AKA “what the f*** should I blog about?!”

Blogging is a great way to build your local business' authority and profile in your target area. A content-rich, regularly updated website will help improve your local SEO, increase your enquiries, grow your customer base and make your social media content way more interesting. In this post we explore what blogging means in 2022, how to ensure your blog delivers the most value to your local business, and - most importantly - what the f*** you should be blogging about! 

Blogging is a great way for local businesses to engage with existing and potential customers, prove your company to be a trusted source of knowledge and expertise, and share a little bit of the business’ personality. 

Blogging is also a great way to regularly add keyword-rich content to your website, which will always help improve your local SEO performance.

The added benefit to a local business of blogging is that it’s the perfect way to regularly add new, keyword-rich content to your website related to your products, services and location. And these additional relevant keywords on your website can help encourage Google to reward you with an improved local SEO ranking.  

Remember blogging is not an opportunity for ‘keyword stuffing’ (i.e. cramming as many keywords into a single page). Yes you need to include keywords, but it’s at least as important to engage customers with interesting content, which is in line with your brand personality and  helps them through their customer journey.

That’s all very well if you have a regular stream of hot topics you can blog about... and keeping on top of regularly creating insightful content can become daunting - you certainly don’t want to repeat the same subjects again and again - but most of us don’t know where to start creating articles of interest. 

So, to help you avoid your very own local business writer’s block, here are some ideas to get you started with blogging to improve your local SEO. We haven’t quite got 100 ideas for you here but we do have some helpful strategic ideas to help you plan out an easy-to-manage local business blog that's also engaging and rewarding for your target customers or clients.

What is a blog?

But before we get started, we need to tell you more about the modern-day blog.

Google's priorities have changed in the past few years, now is the time to combine the classic approach of using long tail keywords as well as using topic clusters.  So what exactly are topic clusters? Well, Google likes us to group related posts around a specific topic as Google likes to understand the relationship between your different blog content and will also reward you for it. In return for having cohesive blog content, you will get higher placement on results pages.

So what exactly do we mean by cohesive blog content...? Well, each of your blog topics should link to a central ‘pillar’ page, in other words a core subject (or indeed service or sub service) related to your business. Ideally these core subjects will provide your primary keywords.

So, for example, a photographer may have the pillar pages: Weddings, Portraits and Families. Then under the pillar ‘Weddings’ they may have the topics of ‘Lighting for brides’, ‘Wedding composition ideas’ and ‘5 mistakes wedding photographers make’. When one of these topics performs well, the whole cluster gets a boost.

In LocalMark’s case, we create expert content relating to our local SEO services, therefore our pillars would be On-Site SEO, SEO content creation, Reputation Management, Google Business Profiles, and Local Business listings or citations. We could also include our Local Search Audit.

There is no one size which fits all but it’s important to think about the pillars which represent your business and the type of content you will produce. 

Some considerations before you start your blog

Before you think of your content categories it’s also worth noting that all of your blog content should:

• Have a clear, measurable business goal

• Have a specific audience or persona in mind

• Resolve something for the reader by helping them at a very specific stage of their customer journey

• Apply to your chosen pillars or topics

• Be in-depth enough to provide some value and insight

• Ensure analytics are set up for your website so you can see the number of views and where your readers are coming from. Google Analytics is a good option for this.

• Blog updates should be consistent. So for example if you post once a week, or once a month, stick to the schedule and update accordingly. 

• Be up-to-date with content (at least it should be current at the time of writing!)

• On-brand with the correct tone of voice

• Depending on your business (and personality), posts can be humorous and light hearted, or professional and in-depth

• Include video and imagery or photography, not just a never-ending stream of text

• Include external links and internal links to related content on your website

• Include a call to action that’s applicable to where they are on their customer journey, for example ‘Find out more’, ‘Get in touch’, ‘Arrange an appointment’, ‘Request a callback’, and so on.

Bearing all of these prerequisites in mind, let’s now look at blog categories and what type of content we could produce easily and regularly for your local business.

So, what the f*** should I blog about? 

So, you’ve thought about your content categories and established some pillars for your local business blog. And you’ve got a clear scope of what each post needs to include. But what about the content itself? Where’s that flash of inspiration to get you started?

As a springboard for your ideas, we’ve pulled together some topics to help inspire your very own local business blog, as follows... 

Profile & team profile blog posts

Profile blogs are great when starting to blog for your local business. Profiling key team members or even sharing employee stories in and out of work works well and can really add a unique and  personal touch to your business which nobody else can create. Good to use plenty of images and even video to introduce you and your team.

Personal journey blog posts

Sharing your personal Journey - how you got to where you are today in your business, the challenges that you’ve overcome (or are ongoing) can help to show the human side of the business. People often like to read articles such as ‘I achieved X by a certain age’ or that provide an overview of the best and worst parts of your job. Personal journey blog articles should show both sides of the story… it’s always tempting to just share our success stories but it’s often the human side to our business which makes us stand out from the competition. 

Behind the scenes blog posts

Many local customers love to understand what goes into providing a product or service, so sharing behind-the-scenes content helps your customers get to know the people who make things happen and how they create the magic that goes into your product or service is interesting for your clients. Visually led posts are recommended for this type of content, so you’ll need to include plenty of video and/or photography. 

Round-up blog posts

Why not gather and share opinions and thought leadership from a variety of people for example within your own team, from clients, industry key thinkers or even affiliates and partners? valuable, current industry insights posts can be great for your target audience to share amongst their wider network, giving you greater exposure and opportunities to build awareness further afield. As well as helping to position you as local experts in your field, these types of posts help readers to feel a human connection which goes beyond your business.

Prediction blog posts

What do you expect the coming months or even years will bring to your industry? Prediction posts are good for the end of a calendar or financial year, or ahead of a new season (especially for fashion, travel and technology). Every year, or every quarter you can discuss what you predict will happen in your industry which provides insight as well as sharing  expertise.

Industry trend blog posts

Industry trend blog posts are similar to prediction blog posts, but based in the present as opposed to the future. In them you can discuss what's happening right now in your industry. An example of this may be a ‘What we love right now’ type post which is  great for capturing your readers' interest. These could be time saving applications, a great book on your topic, or even introduce a new product which compliments your service offering. 

List blog posts

List blog posts can be really interesting, and relatively easy to produce for your local business. Think of topics such as: ‘Top 10 applications which changed our lives’ or ‘Top 5 destinations for holidays this year’, or ‘What you need to know to start your own plumbing business’. A list of 'Don'ts is always attention grabbing...  These are easy blog posts to pull together, and readers love tips and advice which are relevant to their needs, help them solve a problem and make life easier in some way.

Ultimate guide to…blog posts

Ultimate Guides can provide another rich seam of content for your local business blog, and are generally fairly easy blog posts to pull together. Think about  your areas of expertise and what your customers' most frequent questions are. Then plan a series of ultimate guides which you can schedule in advance. These can be good for seasonal changes relevant to your local business i.e. the Ultimate Guide to Spring Fashion colours, the Ultimate Guide to your Christmas wine list, the Ultimate Guide to Paris Art 2022.

How to… blog posts

‘How to’ blog posts can help to show you as the local expert, but also gives your clients or customers an idea of what’s involved in the work that you might do for them. Blog posts such as How to… land your dream job; write a great blog; take the perfect self portrait at home. Or even ‘What I wish I'd known when I started’. Readers always benefit from this content and engage readily with a ‘How to’ post. Your frequently asked customer questions can be  a great place to start with this type of content. 

Interview blog posts

Interview key stakeholders within and around your business, for instance your founder/owner, a key member of staff, a new employee, a lifetime customer, industry expert, journalist or other thought leader. Interview blog posts can be great to share with the interviewees' audience as well, meaning greater coverage and interest from a wider audience. Again the personal connection works well in these posts.

Problem / solution blog posts

Your local customers will most likely be searching online for solutions to their problems, so why not share with them how you would approach fixing whatever headache they are facing? Problem/solution blog posts are a great way to attract new customers, show expertise, and build trust all at the same time. They also provide a great way to introduce your service offering and outline how you might be able to help them.

Holiday-related blog posts

We’re big advocates of encouraging our team (and clients!) to try to switch off on holiday. But holiday blog posts can provide an opportunity to share your time away and any key learnings from your personal journey related to your work. If you’re a photographer or writer, you could easily share some inspiring images or text from your trip. A mechanic (or simply a car enthusiast) could share photos of all the classic cars or strange vehicles that they encounter on their trip. A restaurateur or chef could document the local ingredients and plants on their holiday, or even share inspiration for  creating a new recipe. 

Industry survey blog posts

Industry-related surveys can give you plenty of insight to share within your industry. These could be made up of insight from experts within your team, partner companies (suppliers for example) or even from your customers themselves. Although time-consuming to produce because of the related analysis, they are straightforward. The classic survey always gains interest as people like to think you are interested in their opinion. The added bonus is that they can provide you with unique customer insights to shape future content, your service offering and your sales and marketing strategy.   

Guest posts

Why not ask an influencer, celebrity, journalist, key client or partner to write a guest post for your blog?. This is a similar idea to an interview, but these posts are 100% created by your guest on the topic of your or their choice. Ideally this would relate to your business sector but, to add a deeper local angle, you invite people wanting to share their experiences of living or growing up in your area, or offer your blog to local non-competing businesses and non-profits as a platform for letting the community know what they are doing. 

Case study blog posts

Depending on the type of business you are running, case studies can be a great way for you to encourage sales by creating a sense of trust. Potential customers always like to see other customers’ experiences of working with a business they’re unfamiliar with. A good case study should showcase the problems your customer was facing, their experience of working with you to solve these problems, and the results that were delivered by you working together.

New product/service blog posts

If you’re launching (or have recently launched) a new product or service, why not provide a little back story to provide an opportunity to promote that product or service. What was the client need that you identified and hope to solve with this new product/service? If you’re buying in that product or service to re-sell, why did you choose that particular supplier? 

Promotional blog posts

Don’t be shy of promoting your existing products and services as well. Prospective customers won’t be as familiar with your products and services, so what better way to introduce them to your business and your offering than with a glowing introduction. Tell the story behind your business - your founder’s background and inspiration for the business - and behind each of your products or services, to give customers a unique story behind your business. 

Last but not least, share it

Creating great content on your website is great for search engines and regular visitors to your website, but what about the rest of the Internet? If you’re going to invest the time and effort in producing great content for your local business blog, you should be sharing it via your social media channels and to your social media followers - not just for your existing fans and followers, but also for their extended networks online.

Over to you…

Hopefully these blog topic ideas give you plenty of inspiration to create attractive and engaging content for your local business blog. If you find any other topics working well for your blog, please do share them with us so we can help other local business owners on their own blogging journeys. Happy writing!

We’re a London-based local SEO agency working with local businesses across the UK. If you’re curious to see how your local SEO is doing, take our free local SEO audit. Simply share a few details and you’ll receive a complete overview of your Local SEO performance in minutes.