One of the largest mental hurdles to maintaining a consistent business blog is coming up with a topic week after week.  It is easy to trap yourself with an artificial need for novelty instead of sticking to your strengths.  But if you’re really unsure of your ability to come up with relevant topics, the following strategies help.

1. Follow the News

Whether you listen to the radio while you commute or read an industry magazine on the weekends, make sure you keep abreast of current events.  The modern online reader is interested in relevant commentary.

Look for the stories that interest you as a specialist then ask yourself, “was the story perfect?”  It probably wasn’t, which is where you get to step in.  Use your blog as a forum for response in which you answer the following questions:

• Where did you find the story?
• What did the original reporter get right?
• What are the facts? (And where do the facts you have access to differ from those cited or assumed by the reporter?)
• How would you have handled the investigation to produce a more accurate report?
• On the whole, did the reporter do a good job?
• What should your readers think about after hearing a story like this?

2. Read Twitter (or Facebook, or Technorati, or…)

Social Media is another place where you can find relevant topics for discussion.  Sometimes inspiration will come directly from your friends/followers/contacts, but if you intend to make a Muse of your Social Media, there are a few strategies that are particularly helpful.

• Keep an eye on people who share interesting articles and put them in a list so that you can find their offerings quickly and easily.
• Build a separate list of your favorite industry and mass media news outlets to see what they’re promoting through social media.
• Use the search function to find specific articles on a topic that interest you.

Once you’ve been writing online for a while, you may find that your followers themselves become a good source of content.  After all, they’re clearly the sort of people who are interested in the topics you tend to write about.

3. Consider your Marketing Materials

Who is your target market?  What worries them?  How can you help?  If you’ve ever written marketing materials for your business, you’ve probably asked and answered these questions already.  Use that material; expand on it.  If you had a page to focus on that bullet point (you know the one), what would you say?

Congratulations, you have a page!

4. Look at the Calendar

Some of us have it easier than others.  If you’re an accountant or a tax specialist, you probably know what your clients are thinking about at the start of April.  Now work backwards, when should they start thinking about taxes?  What deductions do they tend to overlook?  Are there other deadlines they don’t think about?

Even if your industry doesn’t provide you with clear seasonal themes, you can always look at what you wrote this time last year.  It may seem like only yesterday to you, but your readers aren’t going to remember that article.  Write it again, write it from the perspective of someone a year older, a year wiser, and a year better at answering your readers unwritten questions.

5. Revisit Customer Feedback

There’s one person who knows what your customers are thinking even better than you do: your customers.

Any time a client asks you a question or offers a critique, it’s an opportunity for a customer-centered blog.

• What’s the best question you’ve been asked this week?
• Was a public critique of your company valid? Take ownership of the problem and share how you intend to fix it.
• Do people love you on Yelp!, what about Annie’s List?

Readers love it when they are the focus of a corporate action.  It shows that you’re paying attention and taking them seriously.