Choosing topics for a blog is often one of the most difficult parts of an automotive SEO campaign.
While you might feel like you have a wealth of ideas to draw on when you first start out, you can quickly start to feel like you have fewer and fewer ideas as time goes on.
Once you use up all of the ideas that you first had, you might give up on your blog altogether until inspiration hits with a new topic.
Because consistency is so important when it comes to automotive SEO and especially when it comes to posting on a blog, you need to have an arsenal of topics to choose from so that your consistency does not falter.
Choosing topics for your blog does not have to be difficult.
Here are some tips and tricks to help you choose topics and to keep your sheath full of interesting and relevant topics to write about:
What You Shouldn’t Do
Knowing what you shouldn’t do can greatly influence what you actually do once you start picking topics.
Keeping these guidelines in mind as you start writing a list of blog topics you want to write about will ensure that your topics and the resulting content are high quality and useful.
• Don’t pick topics that are other bloggers are using just because they seem to be successful.
While it’s perfectly find to read industry and competitor blogs to see what exactly they are doing and how well it is working, you shouldn’t take their topics and rewrite them just because they are working in those venues.
Your direct competition might be vying for the same audience, but your dealerships will have some fundamental differences and simply doing what they are doing is unlikely to bring you the same results.
• Don’t choose a topic that you love but no one else cares about.
You should write about the things that you are passionate about.
You should not, however, try to make something you are passionate about fit into the box of your blog when your audience is not really going to be interested in it.
• Don’t write about a topic you don’t really know anything about.
Researching a blog topic is fine. Picking a topic that you know nothing about and trying to write a post without doing any research or having a firm grasp on that topic is not fine.
Especially when it comes to blogs about car maintenance, don’t write about topics that you really have no working knowledge of.
• Don’t write about a huge variety of topics.
Every blog should have focus—your readers should have a good idea of what they can expect when they come to your blog.
They should not be surprised by an off-the-wall topic that doesn’t really mesh with the rest of your topics.
What You Should Do
Struggling to find something to write about is not a new challenge. It is something that many, many blog writers go through.
That is why the best blog writers sit down, brainstorm ideas, and make themselves a content calendar that goes months into the future.
That way, even if they are low on ideas one week, they already know exactly what they are going to write about.
This principle is extremely important when it comes to your automotive SEO campaign.
Here are some tips that can help you develop ideas when you have no ideas at all:
• Learn to research your industry.
You probably already know a lot about selling cars.
That doesn’t mean you have license to just stop learning.
You need to be mindful of the content that your industry is currently generating.
Are you aware of what new developments are being made?
Do you know the advancements that your brand (if your dealership has one) has announced? Researching your industry, keeping up with its trends, is a great way to find new topics for your blog.
• Pick just one idea to start.
If you are just now starting your blog, pick one idea that will be the central focus of your blog.
If your blog is already established, make a goal right now to pick one central idea and let that guide your topic creation.
This will ensure that all of your blogs have the same focus and are consistent.
• Think about what your customers are concerned about.
You’ve probably bought a car before.
What concerns did you have when you bought your car?
Were you worried about how to maintain it?
How to get it ready for season to season?
Did you want to know how long your tires would last and when you needed to get new ones?
This isn’t information that every buyer automatically knows when they purchase a car but is definitely information that they want to know.
• Think about what activities buyers do with their cars.
Depending on what brand your dealership is (if your dealership has a specific brand), your buyers might be off roaders, campers, professionals, moms, etc.
Think about what your buyers use their cars for and come up with topics that are centered on those activities.
For example, if your brand is “outdoorsy,” like Subaru is, write about the best places to go car camping in your area.
When you sit down to brainstorm ideas, don’t just think of ideas for that upcoming week.
Think about the arc of your blog in the long term.
An effective automotive SEO campaign looks to the future. It is concerned with how people view the blog and what information they will continue to come back to.
