4 Ways Accountants Can Find Ideas For Blog Posts

On todays episode we talk about how to find ideas for blog posts:

• Use tools like Buzzsumo to find popular articles that people are already reading in your niche, then come up with your own twist.
• What are your current customers currently asking about? Chances are you get the same questions over and over again. Create a blog post about the most popular questions so far.
• Scan websites like Quora where people are constantly looking for answers to questions, use those as a guide to write blog posts.
• Share your experiences, you can’t necessarily call out a client, but others like to read those outlier stories.

Christian: [00:00:17] Heyo.What's going on? My name is Christian, and thank you for joining us on anotherepisode of the Marketing Natives. Today we're talking about four waysaccountants can find ideas for blog posts. A few tools that we're talkingabout: BuzzSumo. We're talking about Quora. We're also going to, you know, giveyou some ideas on maybe some frequently asked questions and maybe someexperiences.

Aaron: [00:00:41] Arethese maybes or are they real?

Christian: [00:00:43] Idon't know.

Aaron: [00:00:44] Theyhave to wait until the end of the episode to find out.

Christian: [00:00:46] Yeah.

Aaron: [00:00:48] Allright. So the one that you did say that we're going to talk about is BuzzSumo.The rest of them are kind of a mystery. But we've mentioned BuzzSumo on theshow before, and what this is is the most popular topics on the Internet andthen their social engagement. So it only shows topics that are really relevantand then have a ton of social engagement there. So accountants can go there andsearch for accounting topics, find topics that are already working really well,and then craft them, create them themselves, and really copy them. Now Iwouldn't say copying them specifically. Like that's kind of plagiarism, and wewon't go into that. But a lot of people when we talk to them to them just saywell, somebody already wrote a blog post about this. Somebody already wrote anarticle about this. It's like yes, they did, but you didn't write one. You havea different perspective. You're not going to write it word for word, and wekind of wrote down an example here. Like there's a reason that there ismultiple major news platforms because they tell their stories differently. Nowwe're not going to get into fake news or anything, but there's a reason thatNBC and FOX and CNN, all of them exist because they're all telling differentstories. Same thing with the accountants. You may have a different story thatyou're going to tell about these three problems that are happening in 2018with, you know, small businesses. They may be the same topics, but you're goingto cover them in a different way. So don't be scared to take those topics andcreate them and make them your own.

Christian: [00:02:12] Verygood. The next thing we have here is frequently asked questions. So a lot ofyour current customers right now are probably asking you the same questionsover and over. Some of the best ways to, you know, maybe defer people insteadof answering the same questions over and over is to say well, I actually have areally good blog post that I wrote about that particular question, and justdirect them to that blog post. One, you'll create more traffic to your website.More traffic to your blog post. And two, you won't have to repeat yourself overand over and over and over and over again. You can just write blog posts andmaybe even do a little video with that blog post answering that frequentlyasked questions.

Aaron: [00:02:59] Right.I was going to say that's a really good idea. I think it's the first time thatwe've done it for ourselves where I wrote a blog and then also created a video,and then down at the bottom it's like okay, if you go all the way down here,you still have trouble. Let me walk you through it with a video, and it may bereally important if you just- Even if the video is like 30 or 45 seconds andyou just summarize the blog post and say hey, look, you can't do this with youraccounting. You can't write off your vacations to Tahiti. It's just notpossible. So you know, you can say that in 30 and 45 seconds, but people arealways consuming content in different ways. And so it's really good to add thatto your blog post, and it will help push you up in rankings as well. So that isa very good option, but those frequently asked questions, I mean, it's going tosave you a ton of time. Not only is it going to create content for you, but I'mjust thinking about all the time that we asked our accountant question if shewould've just sent me a blog post with it then who knows how many timessomebody asked the same thing.

Christian: [00:04:01] Exactly.

Aaron: [00:04:01] Whoa.That's usually what Christian would say after that part. I was hoping he wasgoing to do that, but this is- That's our favorite part or at least my favoritepart. It's called- Just so you guys know and you can check it out and you canplay it for yourselves because it is fun to play around with. It's called therap air horn, and it does sound really cool. So anyway this is the section ofour show where we tell you a little bit more about BitBranding, and that wayyou guys get to learn a little bit more about us and, you know, who the heckare these guys that you're talking to on the other side of those microphones.So we are a digital agency in- Digital creative agency really in Allen, Texas,and we focus on helping businesses grow. And one thing that we're reallypushing right now is education on reputation management because a lot ofbusinesses have less than 20 reviews and their last review has been more thansix months. To give you some really quick facts for that, most people don'tconsider a view that's older than three months to even be relevant. So if youhave reviews that are older than that, they're only looking at the currentones, and then another thing is that Google came out with this last week - werecorded this in February of 2018 - that your star rating is not going to becompiled of an average of five anymore. It's just going to be one. So what doesthat mean? It means that if you get one review, it's going to give you a starrating. So you can have a one star, and now your company is looked at as a onestar review versus it never gave a star rating before until you got five. Soyou had a chance to, you know, kind of push up your averages. Now on the flipside, if you have a five star review, that's great because you look good, butat the same time, if you have a bad review, it can look really bad. So thepoint is you need more reviews. You need them more frequently, and then youneed that sentiment which means that you need people to leave comments, notjust say hey, that was a five star. That doesn't give anybody any value. It isbasically a wasted review. So you want to make sure that they leave a comment.All right. So if you are interested in this, all you have to do is go tobitbranding.co/contact and let us know how we can give you that free report.

Christian: [00:06:07] Wow.That was the longest ad ever.

Aaron: [00:06:11] Value.I was giving them the explanation.

Christian: [00:06:13] That'sgood. That was good. All right. So the next thing we have here on the- So againcoming back to Earth. This is the four ways accountants can find ideas for blogposts. We have another tool, and that tool is Quora. Quora is actually, you cansay, a social media network. It's a website really where people ask questions,and experts - I'm putting air quotes - experts get a chance to answer yourquestions. I say experts, but it's really, you know, people who usually haveexperience in that field. So if you're an accountant, you may find a lot ofquestions people, you know- Again this is kind of going back to the frequentlyasked questions, but you can find, you know, questions that people are askingregarding accounting. And I mean, that way you can actually find some blog posttopics within Quora. I mean, I would definitely encourage you as an accountantor as any other type of business owner to scan websites like Quora and see, youknow, what type of questions people are asking. That way they will give you abetter idea on what things that you can really write about, what things arepeople really interested in. Especially, you know, I think you can do filtersof, you know, the questions when they were asked. So you can do it by time. Youcan do it by popularity. You can do it by, you know, how many answers italready has. Because, I mean, the beauty of Quora is that, you know, you ask aquestion and multiple people can answer that question. So it's not just onequestion, one answer. You have multiple people answering that question. So itwill give you a better idea on what's popular on that website.

Aaron: [00:07:57] Yeah.I think when you fill out your profile, you kind of tell people who you are andwhat experiences you have. So Quora will kind of cater that content to you, andyou'll get more questions that are regarding like your expertise. So you canhave an ability to answer more of those questions, and I also think it's goodbecause you could potentially get business out of this because if you answer alot of questions and you add real value to people, they're looking at you as anauthority now, and it doesn't take much for them to send you a private messageand say hey, that really helped me out. How can you help me more? So you mayinadvertently get business out of this more than one way besides just writingthose blog posts.

Christian: [00:08:35] Soyou're saying- I think that's a good idea. So you're saying look at a reallygood question that may have three or four answers, but again you can dosomething a little bit better. Write the blog post first, you know, have theblog post on your website. Then go back to Quora, go back to that question, andanswer in a very short form and then have a link to say hey, if you want tofind out more information about this, I actually wrote a blog post about this.And that will give you more traffic to your website.

Aaron: [00:09:03] Moretraffic. And Quora's much like Reddit. If you're not familiar with Reddit, it'slike the front pages of the Internet. But yeah, Quora's very dedicated. Sowhenever somebody follows a topic, it could be thousands. It could be tens ofthousands, and if your comment is upvoted and it's seen as one of the primarysources, yeah, you can absolutely get a ton of traffic that way. All right. Sothe next and final one we have here on how accountants can get ideas for theirblog posts is experiences. So if you've been in business for say even sixmonths, you've been an accountant, you have an experience. You've had-Hopefully, you've had clients. I mean, if you don't have clients, we're justnot going to skip to that, but anyway, let's just say you've been in business.You have clients, and then you have things that people have told you and askedyou that maybe kind of off the cuff. I used an example here that we've actuallyheard personally. Hopefully that person is not listening to the podcast becausethey know that we are talking about them, but we had him tell us that he wasgoing to write off his dog and his cat because the dog was for like-

Christian: [00:10:11] Pestcontrol.

Aaron: [00:10:12] Pestcontrol, and the cat was for-

Christian: [00:10:14] Samething probably.

Aaron: [00:10:16] Well,like, no, I think it was like ADHD or like calming. Like he could pet the cat,and it was like, you know, it was going to help out that way. So he told usthat, and then we- And this accountant did not tell us this, but we went to gosit down with an accountant and he told us yeah, I got this crazy story aboutthis guy who thinks he can write off his dog and his cat food. And we're likewhat are the odds? Like we went to go sit down with this accountant, and hetold us this story. But those kinds of experiences would make great blog postsbecause people have some crazy stuff for their accounting. Like hey, is it okayif we buy this liquor for people who are 21 to 20 - we don't know - on thisabandoned island since it's not in US jurisdiction or something? Just somethingcrazy like that. That would be a great blog post. I would read that.

Christian: [00:11:07] Absolutely.Yeah, and it goes back to, you know, sharing experiences, sharing stories. Youknow, people usually want to read stories, and those experiences and the funnyones actually are going to be really good blog post ideas. All right. So Ithink we- Do you have anything else you want to add here?

Aaron: [00:11:24] No.I was going to say the- I guess, the- Well maybe part. The two main things towrite about for the blog posts are going to be like tutorial style or likewhere you give them a straight answer and then like what we're seeing here, ifyou break them down into the experiences which is more like the storytellingstyle. Those two would work really well for accountants.

Christian: [00:11:41] Yeah.So just a recap. Two tools that we talked about. One, BuzzSumo. You candefinitely look up in there and see topics and blog posts already written byother accountants, and then Quora. You can find kind of like the frequentlyasked questions and what people are actually asking online. You can alsopersonally use frequently asked questions from your customers, and you canactually share experiences. And obviously, not name any names or not sayinganything like that, but share experiences and tell stories about yourexperiences. So there you go. There you have it. So four ways account can findideas for your blog posts. Thank you for listening, and if you haven't already,leave us a review on your favorite podcast app wherever you're listening .  If you're listening on your computer, just goonto your phone and look up for that purple - if you're on an iPhone - look upfor that purple Apple podcast app, and find the Marketing Natives and justleave us a review and let us know how we're doing. That way we can cater bettercontent for you. So if you like blog posts like this- Or if you like episodeslike this or if you like something maybe a little bit different. Or if yourindustry, if we haven't talked about your industry, let us know, and we'lldefinitely put it up as an episode.

Aaron: [00:13:01] Iwas going to say one last thing. We're on iHeartRadio now too.

Christian: [00:13:05] Ohyeah, yeah. So definitely check us out there.

Aaron: [00:13:07] AndI want to give a shout out to people who have actually left a review since wehave a couple of seconds here. There's Photog Dave, OV3RTiiM3, PixelmonkeyLance, and I think there's one more of us, but it's not shown. But thank youguys for all leaving reviews, and not just a star rating but leaving an actualcomment. And if you do that we will happily shout you out there as much as weknow by your username. So we really appreciate that. That helps the podcastgrow, and we'll talk to you guys next week.

Christian: [00:13:35] Yep.