Are you STUCK coming up with topics for your coaching blog?
Have you abandoned your blog altogether?
You aren’t alone. With ALL that you have to do in your business, maintaining a blog may be something pushed to the back of your to-do list.
However, if your latest blog post was months ago (or even years ago), it’s time for a new blog post.
But, what the heck do you blog about?
In order to establish yourself as an expert in your niche, you should regularly create valuable content to provide value to your ideal client. Not only is it a great way to keep traffic flowing to your site, but it gives you the opportunity to go deeper with a particular topic.
However, if the thought of picking out new topics .. and even writing … overwhelms you, here are 5 tips to create content that your visitors will love.
Recall past conversations/ situations with clients
Whether you do one-on-one coaching or group coaching, chances are that you have plenty to write about!
The best ideas come from the problems that you are already solving.
Do you remember in school when your teacher encouraged you to ask your question in front of the class in case another student had the same question? The same principle applies here. How many more people could you help if you shared the solution with your audience?
You may have clients with the same recurring issues or questions. These issues make effective blog topics. However, use your discretion here. Do not disclose your client’s confidential information or situation. It’s best to use a hypothetical approach.
For example, if you are a career coach, and you clients (or leads) tend to struggle with rejection after an interview, you might want to write: How to handle rejection after an interview without taking it personally. (Or something to that effect)
Share a Success Story
Everyone loves a happy ending! If you have a success story, either for yourself or your client, share it! If there’s a win, use your blog to talk about the process to get the outcome.
This is similar to a problem that you’ve solved, but your emphasis is on the outcome. Your blog post should be either based on a personal story, a client’s story, or even a hypothetical one.
The success story for your blog post should be related to a service that you provide. Can you help your client achieve the same outcome? What does the process look like? What’s the benefit to the reader?
Use Social Media to hunt for blog topics
Your social media accounts and groups are prefect places to look for topics. Using social media helps to gather content from those you may not have met. It gives you a different perspective than your current network of clients and leads.
Search Facebook groups for content topics for your coaching blog
I tend to look for content within the Facebook groups that I am a member of. I do a search for words such as :”challenge”, “issue”, “struggle”, and “help”. Pay particular attention to the pots with the highest response and read each response. If you have an answer, advice, or feedback, writing a blog post about this topic would benefit your website readers.
Ask your own tribe
Create a Facebook poll to ask your readers what they would be interested in reading. If your group is small, you can ask for permission from admins of other groups. By directly asking, you’ll get direct feedback quickly. However, make sure that the people that respond are you ideal client, and only entertain answers from those that fit the profile.
Refresh older blog posts (or social media posts)
If you’ve written about it in the past, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Is there a way to enhance the content that you already have. It’s better to have a few posts of really good content than to have many posts of mediocre content.
Identify your best content.
What are your readers looking at the most? Which posts get the most pageviews? Once you’ve identified your best posts, how can you enhance them to make them even better? Could you:
- go in-depth to provide more examples?
- create a video to accompany your blog post?
- add visual aids?
- add a content upgrade (free resource that is related to the topic)?
- link to internal or external webpages?
By doing so, you’ll consistently provide value without having to come up with something entirely new. As an added benefit you’ll also improve your search engine rankings.
Use your previous social media posts
It amazes me to see so many coaches and speakers consistently turn out valuable content on social media and not on their blog. What a missed opportunity!
Your social media content is at the mercy of the platform. Not everything that you post will get seen. However, you can re-purpose that content on your website by:
- downloading your Facebook videos and re-posting to Youtube for your vlog (video blog)
- turning your longer Facebook posts into blog posts
- transcribing your live videos into posts or ebooks
There are several possibilities to work with the content you’ve already created.
Good ol’ Google
Last but not least, if you are really struggling for ideas, turn to Google.
What are the influencers in your niche writing/talking about? Do you agree with them? Can you offer a different perspective? Can you refute them altogether?
The idea is not to copy another person. That would be plagiarism. Instead, you are taking popular content and making it relatable to your audience from your point of view.
There are lots of articles about finding the right topic for your coaching blogs. However, this is from my own perspective based on what I currently do and what is working. Having a successful coaching blog is a matter of finding balance of what your ideal client wants to read and what you are proficient in writing about.
