The best content marketing topics for your business

Content marketing is amazing – when done properly. And, a huge part of doing content marketing properly is deciding the best content marketing topics for your business. This is how to choose the best content marketing topics for your business, as well as how you can use content to nurture your audience down your marketing funnel.

 

 

 

Choosing the best content marketing topics for your business

I've previously looked at how to build trust and add value to your audience's life, and that might have left you thinking “Should all my content be adding value?”.

Surely, if I'm posting daily on Instagram, weekly on my blog and doing a Facebook Live each month, I'll run out of value to give? I should have mentioned something: Not all your content needs to be value-adding. You also want to build a connection with your audience, and you do want to sell to them occasionally – just not all the time.

What are the best content marketing topics for my business?

The best types of content to post will depend on the platform. So, for example, funny quotes are a lot better suited to social media than they are to your blog. The key here is to try and keep your content relevant to your audience – and most of it should have a connection to what you do or what you’re about.

For example, if you sell skincare products, you shouldn't be posting about fashion on your Instagram account every single day. But, if you know that your audience is interested in fashion, a couple of times a week would be fine.

Likewise, if you run a social media marketing business, you probably shouldn't regularly be blogging about skincare products.

What topics should my content be about?

You could go out and create content about anything and everything related to what you do (and that's a mistake that a lot of business owners make). Or, you could choose your content categories strategically, rather than taking a scattergun approach to your content.

Pick a couple of topics and do them really, REALLY well. Depending on your industry and your niche, these topics could be really really micro-niched. But, don't let a tiny topic scare you off. If you can dive deeper into this topic than anyone else has, your content is going to give your audience a new insight and it will be super valuable to them.

These content categories should be pretty much consistent across your different platforms. For example, one of my content categories is Facebook Ads. In any given month, I might write a blog post on something related to Facebook Ads, record a video on a different topic (but still related to Facebook ads), share a couple of Instagram posts (usually with snippets of what I wrote in the blog post or shared in the video) and I might do an Instagram Stories impromptu video from this content. I’ll usually give a call to action to download my Facebook Ads cheat sheet and get them on my email list.

So, grab a pen and paper or make a mental note: What content categories will you be basing your content around? If you can only think of one, maybe there are some subcategories you'd like to delve into? Or, if you're struggling to narrow them down, this is how you can pick the best content marketing topics for your business:

• • Which categories do you know best?

• • What are you most comfortable writing or talking about?

• • What does your ideal client or customer struggle with the most?

• • What common questions do your audience ask you?

• • What could you talk about for hours and hours without getting bored?

• And, finally, if you have any services that you hate offering it simple don't write about them.

A maximum of 5 categories is a good rule of thumb to make sure you're not stretching yourself too thinly across too many topics. Choose a small number of content topics, so that you can dive into each one deeply enough that you’re actually providing some new value, and you're not just adding to the clutter out there.

Creating genuinely valuable content

The best content marketing topics are ones that you can create genuinely valuable content about. You need to think about exactly what you're going to share. The best content content marketing topics for building trust and connection with your audience are content that builds connection, content that educates, content that entertains or that inspires.

Let's look at each one in a bit more detail.

Creating content that builds a connection

First up is connection-building content. As the legendary Seth Godin puts it, “Marketing is no longer about the stuff you make but about the stories you tell.”

Storytelling is one excellent way to build connection. I don't mean any random stories, but stories about your brand, about the people behind your brand, about your product. For example, you could share the story behind why you started your business or what events spurred you to start it.

You could talk about the people behind your brand. Even if it's just you, introduce yourself. People buy from people, not from big companies.

Talk about your customers. Have they done something really inspirational? Maybe someone has had some really epic results with your product or service?

Or, you could tell us about what inspires you. Or, you could show us what goes on behind the scenes.

There are a lot of different options, and the things that you might think are boring, your audience will probably find them really interesting.

Creating content that educates your audience

Before you say, “oh, but I have nothing to teach”, I want you to hear me out. You don't have to educate your audience on something huge. It could be as simple as a tip for avoiding sugar cravings, or it could be a blog post with 10 tips to avoid sugar cravings.

As a side note, you should be repurposing your content. 

Anyway, back to creating educational content. You probably know some topics really well and you might not even realise it. Think about what you know that people in your audience don't know, and then do a brain dump of everything – little or big. Everything you could share with them to improve their lives just a tiny little bit.

Once you've got that, narrow it down into smaller topics and voila! These are some of the best content marketing topics for your business. 

Creating content that entertains your audience

Next up is entertaining content and this one is pretty straightforward. In this category, we have your funny quotes, your memes, funny cat or dog videos, cute animals, etc etc.

Try to keep the random entertaining content (the stuff that isn't related to your business or chosen content categories) to a minimum. But, if you can find or, better yet, create entertaining content that links back to your business or to your content categories, then that is ideal.

You could, for example, take a photo of your product with a cute puppy. There we go – it's instantly a lot more shareable. Entertaining content is super shareable, so if you can get people in your target audience to share it with their friends who are also your target audience, then you've struck gold.

Creating content that inspires your audience

Last on the list is inspirational content. This doesn't have to be totally related to your business or your industry, as long as it's something that you know your audience will find it inspiring.

For example, with Wildbloom, we’re in the marketing space. But, I also know that my ideal customer is someone who finds travel photos inspiring. So, I post those occasionally. Or, beautiful workspaces or a gorgeous pair of shoes – that kind of thing.

Again, if you can link it back to your business, then that's even better. This category could also include inspirational quotes or inspirational stories, and they're both quite good for building connection as well.

Sharing promotional content with your audience

I guess I should mention a little something about promotional content before I wrap this episode up.

Yes, it is also a core content type, but try to make sure it doesn't make up the majority of your posts. You don't want to be giving so much value away that you forget to actually sell to your audience. But, if every post is screaming “buy me! Buy me!” then people are not going to be caring about what you have to say.

You might also be interested in my tips on how to create content when you're busy, because it’s usually the first thing that falls to the wayside the minute business picks up and things get a little bit busy.

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