What to Blog About

Yesterday, I posted an item saying that you’ve got to consider doing a business-oriented blog as another way to communicate with key audiences such as customers, partners, employees and even competitors.

The next and most obvious question is this: what should you blog about?

First, let’s answer this question: what shouldn’t you blog about?

Unless you are the second coming of Ernest Hemingway, don’t plan on writing carefully crafted 1000-word think pieces. Very few people have interesting and compelling things to say at that length on a daily basis. So if you set that as your standard, you’re going to freak yourself out and not start the blog.

Second, you don’t have to be as opinionated as Bill O’Reilly. Not many people can pull that off, either. Have a point of view, but it doesn’t have to be unique and highly charged.

OK — that’s what you shouldn’t blog about. What should you blog about?

The most obvious answer is to blog about things you are passionate about and interested in. But here’s one big caveat: you need to express your passion about your business. You can do a blog about your cat or your stamp collection or Barack Obama, but that ain’t a business blog. So — find your passion about your business and figure out how to express it. Start there.

Here’s the next big piece of advice: don’t think of a blog as a “diary.” Think of it as a way to quickly and easily create online content to share with the world. That means that in addition to words, you can post pictures, video, audio, graphics, and especially, links to other places on the web. Any combination of those is a blog post.

What else can you blog about? The folks over at ProBlogger.net created this handy list of the types of blog posts that get the most traffic (after all, what’s the point of blogging if no one sees it?):

1. Resource lists
2. Lists of tips
3. Good advice
4. An opinion that’s widely held by other people (people like to read things they agree with)
5. “Killer” headlines
6. Q&As with high profile people
7. “Best of” lists

There — that should get you started.