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Marcus Sheridan, who goes by @TheSalesLion on Twitter, is not your average BlogWorld speaker. He doesn’t run a social media agency.  He doesn’t run a marketing agency.  He runs a pool company. In Virginia. And yet, his pool company is one of the most popular in the search engines, in the world.

How did that happen? After the economic slump in 2008, he found selling pools hard. He turned to writing a blog, and saw great results within 6 months. Now his pool blog gets hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. He is truly, as in the example he gave in his session at this week’s BlogWorld Expo in Los Angeles, a “David” to the “Goliaths” in his industry.

Sheridan gave attendees seven blog topics to write about. Essentially, he said:

“If a consumer is thinking it, you should be writing it.”

Cost and Price

The first topics he covered were cost and price. When he asked the audience how many people talked about price on their websites, only two raised their hands. He asked why we didn’t list our prices.

The bottom line: most of us are afraid to talk about price. We want to talk about value. But he’s found that by mentioning price on his pool site, more people buy from him, simply because he’s not afraid of the conversation.

Problems

He also suggests writing about problems. Customers have problems with products in your industry (maybe even yours). They have problems that your products can solve. Write about them. Sheridan also suggests using negative keywords as a way to draw in people looking for bad reviews, such as “product X bad review.” Even if the product isn’t yours, it’s a way to introduce them to yours if there are bad reviews about a competitor’s product.

Comparing or Contrasting Products

Sheridan suggests comparing or contrasting products. His Product A vs. Product B posts have been among the most visited posts on his blog.

Awards

He also suggests creating awards for your industry, even if it means highlighting competitors’ products. The trick here is that in adding a “Goliath” to your award list and linking to them, they’ll become aware of the honor and link back to your site, thus giving you some great Google juice! Genius.

Breaking News

Finally, Sheridan says that breaking news is another great topic for your blog for driving traffic. The more niche your industry, the fewer people will be covering the smaller news stories, so your blog could be a valuable resource for that information.

From Small Business Trends

Looking for Blog Topics? @TheSalesLion Has a Few [BlogWorld Coverage]

View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends