The hardest part of having a company blog is coming up with fresh ideas that inspire prospects to contact you. As difficult as it is, an easy solution to the problem of topic generation is right under your nose — your own sales team!
Sales reps talk to customers and prospects day in and day out. They know what’s on their minds: problems, goals, challenges, hot new ideas and industry news.
Tap into your sales team and you will cultivate a nice backlog of hard-hitting topics sure to arouse interest among potential customers.
Guiding the Conversation With 10 Simple Questions
To get the most out of your topic-generating conversations, direct the discussion. Salespeople are always caught up in their day-to-day activities, and may need a bit of prompting to give you the “big picture” information you need to create blog topics. Ten questions that stimulate great input:
- What questions do prospects ask you most often?
- What are the biggest problems our products/services solve?
- How have our products/services helped our customers become more efficient?
- How have our products/services helped our customers save money?
- What are the biggest objections you hear about our products/services?
- How do you overcome those objections?
- In what novel ways have customers used our products/services?
- What industry-related terms and ideas are customers confused about?
- What industry news/developments are of interest to customers?
- What questions do you wish customers would ask you, but don’t?
Since you’re getting input from the people who actually talk to your customers, topics you build around it surely will interest people who are or will be in the market. As blog readers begin to realize you are really helping them, they will become regular readers, and at some point become highly likely to convert. More leads, better leads and a stronger brand — what more could you ask for?
Looking for other simple but effective ideas to improve your online content? Please contact us now. We are eager to kick around ideas and see if we can help.