Did the 10 Benefits of Blogging for Professional Services Marketing convince you to launch your firm’s blog?  Hopefully, the answer is “yes” because this post offers ideas for generating blog content. 

So what next?

It is time to outline the topics that will greatly interest your prospective and existing clients.  To develop these topics, it is best to refer back to your market segmentation and client profiling efforts, or check out our post titled, Market Segmentation: An Inbound Marketer’s “Social” Bread and Butter.  Taking the time to understand your markets and client needs will help you provide information that answers some of your client’s burning questions. In addition, it is beneficial to reference trade publications, your competitive analysis for any noteworthy blogs, and past articles authored by your firm’s professionals.

Here are a few ideas to help you get started on content development: 

• Repurpose Past Communications – Take an audit of past qualification statements, proposal responses, presentations and other marketing communications. All of these communications are resources that will help you begin to outline the information of distinct interest to clients. While some of this information may be client/opportunity specific, a lot of the information can be repurposed for general audiences.  Going through these materials to identify the content that differentiates your firm’s approach and specifically address client concerns, will be very helpful for developing blog subject matter.
• Survey Your Firm’s Thought Leadership – Conduct an internal survey with your firm’s thought leadership.  These folks serve clients and understand what clients really want.  Send an internal email out to your firm's leadership that asks them to provide the most common questions asked by clients.  Their insight will give you a pretty good start with developing your content outline.
• Generate Blog “Buzz” – Once you come up with a pretty good outline, push the proverbial envelope by generating a buzz about the blog’s launch.  Create a collaborative Facebook group to build and shape ideas for the "hot" new blog. This forum will allow you to share the content outline with a greater internal audience and strike up an exchange on their thoughts and ideas. When you generate "buzz" about the blog, it may also provide an opportunity to share the spotlight and invite interested folks to become blog contributors.  
• Invite Firm’s Industry Partners to Be Contributors –  Inviting industry partners to contribute to your firm’s blog is a win-win proposition for all parties.  Tapping into the firm’s network to find professionals who have great insight, may be interested in becoming a contributer and getting more exposure.  Building blog contributors is a terrific way to continue and add value to your relationships with industry leaders.

Whether you are a principal of an architectural firm or partner of law practice, it is always best to provide content that offers value and solves a problem.  You understand your business and know what your clients want.  Rediscover your resources and think about how you can provide content that will capture the interest of your community.  Hopefully, these ideas will help you whip up fresh content and take steps toward launching your new blog.

Good luck!!!