10 Content Hacks for Software Company Blogging

Creating quality content for your inbound marketing campaigns is a daily challenge. We always bump up against lack of time, resources and writing skills that hinder our ability to create the content we’d like. To make life a little easier, here are 10 content hacks for software company blogging. See if one or more of these gives you some new ideas.

1. Turn client questions into content topics. The questions prospects ask during your sales process are perfect topic ideas for blog posts, white papers, ebooks, and videos. Remember, for all those who ask, there are others who don’t. Providing content that answers their questions gets them to visit your website, turns them to leads, better nurtures them in your sales process, shortens your sales cycle, and delivers happier customers. [Mike Lieberman, @square2]
2. Use buyer personas to make sure you’re talking to the right people with the right content. Who are they? What keeps them up at night? What problems are they trying to solve? Focus your blog content on your prospects needs and problems, instead of talking about you and your company.
3. Host an Google Hangout called “Ask Me Anything.” This is where your audience can ask you anything and you’ll supply amazing answers! Not only does this help develop new relationships, but it also establishes you as an authority. All the question they ask can all become future blog posts. [Luke Summerfield. @savvyluke]
4. Newsjack some current event into an interesting blog post. Newsjacking refers to the practice of capitalizing on the popularity of a news story to amplify your sales and marketing success. The term was popularized due to David Meerman Scott’s book, Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage. [Pamela Vaughn, @pamelump]
5. Interview a client. Because you write for your clients, why not interview one of them? The simplest way to get the topics and supplemental information you need from your busy clients is to interview them as if you are interviewing them for a magazine article or a news story. It just works. They are relieved from the stress of having to think of topics and find the interview process pleasant and helpful. [Steve Brown, @stevbrown]
6. Create and maintain an editorial calendar. An editorial calendar helps you stay organized, and it’s the closest thing you have to “set it and forget it.” The last thing you want to do after a busy day is to sit down and stress out over getting a blog post written and published. By maintaining an editorial calendar, you can plan out your posts well in advance. By seeing all of your posts in one place, it also allows you to visualize “big picture things” like themes, series of posts, and making sure you have a diverse spread of topics you’re writing about.
7. Combine blog posts to create an ebook. You could actually start with the outline for your ebook, and then create blog posts about each topic. Combine these into an ebook and you’ve gotten several weeks of blog posts and and ebook out of the process! [Kathleen Booth, @quintain]
8. Interview an expert. Create expert blog content about a topic you are not an expert about in 15 minutes. How? Call an expert, which could be your client, someone at a company specializing in the topic, or by finding someone on Clarity.fm. Record the conversation using Skype Call Recorder, then submit the audio to speechpad.com. They will transcribe it and within a few hours or days you will have expert content ready to post and share. [Scott Meyer, @mrscottmeyer]
9. Create a new ebook by transcribing an old webinar. This is great because you’ve already got the content and you can use the graphics from your slide deck. Simply have speechpad.com transcribe your webinar to text and use that as the starting point for your ebook. Consider also breaking it up into a series of blog posts to get more mileage out of your transcription. [Dan Stasiewski, @DanStasiewski]
10. Write about issues and controversies that impact your industry. Leverage your expertise (or that of another member of your team) to craft a cogent solution to an industry controversy or problem. Keep your article fact-based to avoid a flame war, but “stirring the pot” from time to time can help drive a lot of traffic. [Spencer Pitman, @alcesbull]