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Do you want to start a blog but don’t know what do blog about? The authors of “The Step-by-Step Guide to Selling Online” have recently emailed me this great list of 42 blog post ideas you can outright “steal”:

1. Helpful how-to tips related to your product
2. Reviews for products you don’t sell but you know would appeal to your audience
3. Explain why you are so passionate about your business
4. Explain how you got into the business in the first place
5. What inspired you to take the jump into small business?
6. Describe a day in the life of your business
7. Share a photo or video “walking tour” of your business
8. Describe your customer service philosophy
9. Share Testimonials you get from your customers
10. Offer product tutorials, either for your product or other ones your customers use
11. 3 things you love about the current state of your industry
12. 3 things you wish you could change about the current state of your industry
13. What will the future of your industry be like — and how should people prepare for it?
14. What famous people have currently been associated with your industry lately?
15. The 25 best online resources for people in your industry
16. Review other blogs related to your industry
17. Review an online magazine related to your industry
18. Review print publications related to your industry
19. Debunk the top myths that are currently floating around about your industry
20. Go to a trade fair or conference and then write reports about it
21. Take a stand on a controversial issue related to your industry
22. Identify the most prominent experts in your industry, explain why they’re famous or important
23. Disagree with a well-known authority in your industry and list reasons why they’re wrong
24. Post about the best things you’ve read online in the past week (related to your industry)
25. Answer FAQs you get from your customers
26. Admit mistakes! If you’ve done something wrong in the course of building your business, share that information and explain how you dealt with it. People love learning from others’ mistakes
27. Create a list of “best practices” for businesses in your industry
28. Write a blog comparing what your industry is like now to what it was 20 or 30 years ago
29. Post a “Test Your Knowledge” quiz and give readers a chance to interact
30. Make a list of “must-have” free resources your audience will appreciate
31. Ask a question of your followers on Twitter and then blog about the best answers you got
32. Sign up for Google Alerts on topics related to your industry — then blog about breaking news stories
33. Find out which of your blog posts is most popular, then blog about it
34. Get involved in a discussion on another blog or forum and then write up a summary about it on your own blog
35. Post weekly or monthly wrap-ups about what you accomplished with your business
36. Offer a case study of how someone has successfully used your product or solved a common problem
37. Run a poll on a controversial issue and then discuss the results
38. Interview key people in your industry
39. Reveal a generally unknown secret in your industry
40. Create a list of books everyone in your industry should read
41. Run a contest, offering a free product sample or service for the winner. Then ask them to comment about what they thought of it — and make that its own blog post as well
42. Make a list of 42 blogging ideas specifically for your industry

The above will help you — whether you want to start a business blog, or you already understand the value of having a blog on your site but just don’t know what to write about.

As the authors who compiled the above tips state, it’s important to remember that when you write content for a business blog, you have to provide VALUE to your readers. If you offer them useful, interesting information they will love you for it, and when the time comes to make a purchasing decision, your site (or blog) will be the first one they will think of turning to for more information.

To learn more about ways to build a profitable long-term ebusiness on a solid foundation, I recommend you also check out The eBusiness Handbook, which is published by the same authors of “The Step-by-Step Guide to Selling Online“.

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“The Lowdown – Blogging For Business” is a great audio book for anyone thinking about starting a blog for promoting their business or for those who already have a business blog and want to know how to get the most benefit from business blogging.

As the audio book publishers state on their introduction, this audio book about business blogging is for people who are long on ambition but short on time, and offers great tips and tools that will keep you ahead of the game in creating and running your business blog.

“The Lowdown – Blogging For Business” by James Long and narrated by Lorelei King is a one hour long unabridged audio book recording published by Creative Content Limited and available as a downloadable MP3 file.

Here’s what the publishers have to say about this business blogging resource:

“On the internet, you never know who might become a customer. It’s important to put your best foot forward when crafting an internet presence.

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If you run any form of community or networking organization, like a business networking group, church, local community association, network marketing team, etc … then a community blog can be a powerful tool to help you promote, educate and inform people about your organization, as well as to keep your members informed and up-to-date.

I have just finished setting up a blog for Independent Business Network Incorporated, a local, not for profit, small business networking community that I belong to, and I would like to share with you some of the benefits of setting up such a site, as well as some tips on how you can do the same, especially if you have never set up a WordPress blog before.

Tips For Creating A Community Or Shared Blog

The community blog I recently set up for the small businesses networking group allows each member to post articles on topics related to their particular business. If they have a web presence of their own, they can post links back to their own web sites, business blogs, e-commerce stores, etc … in their articles and posts.

For each type of business, I then created a corresponding category (e.g. Travel, Legal Services, Bookkeeping, etc …), so that whenever a member publishes an article to the community blog, they simply assign their post to a category that is relevant to their business. This not only makes it easier for blog readers to find content when they visit the site (i.e. all travel-related articles will appear under the “travel” category), but because the blog has been set up to show categories in the URL using permalinks, each post ends up with their own unique keyword rich page address, which makes it easier for search engines to index.

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