Posts would make a great category for a weekly blog post:

Why You Should Spend More on the Basics

5 Investment Pieces Every Woman Should Own

Steps to Developing Your Personal Style

How to Shop: Dept. Stores

How to Shop: Sample Sales

How to Shop: Vintage and Second-Hand and/or Consignment

How to Shop: The Internet

How to Shop: Catalogues

How to Decide if a Trend Works for You

A series of Definition Posts would also work well:

Haute Couture

Prét-a-Porter

Sample Sale

And how about a “Style Icons” category for this fashion blog?

The Grace Kelly Guide to Looking Sexy in Pearls

The Jackie O Guide to Finding the Perfect Pair of Sunglasses

The Marilyn Monroe Guide to Dressing Like a Bombshell

The Betsey Johnson Guide to Creating Your Own Signature Style

That’s 34 total ideas for blog posts; if our fashion blogger posts twice a week, that’s over 4 months worth of material. And I only used the Magazine Headlines and Book Chapter Titles shortcuts to come up with these 34 ideas — if I finished out the exercise using the 4 other resources mentioned above, I could come up with enough ideas for an entire year.

The same will happen for you: once you get into this process and let it flow, you are going to come up with many of your own killer ideas for blog posts, whatever your topic happens to be.

**I don’t suggest using the headlines you find on Amazon verbatim; instead, use them as writing prompts — you’ll want to tweak them for your specific business and target audience.

Now you try it. Go ahead, let your creative freak flag fly, baby!

[Hey there, gorgeous. Did you know you can get my FREE weekly newsletter, with actionable tips, techniques, and how-to’s for marketing your business online, delivered straight to your email inbox each Tuesday? You betcha! Go ahead and enter your name and email address at the top right hand side of the blog now, and let’s get you glowing online.]

Filed Under: Blogging, Content Strategy Tagged With: , ,

How to Generate Blog Post Ideas, Part 2

April 19, 2012 by · 3 Comments

Last blog post I talked about my system for consistently generating dozens of ideas for blog posts and weekly newsletter content, and shared three resources you can use to find kick-butt ideas of your own.

This time I want to talk about three other good resources for idea-gathering:

1. Google Alerts

Google Alerts will allow you to monitor any topic or search term you choose; when results are found for that search term, Google sends them to you in an email.

You choose result type:  “Everything,” or, news, blogs, videos, discussions, books, etc., frequency:  once a day, as they happen or once a week, and how many: “only the best results” or “all results.”

This is a great tool for generating content ideas, but you can also use it to gather market and competitor intelligence, and who doesn’t want that?

Go here to set up your own Google Alerts.

2. Blogs in your niche

I love this as an idea generator, because it’s essentially killing two birds with one stone – you’re likely reading the blogs in your niche anyway, so why not gather some ideas while you’re there? Just pop over to a few of your favorites and note what’s being written about.

But don’t stop there – you’ll also want to pay attention to which blog posts get the most interaction in the way of comments and social shares.  This will give you an idea of some of the hot topics in your niche.

You’re not going to copy these ideas verbatim, of course, but use the material to spark your own ideas, and add these to your Ideas File.  You can then write about these topics from the opposite viewpoint, or go deeper into them for a more nuanced view, etc.

3. HARO Queries

HARO is an email list you sign up for to receive daily queries from reporters who need sources for their stories; it stands for “Help A Reporter Out.”

There’s a whole other blog post waiting to be written about how to mine HARO for sharing your expertise and getting publicity for your business, but today I simply want point out what a great tool it is for generating blog post ideas.

Why is this a such a great short cut for getting content ideas?  Because each HARO email alert will have several queries in multiple categories, and since journalists are looking for sources for these stories on a deadline, you already know they are super hot, timely topics.  Just a little tip from me to you.  ; )

Sign up for your own HARO email alerts here.

 

There you have it, 3 more excellent resources to add to your blog post idea generating toolkit.  And for still more idea gathering, you might want to check out forums in your niche, Tweetmeme for trending Twitter topics, Google Trends, or simply address questions your customers frequently ask .

So tell me, what are your go-to tips for coming up with blog post and newsletter topic ideas?  Please share in the comments, I’d love to know your tricks!

[Hey there, gorgeous. Did you know you can get my FREE weekly newsletter, with actionable tips, techniques, and how-to’s for marketing your business online, delivered straight to your email inbox each Tuesday? You betcha! Go ahead and enter your name and email address at the top right hand side of the blog now, and let’s get you glowing online.]

Filed Under: Blogging, Content Strategy, Resources Tagged With: , , ,

Shortcut to Market Research: How to Create Content Your Target Audience Wants to Read

February 1, 2012 by · Leave a Comment

Oprah Magazine Cover What if you could figure out a way to write exactly what your target audience wants to read, without having to brainstorm for hours or randomly throw stuff out there until you find out what “sticks?”

You can, and I’m going to tell you how.

It’s shockingly easy, really.  See, glossy print publications spend thousands of dollars on market research to learn precisely what customers want to read, and create their headlines and articles based on that. So why not piggyback on that research, and use magazine headlines in your niche as an inspiration for your own content?

For example, let’s say you’re in the business inspiration niche, and you’re stumped about what your audience wants to read. If you look at Success magazine you’ll find headlines like:

  • Lionel Richie: Overcoming ‘No’
  • Vince Lombardi’s Rules for a Legendary Life
  • Conquering 6 Deadly Fears of Entrepreneurship

If you sat down with a few issues of the magazine and a notepad, I bet you could come up with at least a dozen ideas for blog posts to write, from your own perspective and with your own particular spin on things, of course.

In the lifestyle niche, there’s no better example than O, The Oprah Magazine. Check out these great headlines:

  • 4 Steps to Aha!:  How to Figure Out Exactly What You Want 
  • Express Yourself: 26 Ways to Tell Your Story and Share It With the World
  • The Healing Effect: How to Tap Into Your Mind’s Hidden Power

In the cooking niche, you could look to Bon Appétit.  I love to cook and I love to write about cooking, so I could look to BA for inspiration, where I’d find headlines like:

  • 50 BBQ Tips & Techniques From the Experts
  • Low-Fat Cooking Secrets
  • The 5-Minute Appetizer
  • Corn, Tomatoes, Zucchini:  12 Things You’ll Make All Summer

So set aside a couple of hours, grab your favorite adult beverage, a notepad, and several issues of a magazine or two in your niche, and go to town!  (If you don’t have access to physical copies of magazines in your niche, you can search for them on Amazon.com.)

And for more ideas on how to use magazine headlines to get your creative juices flowing, check out this article on Crazyegg.com, “7 Proven Headline Formulas That Convert,” and over on Copyblogger.com, “The Cosmo Headline Technique for Blogging Inspiration.”

What techniques do you use for brainstorming content ideas? Let me know in the comments!

[For more on writing copy that connects with your ideal clients, sign up for free weekly updates and get instant access to the CREATIVE REBEL GUIDE TO WRITING A CLIENT-ATTRACTING ABOUT PAGE, plus copywriting & web marketing tips and other goodies for creative freelancers & biz owners that I only share with my subscribers, delivered straight to your inbox each Tuesday.]

Filed Under: Content Strategy Tagged With: , ,