Side Project Playbook

Content marketing for boring industries can be a real challenge. There comes a point where you run out of reasonable topics for boring industries. How do you create content? There are only so many ways you can talk about prison guard training. And yet the iron law of the internet remains: publish or perish (from the face of Google's search results).... It is indisputable that blogging can be a highly effective digital marketing strategy. Good posts will raise your search rankings, help you attract traffic from social media, and earn backlinks from leading sites that cover your niche. But you need to publish regularly for this to happen. According to HubSpot, blogs with 20 or more new posts per month attract up to five times the organic traffic as blogs with four new posts per month. Unfortunately, many bloggers struggle to consistently publish fresh, high-quality posts. After covering all the interesting topics in the industry content related to their niche, they're left with dull topics that are difficult to write about. While it requires some creative thinking, though, you can still write highly engaging blog posts on otherwise boring topics. Boring Industry Buster #0 - Don't Take Yourself Seriously I came from the toilet paper distribution business. Cheap toilet paper, specifically, the kind which you can find in highway restrooms and low budget campgrounds. Our industry blogs are enthralling, particularly since management keeps sticking pictures of trucks on them, to reassure you that we can easily ship you even more cheap toilet paper! But what's this? "Toilet Paper That Builds Toilets." Sold in individually wrapped rolls with sassy sayings on the side. From a website littered with potty humor at nose bleed pricing. In an boring industry, "Who Gives A Crap" managed to carve out a unique, highly profitable, market position by finding a way to laugh at their chosen mission in life... Laughter is a powerful step forward. The audience will get it and support you.... Trick #1 - Share Statistics Don't like humor. Find, how about data? Especially data nobody knows exists... Statistics can turn a boring topic into an interesting and intriguing blog post by providing readers with quantifiable data. If you're writing a blog post about heart disease, for example, you can mention that it's responsible for one in four deaths among men and women in the United States. This allows you to convey the dangers of heart disease more effectively than simply saying "heart disease is deadly" by revealing exactly how many people lose their lives to their medical condition. To find statistics on a topic, search for " statistics" on Google. For newer and more relevant statistics, add the year 2019 to your query, such as " statistics 2019." You can further refine your search results to only include government or educational sources by adding "site:.gov" or "site:.edu" to your query, respectively. In addition to Google Search, other sources of statistics include: pewresearch.org scholar.google.com statista.com gallup.com usa.gov/statistics Trick #2 - Focus on the Facts Did you know Squirrels are behind most power outages in the U.S.? That fact belong on every pest control blog.... When you encounter a boring topic, research facts about it that you can share with your blog's readers in the form of an interesting new post. Even if the topic itself is boring, focusing on the facts can make it interesting. If you're blogging about office chairs, for instance, you can reveal that Charles Darwin, the pioneer of modern biology, helped invent the modern office chair by installing small wheels on the bottom of his chair. If you're blogging about steel, you can reveal how it's approximately 1,000 times stronger than plain iron. Like statistics, you can find facts about a topic on Google. Just search for " facts" and scan through some of the top listings. Wikipedia is an invaluable resource for fact-finding as well. Run by the nonprofit organization, the Wikimedia Foundation, it contains more than 40 million fact-filled online encyclopedia pages. Using Google and Wikipedia, curate 10 to 20 of the most interesting facts about your topic and then use those facts to create a new a blog post. Trick #3 - Answer Frequently Asked Questions Another angle you can take when writing blog posts on boring topics is to answer questions frequently asked about the topic. To get started, search for your topic on the Q&A website quora.com. Now, scan through the results while taking note of the most common questions related to your topic. If a lot of users are asking a specific question, answer it in a blog post. You can also use the autocomplete suggestions tool at keywordtool.io to find frequently asked questions about a topic. This isn't just an ordinary keyword research tool that displays keywords related to your topic; it harvests the autocomplete suggestions that search engines provide when typing an incomplete query. When you type a word into Google's or Bing's search box but don't click enter, the two search engines will provide suggestions of common queries containing that word. The tool at keywordtool.io will display these autocomplete suggestions for your topic, and it even has a tab dedicated to questions. Trick #4 - Look at Your Competitors' Blog Posts You shouldn't copy your competitors' blog posts, but there's nothing wrong with using them as a source of inspiration. If you're faced with the task of writing about a boring topic, search on Google to see if any other blogs have covered the same topic, and if so, how they presented it. While reading your competitors' blog posts, look at the language, format and overall presentation of the topic. Taking a step back from your blog to look at your competitors' blog can spur new ideas of your own, allowing you to tackle boring topics and turn them into high-quality content. Just remember to make your content unique without copying or rewording it from a competitor's blog post. Boring Industries Trick #5 - Visualize It Creating highly engaging blog posts requires storytelling, and there's no better way to tell a story than with visual content. In fact, research shows that blog posts with images attract nearly twice the views as blog posts with only text. The human brain responds more strongly to visual stimuli than written text, allowing you to connect with readers on a deeper level. You can include text in your blog posts, but consider adding more images and videos in posts about boring topics. You can find free images to use in your blog posts on the following websites: pexels.com canva.com/photos/free unsplash.com pixabay.com flickr.com/creativecommons morguefile.com Adding relevant images will help you create highly engaging blog posts, but you can go one step further by sharing infographics in your posts. An infographic is a type of custom image that contains visualized data and information. You can always use text to convey data and information about a topic. Infographics, however, promote increased engagement because of their visualized format. The only downside is that you won't be able to source a high-quality infographic for free. You'll need to design one yourself using graphic design software like Photoshop or outsource the project to a professional graphic designer. Some topics are undoubtedly boring, but there are ways to turn them into high-quality blog posts that connect with readers. Along with spying on your competitors, posting statistics, facts, answers to related questions and visuals will allow you to keep your blog fresh with highly engaging content.