What Can You Blog About? The Future For Your Readers

Wondering what to blog about is becoming an increasing headache for many business people. In this series, we take a look at some key areas of inspiration to help trigger ideas for your next blog post. This time, we look at the future for your readers.

Everyone loves to speculate about what lies ahead. However as you know, speculation comes in different shapes and sizes. Some is wild and wonderful; some is less exciting but far more realistic.

This is where you need to start using your imagination a bit and particularly, put yourself in your customers / clients / prospects’ shoes.

To do this you don’t need to be clairvoyant; you need simply to have a reasonable grasp of your industry and where it’s likely to go, and where your main customers’ / clients’ industries’ futures are concerned.

Research it, but realistically

Although if you’re at the forefront of your business area you shouldn’t need to look too far into the wild blue yonder, your customer / client base maybe diverse.

This means that where you need to differentiate here is between what you feel the future holds for your business, and that/those of your customers/clients.

The former is your problem.

The latter is where you need to look for good blog posts.

But overall you need to marry the two harmoniously.

Some examples

Your business is: garden design

Here you can pick up on the worrying thoughts of mass-produced foods, genetic modification, use of pesticides and other chemicals, etc., and encourage your readers to think organic for the future – and focus on food-producing plants that also look wonderful. Uninspired? Think “cardoons” / globe artichokes … such imposing and stunning plants!

Composting, also, is a good one because it necessarily needs people to look to the future; using a compost container or other means takes at least a year before you get results. So does the cultivation of various perennial plants that can provide food – and beauty – for several years.

Your business is: used car sales

Depreciation of car values is often a key issue for people buying even low unit cost used cars. This can provide you with the chance to blog about the different marques and models and how their values will stand up to the test of time, and why.

As your business is used cars, you can also blog about the huge drop in value experienced in the first year when customers buy new cars, and emphasize how much better off they will be over time having bought a used car that is not subject to such galloping depreciation.

You can also look at future plans for hybrid power, hydrogen power, electrical power etc., and share your own take on all that, plus the new concept cars that festoon the motor shows but often never see the light of day. Ensure you relate all that, to your target audience which in the case of a used car business is likely to be local / regional.

Your business is: personal training

This could be really quite exciting … what wonderful fitness products and services may be available in the future? Think how those things might affect what you do and be sure to emphasize how the human touch of personal fitness advice can never be replaced by technology.

But supervised by someone like you, the new technologies in fitness, training, etc. could offer your customers and prospects even more effective results. You could also blog about what training products and services you would like to see on the market to help your customers, and ask them to share their own views in the comments.

Your business is: running a Bed & Breakfast

Who said I don’t like a challenge! LOL… Actually there is quite a lot you could blog about on this one because of the way the hospitality industry may be moving.

The fact that B&Bs are flourishing almost everywhere now suggests a turning point in people’s choice of accommodation when away from home for business or recreation. You could well blog about the fact that business people, as well as tourists, are likely to become more and more fed up with the impersonal, cloned effect of big hotels and revert to the much more intimate hospitality of the B&B.

You could also set up a survey of your readers as to why they like to stay in B&Bs rather than in cheap hotel chain accommodation, and use the results of your survey as a basis for a series of blog posts.

I could go on here, but that’s all we have time for today. For more ideas on what to write about on your blog, give me a shout on [email protected].

While you’re here, don’t forget to stop by my Bookshop…books and eBooks to help you write better – and to give to friends and family…

photo credit: Wesley Fryer via photopin cc