What do you find? Zip. Nada. Zilch. There are three views on the page, but if you’re honest that might have been you when you were still editing it.

How do you go about getting views on your brand’s content? There’s no magic formula, but there are four areas you should consider to help maximise your visibility:

1. Careful topic selection (Part 1)
2. Social media posting (Part 2)
3. Republishing across the web (Part 3)
3. Email marketing (Part 4)

In this Ultimate 2018 Guide, we’ve detailed our top tips for making each of these into effective tools for driving traffic to your blog posts, videos, infographics and more. This is part 1 - focusing on how you should carefully select the topic of each piece of content you produce, and how you can improve your process for doing so.

Part 1: How to choose the right topics for your blog posts

You could find yourself hamstrung before you begin if you don’t choose a topic the readership you’re aiming at will be interested in. Follow these tips to find a subject that’ll home in on the tastes of your target audience.

1. Think about what questions your customers ask you

What questions do you answer from clients on a daily basis? Could they form the basis for a blog? It could take the form of an FAQ, or you could provide a fuller, more detailed answer to a single question.

2. Consider what your competitors are focusing on

There are arguments both for and against following the crowd in terms of what your competitors or peer brands are publishing to their blogs. Stay up to date with what your competitors are publishing – it’s a great way to spark ideas – but don’t feel the need to follow it slavishly.

At the same time, don’t worry about making every one of your pieces of content totally original. Taking inspiration from other, proven, popular content and putting your own spin on it is a good strategy.

3. Don’t worry too much about giving away your ‘secret sauce’

Especially in businesses where you sell information or advice, there can be a hesitancy about publishing content which gives away for free the information you would normally sell to customers.

A degree of caution is always good, but it’s often unlikely that 500 words of your thoughts on a hot topic for your customers is likely to make them think they no longer need you. Give away enough that the information is useful in its own right, and you’ll only be demonstrating your own expertise in the field.

4. Use data from your previous pieces to inform your future ones

This is one for when you’ve got a posts and a few readers under your belt – but when all of your views so far are concentrated in a particular post, ensure you know about it and can expand on it accordingly. More posts on similar topics are the logical next step if building your readership is the focus.

5. Be topical

Is your industry in the news? Or is there a news story that has a link with what your company does? It's not essential to tie your articles in with what's trending, but it can be a strong source of inspiration, as well as help to give your post a relevant twist that draws readers' eyes on social media.