When you look at websites for any business today, almost all have blogs. There are a couple of reasons for that. For one thing, a blog can provide helpful or educational information to your customers. This can set you up as an authority in your industry and help to build trust amongst your customer base. Blogs are also a great way to boost your SEO so that you show up in more searches and drive more traffic to your website.

Your blog should stay active, updated weekly, biweekly, or monthly ideally. The more blogs you have, the better the chances of driving traffic to your website and catching the attention of your customers. But how do you plan content without eventually running out of ideas? Here are our tips:

Set a Goal For Your Blog

It can help to begin by setting a goal for your blog. Do you want it to be full of long-form content and helpful information that your customers can use in their lives and work? Or do you want to use it to keep your customers up-to-date about the goings on of your business? Some blogs do a mix of promotional content, news, and informative content. Knowing what combination you want your blog to be can give you a sense of direction when planning your content.

Figure Out Your Blog Voice

Next, you want to get a sense of voice. This should fit with the overall voice of your brand. If you have a light, fun brand, your blog should similarly be light and fun. If your brand is more serious, the same goes for your blog. Make sure you keep your voice consistent. If you provide your customers with in-depth serious content in one post and then fill the next post with memes and exclamation points, they may be confused about what to expect and decide to bounce.

Decide On Your Blog Categories

If you want to have plenty of content for your blog for months and years to come, you’ll need to have multiple categories to cover. Think about the different aspects of your industry, as well as topics that are of interest to your target audience. For instance, if you have a beauty brand, your categories could be something like:

• Make-up
• Fashion
• Hygiene
• Sustainable beauty trends

You can rotate your content between these categories so that it keeps from being too stale. It can also help to bring in more of your target audience based on their needs and interests.

Perform Some Market Research

You can now begin generating blog topics by performing market research to find out what your target audience might be interested in reading. This could include looking up keywords that come up frequently within your industry, analyzing data collected from your target audience to get an understanding of their preferences, and even looking at the blog of your main competitors.

What topics seem to come up often? What blogs perform well? This can help you to decide what to write about. Make sure to perform market research often so that you always have your finger on the pulse of what your readers want to know.

Next, Do Content Research

Research the topics you’ve decided to cover in your blogs. This will lend authority to your blogs, since you’ll be able to back them up with facts and statistics. It can enrich your blogs rather than filling them with fluff.

In the midst of research, you can also often find the next blog topic you want to write. If you think of a blog topic while researching another one, write that down. Make a list of potential blog topics so that when you feel your well has run a bit dry you can go back to your old ideas.

And of course, just like market research, you’ll want to research regularly so that your research stays up-to-date.

Create a Publishing Schedule or Content Calendar

Once you have a few ideas ready to go, figure out a publishing schedule. Make sure that it’s consistent so your readers can know when to expect your next blog. You will also want to make a note to share your new blogs on social media when you post them. A content calendar can also help you stay organized about what content goes out when. That way you can take a look at your month overall and fill in content or prepare ahead of time in the events that you might need to do so.