What To Write About When “Everything’s Been Written”

Developing great content can be a challenge for any online business. Yet, unless you’ve been blogging for decades in a static industry, which I’m not sure exists given the technological revolution of the last several years, or manage a blog in a micro niche and have a content strategy focused only on evergreen content, then you likely haven’t written about everything. And since no blog will ever absolutely dominate the search engine rankings across the board for every single keyword in their industry, there will always be room for improvement and growth.

However, that’s not to say that coming up with fresh content with a unique perspective isn’t always a challenge. With millions of blogs being created every year and competition heating up as more brands invest resources in their online marketing plan, differentiating yourself is more important than ever.

Try Some Creative Keyword Research

Google’s Keyword Tool is amazing, and we all know that. But that just may be the problem – almost every blogger uses it for keyword-driven content creation. Yet, not every post needs to be written with the intention of ranking for a specific set of keywords. In fact, some posts may not offer long-term, recurring traffic, but they can be immensely useful in building up social proof and overall domain authority.

For these types of posts, try the following tactics:

• Use BuzzSumo to find the most socially shared content in your specific niche.
  
• Filter through a competitor’s blog to find pages that have garnered a high social sharing count.
  
• Use SEMrush to find posts that rank for a lot of keywords.
  
• Research a websites backlinks to identify posts that have served as great link bait.

If you’ve written a post similar to the one you find, you have three options. If your post performed better, move on to the next topic. If your post didn’t earn as many links or shares, write a new post with a unique angle. Finally, if you don’t want to write a new post because it will be too similar to your original, consider an outreach campaign to bring attention to your older post.

Conquer New Mediums

Online audiences absorb content in many different ways. For example, some internet users love to read while others prefer podcasts or videos, and depending on your audience, there may be some or no overlap.

If your blog is dominant in one medium, one source of growth may be to expand into the others. Traditional content consists of text and images, so you may want to re-purpose your content and attract visitors via YouTube or Apple iTunes Podcasts. YouTube’s Partner Program may generate new incremental revenue and your Podcasts may attract sponsors.

The best part is that you can re-use older content for these mediums without a duplicate content penalty, thereby lowering your costs and increasing profitability.

Discuss Your Personal Growth and Experience

Since you first started blogging, the world has changed and so have you. You were younger and in a different stage of your life. Your perspective and experience in your niche has matured. There have been technological and business evolutions in your industry.

Take the SEO industry, for instance. A decade ago, web spam was more prevalent. Webmasters could buy an exact-match domain, keyword stuff, scrape content, publish spun content, automate submission to content farms and directories, and buy links from private networks to achieve top rankings.

Nowadays, webmasters worry about Panda, Penguin, Pigeon and Hummingbird algorithm updates, branding signals, top-heavy ad layouts, anchor text diversity, relevant links, guest post spam, design, user experience, conversions, ROI, utilizing multiple channels, and everything in between. Furthermore, while most bloggers still heavily rely on search engine traffic, the community has leveraged social media, email marketing, PPC, and referral traffic sources.

In this example, some of the easiest posts to publish would be how your view of the industry has changed, how you would approach building a high-quality website or company now, the mistakes you made because of naivety, how newcomers can avoid them, predictions for blogging and SEO years from now, etc.

The bottom line is that, although the underlying concept may not be original, you can infuse a personal experience or anecdote and make the application or effect on your life unique. After all, posts that incorporate personality tend to resonate with readers and create closer relationships.

Final Word

Be honest with yourself – if you believe you’ve written everything there is to cover in an industry, it’s likely that you are either being lazy in your content strategy, have lost passion for your blog, or are not thinking creatively enough. The worst case scenario to consider is to stop blogging for a few months and contribute elsewhere on a different topic that interests you. In the end, it just may be time to sell your blog and start a new project.

^{* Lead image adapted from Joe The Goat Farmer}