How do I stop guessing what to blog about and choose topics based on customer intent?

How do I stop guessing what to blog about and choose topics based on customer intent?

Why we had to get more deliberate about blog topics

At Bit Famous, we create a lot of content.

As a training, coaching, and speaking business, we have no shortage of topics to write about: leadership, communication, workplace confidence, personal impact and difficult conversations.

The problem is not finding ideas. The problem is choosing the right ones.

In the past, like many knowledge-led businesses, we would opt to write something that felt interesting and roughly connected to our work. A business story. A leadership lesson. A trend. A useful observation from something we had seen or read.

And there is nothing wrong with interesting ideas. But interesting ideas do not attract customers.

What we’ve learned is that we are not writing for everyone. We are trying to reach people who look like clients, senior leaders, HR and L&D professionals who might need help with the kind of work we actually do.

So the question cannot just be:

“Is this a good business blog idea?”

It has to be:

“Would someone who looks like our customer search for this because they have a problem we can help solve?”

That is a very different test.

It forces you to think about the reader first. Who are they? What are they dealing with? What are they trying to fix, improve or understand? And why would they turn to Google for help?

That is where many business blogs go wrong. They start with the writer’s interest, not the customer’s intent.

For a knowledge-led business, that matters. You do not need thousands of casual readers. You need the right people to find you when they are looking for useful help.

That is why we had to stop guessing what to blog about and start choosing topics more deliberately.

The trap: writing about ‘interesting’ business stories

This is where it’s easy to go wrong with your business blog.

You think of a famous business challenge, and it feels like a strong blog idea.

Kodak failing to respond properly to digital photography. Lego nearly losing its way. Blockbuster passing on the chance to work with Netflix.

They are all interesting stories.

They also feel business-relevant. If you are a consultant, coach, speaker or business author, it is easy to think: There’s a useful lesson in that.

And there probably is.

But that does not mean it is a useful blog topic for your business.

Take Kodak. A blog about how Kodak failed might say something useful about innovation, complacency or business change. But who is actually searching for that?

It could be a business student. It could be someone interested in photography. It could be a vintage camera fan. It could be someone looking for a quick case study. If you are lucky, it could be a leader thinking about disruption, but you cannot be sure.

That is the problem.

The topic is too broad. The intent is unclear.

It might attract curiosity, but curiosity is not the same as customer intent.

A potential client is usually searching for something much closer to their own immediate problem. They are not necessarily typing “how did Kodak fail?” into Google. They are more likely to search for something like:

Could (a new technology) disrupt my (business sector), and what should I do about it?

That is a very different starting point.

A famous business story might still have a place in the article, but it should not be the reason for the article. The reason should be the reader’s problem.

That is the trap with big business anecdotes. They make you feel like you are writing serious business content.

But often, you are just adding another version of a story that the internet already has plenty of.

Three questions we now ask ourselves before writing a business blog

This is the bit we have had to get much better at. Before we write a blog, we now run the idea through three checks.

1. Is this closely related to what we actually do?

This sounds obvious, but it is where many blog ideas start to fall apart.

A topic can be broadly about leadership, business or management and still be too far away from the work you actually sell.

For Bit Famous, the topic needs to clearly connect to our training, coaching, or speaking work. If it does not link to communication, confidence, personal impact, media skills, visibility or leadership communication, then it is probably not the right topic for us.

That does not mean every blog has to be a sales page.

It means the reader should be able to see why we are the right people to talk about it.

2. Does it speak to the pains, gains and to-do list of our clients and potential customers?

This is where we stop thinking like writers and start thinking like our customers.

• What are our clients worried about?
• What are they trying to improve?
• What have they been asked to fix?
• What keeps coming up in calls, workshops and enquiries?

For us, that might be a leader who lacks confidence in senior meetings. It might be a manager who avoids difficult conversations. It might be an HR or L&D professional trying to help people communicate with more impact.

These are not abstract topics. They are real problems we hear about from the people we work with.

That is why a blog such as Why does my team go quiet when I walk in the room? Works better for us than a broad business case study.

It speaks to a recognisable leadership worry. It is the sort of question a leader might quietly type into Google because they know something feels off.

And crucially, it points towards a problem we can help solve.

3. Would someone who looks like our customer search for this?

This is the customer intent test.

• Not: “Do we find this interesting?”
• Not: “Could we write something clever about this?”
• Not: “Does this sound like a business topic?”

The better question is:

Would someone who looks like our customer type this, or something close to it, into Google because they need help?

That is where the Kodak-style topic falls down.

Why did Kodak fail? might be interesting. But the searcher could be anyone. A student. A camera fan. Someone doing homework. Someone reading about business history.

But “Why does my team go quiet when I walk in the room?” points to someone with a live management problem.

That is the difference.

We are not just looking for ideas that are useful in a general sense. We are looking for ideas that align with our work, our customers’ problems, and the search intent behind the question.

That is how we stop guessing.

Why writing for everyone makes the right people zone out

This is another place business blogs can get woolly.

You start with a decent topic. Communication. Confidence. Leadership. Managing people. All relevant enough.

But then you write it for everyone.

A CEO, founder, HR director, L&D lead and employee might all care about communication at work. But they do not experience the same problem in the same way:

• A CEO might be thinking about whether the senior team is being honest enough in meetings.
• An HR director might be thinking about how to help managers have better conversations.
• An L&D lead might be thinking about what skills people need across the organisation.
• An employee might be thinking, “How do I speak up without sounding difficult?”

Same broad topic. Completely different reader. So the framing has to change.

If you are writing for senior leaders, you need to speak to the world they are in. Their decisions. Their pressure. Their responsibility for other people. Their need to influence, reassure, challenge and lead.

If you write in a general way, the right reader may not see themselves in it. They may not feel that you understand their situation. And if they do not feel that, they will probably move on.

That is why knowing the audience matters before you start writing.

You are not just choosing a topic. You are choosing who the topic is for.

Why niche traffic can be more valuable than lots of traffic

Most people talk about blog performance as if more traffic is always better.

More clicks. More visits. More views. Lovely.

But for a knowledge-led business, that is not always the right measure.

You may not need thousands of casual readers landing on your site. You need the right people arriving with the right problem.

That might only be a handful of people a month. And that is fine.

For Bit Famous, if two or three senior leaders find our blog because it speaks directly to something they are dealing with, that can be far more valuable than 3,000 people reading a broad article and doing nothing.

That's because we don’t sell fruit and veg. We sell larger ticket items.

A detailed, specific article may not bring huge traffic. But if it helps the right person think, “This sounds exactly like the problem we’re having,” then it is doing its job.

How to find better blog topics from what your market is already telling you

The best blog ideas are usually already sitting in front of you.

They are in the questions people ask on sales calls. They are in the emails from potential clients. They are in the worries that come up again and again in workshops. They are among the objections people raise before they buy.

This is where we now pay much more attention.

If a client asks a question in a call, there is a good chance someone else is typing a version of that question into Google.

If the same concern keeps coming up, it is probably worth writing about.

If people reply to a newsletter and say, “This is exactly what we’re dealing with,” that is a signal.