Also, Google’s search engine loves blogs! It isn’t uncommon for a blog post to be indexed by Google (listed in search results) the very same day it’s posted. With other web content, it can take weeks or months to show up on Google. For all of those reasons and more, I recommend starting and maintaining a blog to every client I speak with.

Blogging isn’t easy for everyone though. Even if you enjoy writing, it can often be a challenge to come up with fresh, new content on a regular basis. Even though you’re an expert in your field, there may come a point when you feel as though your blog posts are becoming repetitious. So how do you come up with fresh, relevant content every week (at least), in a way that will help to draw your target market to you?

One very useful tool for stimulating blog topic ideas is the Google Keyword Tool. This is a tool connected with Google’s advertising platform, AdWords. It’s meant to help website owners and marketers determine which keywords, related to their industry, product, or service, are being searched for through Google. But knowing what people are searching for surrounding your area of expertise can also spark ideas for what to write about in your blog. Here’s how:

How to Use the Keyword Tool for Inspiration

Let’s say your area of expertise is Human Resources Management. If you go to the Google Keyword Tool and search for the term “human resources management,” you’ll find that nearly half a million searches a month are conducted on that specific term. Because there are so many people searching for the same term though, competition for the attention of those searchers is quite high. That means that your chance of getting listed toward the top of the search results is fairly low.

So how can this tool help you? Following the keyword or phrase you searched for in the keyword tool is a list of suggested terms. These are words and phrases related to your original term but different in some way. This list is where the gold is! Staying with our HR example, there are a number of very interesting suggestions that come up:

 
Keyword Phrase Suggestion: Human resources managment (Yes, with management spelled wrong.)

This phrase was searched for one hundred thousand times more often in a single month than with the word spelled correctly.

What to do about it: You obviously don’t want your site visitors thinking you don’t know how to spell management. However, what if you wrote an article entitled, Human Resource Managment – We All Make Mistakes? You could then go on to explain why you spelled the word wrong in the title, and how common this mistake is, relating it back to common mistakes HR managers make.

Keyword Phrase Suggestion: Human resource development

This phrase garners nearly fifteen thousand searches per month. And here’s the great part: When you search for that term on Google, the first page results include a Wikipedia entry, a couple of trade organization sites, a government site, and a Cal Tech article from 1996. Not a single HR consultant or expert comes up in the first page results for that term. Think there’s an opportunity there?

What to do about it: Human resource development is not the same thing as HR management; however isn’t it likely that a good percentage of the people searching for that term are part of your overall target audience? They are likely to be in the HR management field in some capacity at least. So write a post with “human resource development” in the title. It could even be about the difference between HR development and HR management.

Keyword Phrase Suggestion: Strategic human resources management

Over twenty thousand searches per month are for this phrase. And as in the previous example, the search results are not relevant for anyone looking for an expert to teach them about this topic.

What to do about it: You’re getting the picture by now. A blog post entitled Strategic Human Resource Management and You (or something like that) is in order.

Why All of this Matters

Beyond giving you some ideas for blog posts, this technique steers you toward posting content that people are actually looking for. If you want to be a recognized expert in your field, you have to get in front of those who are most likely to be in search of your expertise. Because Google loves blogs, and almost everyone uses Google to search for what they want, your blog posts – especially if they’re consistent – stand a very good chance of appearing toward the top of the search results for the terms you target in your blog posts.

You might have to get pretty creative, and you want to make sure you’re using terms that are relevant to your target market. For instance, “human resource management syllabus” is searched for a couple thousand times a month, but it isn’t likely that the people you offer your expertise to are the ones looking for this kind of information. In any case, the Google Keyword Tool is one simple, effective way to come up with some outstanding blog posts!

But really, Momma Gump was onto something there. What she really said was, “Stupid is as stupid does.” Meaning, it’s the stupid act that makes the thing stupid. The same thing applies with being an expert.

If you act like an expert, you are an expert. If you think you’re an expert, you are an expert. If you seem like an expert, you are an expert.

Now, it’s taking that expertise and doing what it takes to bring it to a whole new level that will really set you apart, and catapult your business into 7 figures.

But really, Momma Gump was onto something there. What she really said was, “Stupid is as stupid does.” Meaning, it’s the stupid act that makes the thing stupid. The same thing applies with being an expert.

If you act like an expert, you are an expert. If you think you’re an expert, you are an expert. If you seem like an expert, you are an expert.

Now, it’s taking that expertise and doing what it takes to bring it to a whole new level that will really set you apart, and catapult your business into 7 figures.