3 Ideas for Epic Business

I hate to say it, but at least 95 percent of business blogs are absolute crap. In some cases, these sites fail because they’re rarely updated, but most of the time, the Achilles heel most business bloggers face is developing content that’s actually interesting to their audiences.

Your customers don’t want to read press release after press release, and they won’t give their attention to articles that read like incognito sales pitches. What they want is what blogger Corbett Barr has described as “epic s***” – content that “makes people think, inspires them, changes lives, creates value and blows people away with your usefulness.”

If you aren’t yet hitting these heights, any of the following ideas can help take your business blog from ordinary to epic:

1. Radical transparency. Want to really blow people away? Give them your secrets! The idea of radical transparency is often used on financial posts, in which business owners or individuals talk about their income, their outstanding debts or other interesting monetary tidbits (as in the case of Pat Flynn’s income reports on his “Smart Passive Income” website).

Even if you don’t want to give away your financial info, you can adopt this same “open door” approach by going in-depth on a recent corporate decision or process. It can be scary to open yourself up in this way, but it’s a guaranteed approach to help readers connect with your business on a deeper level.

2. A complete “how-to.” “How-to” posts are always mentioned on lists of recommended blog post formats because readers really respond to them. But how often have you clicked on a “how-to” post, only to discover a sparse list of bullet points that doesn’t leave you any more educated than you were before you arrived on the site?

If you want to really make your mark, make your posts so epic that people walk away with a complete understanding of the process you’re trying to teach (as in the case of the lengthy “How To Use Goodreads” tutorial pictured above). Using a combination of words, images and video files so that any reader can put the steps you’re describing into action is an easy way to generate blog interest.

3. Massive list posts. Again, list posts are a popular blog post format because they do tend to capture more attention than other structures. But that said, it’s getting harder and harder to stand out with lists of five to 10 items. Want to be truly epic? Create a massive list post with around 100 entries (or even more, if you’re feeling ambitious). Check out the following links for great examples of these types of posts