Conquer Content Block: The Secret To Knowing What To Blog About

Hello Reader,

Thank you so much for the wonderful questions you shared with me as part of my series on blogging for your business (read the installments here, here, and here), but the most common one that I received was simply, "How do I now what to write about?

This is such an amazing question and one that's worth taking some time to answer thoroughly.

When clients ask me this, we reverse engineer the question—starting by Defining the Destination (the first step in my Alignthority™ methodology).

Forget keyword research for now and start with a simple question:

What do we want the reader to do?

The question can have multiple answers for a lot of people.

For example, I have blog content that's designed to encourage new business inquiries, content designed to sell courses, and content that's designed to get people onto my mailing list.

The emphasis varies depending on business needs and the balance I'm trying to create between short-, medium-, and long-term goals. It used to be much simpler, which was wanting folks to book a free consultation call. I recommend keeping it simple for now.

This can be a good place to start for a lot of people, with that consultation call.

(Don't skip this step! Write down your intention here. No cheating! Use a pen!)

Now that you've answered what the destination is for this blog content, think about what kind of information that person (it often helps to think about specific people and conversations you've had) needs to confidently do the thing you're asking of them—in this example, take the scary step of booking a consultation call. (Don't forget, this can be a scary step even for amazing clients.)

What can you demystify for them? How can you make them feel more confident when talking to you? What about your subject matter expertise causes your audience the most stress?

For example, last year, I wrote an article about how to hire an SEO consultant (read it here). This came out of conversations I'd had with real clients about how they were worried about not knowing the right lingo, it being incredibly technical and hard to understand, and worries about how much was "typical" to invest, but time- and finances-wise.

I knew that if I could make these answers to scary questions more approachable for my readers, I would build trust with them before we spoke. I also added the benefit of a free workshop replay to even further prove that I would not make this process scarier than it already was (people have been through it with SEO companies, let me tell you).

Think like these experts:

• A dog sitter creating a guide to calm pets while you're away.
• A personal trainer sharing tips for injury-free comebacks.
• An IP lawyer breaking down AI's impact on artists.

See the pattern? By addressing specific needs and anxieties, you build trust and attract the right audience.
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Without even doing any keyword research, I know these are questions that people have and that experts can answer. Yes, you can use keywords to validate your thinking, but for now, let's not worry too much.

But you don't want to stop there. There's another important question to answer before pulling up your blogging software and typing away:

Will this topic attract the audience you want to connect with?

This is where understanding your audience (what we call Address Your Audience) is so, so crucial. I can sit here and pull keywords and tell you to create blog content around those keywords and you will get leads from that—but are those leads you want?

Sometimes the "people in seats" type of content is what you want—for example when you're first starting out or if there's something causing your industry as a whole to experience a downturn.

(Don't let anyone shame you for this, by the way—sometimes you have to do what you have to do, and I call that resilient.)

But assuming that you're farther along and are clear on your audience and know who you can help the most, think about if there's a unique angle, a perspective (we call this Pinpoint Perspective in our system), a deeper or more nuanced take on the subject that you're absolute favorite people will love and say, "Yes, this is the company/person/brand for me!" It'll inspire them to book that consulting call, join your mailing list, or attend your webinar.

In short, we're asking, what do you want your dream audience to know you for?

Answer that, and start your blogging journey.

Now, this is very simple and it's not the way to do it forever and always, but I care more about you getting started than getting it perfect. From there, you can build both outwards (identify other core topics this person needs to understand to be successful in working with you and your company) and downwards (narrowing and going deeper into the subjects).

With that said, I want to leave you with a word of caution.

It can be very easy to slide into being instructional instead of insightful on your blog. Insightful inspires your audience to take action with you, instructional encourages them to take action on their own. Don't miss this important distinction.

Keep sharing, keep learning, and keep owning your voice.

Talk soon,

Sarah

P.S. Feeling stuck? Check out my free workshop, Engineer Luck, that digs further into this strategy. Or, hit reply to learn about my "secret menu" content planning intensive.