50 Blog Topics Marketers Could Write For Their Companies
You’ve started a company blog. What comes next? It’s not like someone gives you blog topics and an editorial calendar and suggests which one to post first. Well, I’m here to help. As part of my ongoing desire to see you pick up these social media tools for yourself and change the future of your business, here are 50 Blog Topics Marketers Could Write For Their Companies. (Feel free to repost, but please link back to [chrisbrogan.com] ). Oh, and if some of these don’t fit exactly, think creatively about whether you could adapt them.
50 Blog Topics for Marketers
- How to get the most from our customer service department.
- The best way to recommend an improvement to our product or service.
- Podcast - complete installation instructions in audio and video.
- What would you like to see in next year’s catalog?
- Our favorite projects over the coming months.
- Some tricks that might keep you from needing support.
- Upcoming coupons and offers for the next two weeks.
- We want to talk. How should we contact you? Where?
- Choose our product’s price.
- Five tips for getting more from your ______ .
- A little bit about us.
- A walk in our neighborhood.
- Photos from our community meetup.
- What goes into our decision process.
- Video - a tour of the plant, and a day in the life of your product.
- What it’s like to work for our company.
- We support these causes, and here’s why.
- The next two years: how we grow with you.
- We want to come to work with you (and learn how we can help)!
- Giving back to the community: our plan.
- What we worry about over the coming year.
- How we handle your disputes or complaints.
- Can you recommend a better process for this?
- Sometimes, we have to say no.
- Your call is important to us. We’ll tell you how important.
- We’re sorry, and here’s how we’ll handle things next time.
- Report from our independent community review board.
- How to close out your account with us. (Imagine how risky this is?)
- The economy is piling up costs, and we have to share the burden.
- Understanding what went wrong.
- Birthday announcements for August. (Imagine listing your customers’ names on a birthday calendar?)
- Fourteen ways to customize your _______.
- Why we like our competitor’s product better, and how we’ll catch up.
- Customer Profile - Sedah D’Abdul.
- Our fourth annual YOU awards.
- What we think is unique about us. Do you agree?
- Communities in your neighborhood, and several on the Web.
- Your blog posts: Javier Mendoza suggests ways we could improve.
- Companies to consider when you get too big for us.
- Why we believe participation pays off.
- Meet our four favorite customer service reps for September.
- Vendors that serve us so we can help you.
- Our global plan - Vietnam, Italy, and your back yard.
- What we look for in our leadership.
- Video - our new smaller offices downtown.
- Green is our new favorite color- save energy and money with your ______.
- How corporate responsibility saved us $3Mil last year.
- Growing up but staying fun.
- Your event, our treat.
- Five promises we’ve kept over the last few years.
You tell me: where there some squirmy parts in there? Can you see how customers might react to reading these? I wrote almost every one of these with the customer as a reader. How would these shift if your reader was someone else in your list of stakeholders?
What would you add?
—-
The Social Media 100 is a project by Chris Brogan dedicated to writing 100 useful blog posts in a row about the tools, techniques, and strategies behind using social media for your business, your organization, or your own personal interests. Swing by [chrisbrogan.com] for more posts in the series, and if you have topic ideas, feel free to share them, as this is a group project, and your opinion matters.
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Comments
[…] include the latest, where Chris puts down 50 topics marketers could blog about. Designed for companies I think this list is gold for self-employed as well. There are some truly […]
Great idea to suggest these posts — a blog is nothing without content. How about these?
– How to use our affiliate program
– We’re having a contest! please create an online video ad
– Friend us at Facebook (or Myspace, etc.)
– Please suggest worthy nonprofit organizations for our corporate philanthropy program
– Please join our low-frequency email list for special offers
– Here’s an issue affecting our industry, and here’s how you can get involved
– Monthly employee profile
This is indeed a great list, Chris. I’ve used some of these topics in the past for either company blog posts or articles that I wrote for magazines who promoted us. The tech support topic I chose was one of the most popular :)
Brilliant List Chris! Thank you for creating it and can’t wait to create some new blog posts on a variety of topics. I was thinking of making it a circle, similar to a dart board and spinning it for a random suggestion of the day. The number of the day would than suggest what you have to write about. Cheers
Hi Chris,
Great list, I got a few ideas I had not thought of, like a walk in our neighbourhood — in my case it’s a great way to create community within the neighbourhood and create goodwill for other retailers on my street that I could feature.
To add to the list, I’d say anything that makes the company have more of an identity would be good — for example, a consumer products company could feature a video interview with their head designer, or in the case of FreshBooks (www.freshbooks.com) they had a video showing what it was like to work in the office, which they use on their Careers page.
I also like seeing posts where the company profiles other companies or business/community leaders that they admire and why.
–Amrita
Fantastic topics - I’m going to use this as a source when I’m stuck for topics to tackle.
The ones I love (and that would make management squirm) are the ones where transparency would impact customer behavior. A forward-looking promotional roadmap, for example - when I was at Dell we knew customers were trained to anticipate our weekly promo changes, but the idea of telegraphing upcoming promos via blog would have been verboten in those days.
We all put some effort into image management in both personal and work lives. That typically takes the form of selective disclosure (a puff piece on our ‘green’ corporate initiatives would qualify). But true transparency starts to happen in two-way communication - where we start a conversation about how green _you_ think we are
Fabulous list - very helpful. I’ll probably use at least one of these on my pharma blog this week.
Here’s another: Why did we start this company, anyway?
@ken - happy to help
@mark - some really great ones there! Good job, and thank you.
@michael - if you make a dartboard - share the graphic?
@rsomers - That was really the guts of my intent. : ) A share of squiriming was the goal.
@tinku gallery - I’m glad you found ways to make it work for you. I like when people can transfer the ideas easily.
@steve - that’s certainly a great one!
Good work.
I see a number of these I need to get written right away. Thanks for the direction.
Love this list building you do. I remember listening to Earl Nightingale talk about how important this was over 20 years ago. You’ve got it down. Keep it up.
Rick.
Hey Chris - Thanks, man!! Even though my wife and I run a [very] small business almost all of your fifty post ideas can be tweaked to fit our situation.
Funny, we were out walking the dogs this morning and saying that we really need to update our business blog…
If you and the family ever make it down to Culebra you just earned yourself a free nights stay with us!
Have a great weekend!
MH
Does anyone have any suggestions as to how to get management to at least try some of the transparent posts? I have found that some companies love the idea where others simply dismiss it despite the fact that it would help their business.
Any toe-in-the-water situations, etc?
@marnix - all the photos I use are courtesy of Flickr and are available under the Creative Commons usage. There are tons of great snaps up there. I love Flickr tooooo much.
@Patrick Johnson - what is the specific topic you would like to write about?
I have always found if you can find examples and success stories then management will be more willing to go along. Also, I don’t know if this is an option but if you can make seem more like a newsletter piece and less like a blog post it might be less threatening…
love the list! We’re building a multi-author referral blogging site that offers B2B services, and this is just the thing I’ve been looking for to unleash the creative side of the referral partners.
@businesschatt
Chris,
These are great ideas! So many people considering writing a corporate blog tell me they have no idea what to write about. (so they post press releases - argh!) If this doesn’t keep them stocked with great ideas I don’t know what will.
I also recommend adding posts about best practices to your blogging agenda. In my post this morning Corporate Blogging Made Easy I talk about how to get ideas from other bloggers and make it a win/win for everyone. Of course, I use your post as the example.
Melissa Paulik
http://www.themarketingsurvivalist.blogspot.com
Chris,
Fantastic list. Companies who blog should definitely take the time to not only inform readers on happenings inside and outside the office, but celebrate them.
Another suggestion: “Why the people in our office love what we do…”
Thanks for the inspiration.
Brandon
Best practices are a great idea, Melissa. I should’ve thought of it, especially because it maintains a market leadership perspective.
Brandon, thanks for your idea. Makes me think of the folks at Zappos.
Patrick - it’s a real struggle, especially if a company’s culture is dead set against this. I don’t recommend blogging for every company. One pre-requisite is that the company is ready to have difficult discussions out in the open. If THAT is okay, then toe-dippers have been liberally sprinkled into those posts so that you can start on safe territory, and dip into scary a bit at a time.
@mark_hayward
I can remember a specific example where I was advising a condo development to blog and ask about what they could be to be green (well, more green - they had made strides but ended up semi-green rather than green green). They were afraid it would give them the stigma of not being green. My counter is that it would increase their perception of being green, as those green in the community would talk about their efforts to try and be greener.
They would not do it though…
The newsletter idea sounds good, I wonder how I could have worked that into this situation.
@chrisbrogan - Thanks for the response. Guess in some situations it is just a lost cause then eh? It is frustrating to get companies so far in blogging only to have them shut the door in situations that could benefit them the most.
But there are companies out there that do see the value and are willing to push themselves.
That’s a pretty good list of items. If you guys like learning how social media can be utilized as a powerful marketing strategy then check this site out http://www.readtheanswer.com/index.php?RTA=web2 … another great topic to write about is a market analysis blogpost. If you are twitter, it’d be interesting to hear your perspective on the micro-blogging market space
[…] 50 Blog Topics Marketers Could Write For Their Companies | chrisbrogan.com This really is a good blog post. I’m definitely going to use some of these ideas. (tags: marketing blogging web2.0 writing) […]
One more (hopefully I didnt glaze over this being mentioned above):
“The biggest marketing/business issue we are facing right now. How would you go about this?”
Great list - Thanks
A
This is an awesome inspirational list, and a great starting point for most any company that is planning on making blogging part of their culture (I do agree with you in that blogging is an ideal business move for every company).
A fantastic starting point.
The only one I take issue with is no.39 - I can see what you are aiming for but to me it sounds out a lack of ambition.
For me, no. 11 is crucial. Blogs are about humanizing the company; revealing details about the workforce that clients or customers can bond over.
Great work Chris - please keep it up!
Simon
[…] you pick up these social media tools for yourself and change the future of your business, here are 50 Blog Topics Marketers Could Write For Their Companies. Oh, and if some of these don’t fit exactly, think creatively about whether you could adapt them […]
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Two thumbs up. Great stuff, Chris. Great to see you had a good PCB3 this weekend, too. Sorry I couldn’t be there.
[…] Brogan médiaguru napokban közzétett bejegyzésében a “vállalati” blogok írásában próbál segítséget nyújtani - szám szerint 50 […]
Dear Chris,
Your list has turbo charged my inner mind with interesting ideas on lots of Blog topics.
Keep up the great work.
Consider this topic as well : We are up and running because you are still with us.
[…] 21, 2008 · No Comments Fifty blog topics for marketers from Chris Brogan: 1) How to get the most from our customer service department. 2) The best way to recommend an […]
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Great list, Chris! Other ideas I have include:
- Product roadmaps (for B2B)
- Industry issue/event commentary
- This day in our co. history
- Customer success stories
Thanks for the inspiration!
[…] 50 Blog Topics Marketers Could Write For Their Companies - Chris Brogan traz neste post nada mais, nada menos, que 50 idéias de posts que você pode escrever no blog de sua companhia. Pode ser uma referência valiosa antes de começar a replicar conteúdo por falta de alguma coisa original. Ou para quando o blog de sua companhia começa a ficar desatualizado por falta de temas. […]
[…] there is an interesting post by Chris Brogan with 50 topics that marketers could write for their companies. Examples are “How to get the most of our customer service department” and “The […]
Nicely compiled list. I think that this is a great idea for any company. I know that I have a client who I’m going to be doing long-term marketing for, and so this is an awesome way to get ideas.
Hi Chris,
I find the ideas a bit too company oriented. How about topics that are well not mainly on the companies products/policies but more general.
However I definitely have gotten ideas for a few new posts from here.
~Priyanka
http://www.mahindrauniverse.com
[…] there is an interesting post by Chris Brogan with 50 topics that marketers could write for their companies. Examples are “How to get the most of our customer service department” and “The […]
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I was having a creative issue and just googled blog topic not expecting to find anything. But this post came up. What a GREAT list. THANK YOU
[…] 2008 at 3:51 pm | In Blogging | Tags: Blogging, conversations, transparency Chris Brogan lists out 50 Blog Topics for Marketers over at his blog. Some of them are relevant for the pharma world and others aren’t either for MLR […]
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Nice list - gave me immediate inspiration for an article. Many thanks…