How to find great topics for your SaaS blog

Look at customer questions and feedback #

See what questions and concerns customers have about your product and write about how to address them.

You could create a tutorial or guide that walks users through how to use that feature. To find recurring themes in customer feedback, you can use tools like sentiment analysis or text mining to identify common keywords or phrases in customer comments.

Another way to use customer feedback in your content is to share customer success stories or testimonials. These can be collected through customer surveys, support interactions, or social media channels like Twitter. You can track customer feedback with tools like social media monitoring or customer relationship management (CRM) software. These can help you stay on top of customer sentiment and identify common themes or issues that need to be addressed.

This will not only help you create more relevant and useful content but also improve your product and customer satisfaction.

Highlight product updates and new features #

Share information about new features and updates to your product, and how they can benefit customers.

Create a separate category or tag for the blog. This will make it easier for your customers to find the content that’s most relevant to them. And as a bonus, most static site generators will create a custom RSS feed for it. Use “Product updates” or “New features” as the category or tag. At Spinal these are collected under “News” category.

While you might get excited about all the new features you just have published, it’s important to make sure that you’re not overwhelming your customers with too much information too quickly.

There are three ways you can shape you new feature:

Highlight a new feature #

Introduce the new feature to customers and provide an overview of its functionality and key benefits. It should focus on the feature itself, but it’s also important to mention the benefits it brings to the users.

Tutorials and guides #

Provide step-by-step instructions on how to use the new feature. Use detailed instructions, screenshots and videos (where needed) to help your customers understand how to use the new feature.

Use cases #

Show your customers how the new feature can be used in different scenarios. It should focus on the benefits that the new feature brings to your customer and how it can help them achieve their goals.

Share industry news and trends #

Keep an eye on industry news and trends, and write about how they relate to your product or how your product can help customers navigate those trends.

Good-old RSS is a great way to keep up-to-date on what’s happening. Other sources you should keep an eye on:

• Twitter: Follow industry thought leaders and influencers. You can also use their search to find tweets related to specific keywords and hashtags. Tweetdeck works great for this.
• Reddit: Join subreddits related to your industry. A great tool to help you with is F5Bot
• Hacker News: This is only a useful source if you are in the web/tech industry, as it’s a social news website focusing on computer science and entrepreneurship. Above mentioned F5Bot also supports HN.
• Newsletters: Many industry publications, influencers and analysts send out regular newsletter. It’s a great way to stay updated on the latest news and trends. Many popular RSS feed tools allow you to subscribe to a newsletter via their app too.

Copy verbatim or add your own take? #

Now you got all the content rolling in: what to do now? Instead of copying and pasting news from these sources, it’s better to write your own take and give your perspective (John Gruber over at Daring Fireball does a tremendous job on this).

You can also add your own examples and case studies, to make it more relatable to your audience. Including your own analysis or predictions on how the news will impact your industry and customers, can help make you an authority on the subject.

Offer tips and best practices #

Share tips and best practices for using your product to help customers get the most out of it.

How-to guides #

These provide step-by-step instructions on how to perform specific tasks or achieve specific goals using your product. Add screenshots or videos to make it easier for your customers to follow along.

Best practices #

Provide your customers with recommendations on how to use your product in the most efficient and effective way. They can include tips on how to optimise performance, improve productivity or avoid common mistakes.

Tips and tricks #

Quick and easy-to-implement tips on how to get the most out of your product: who doesn’t love those?! They can be short and to the point, making them easy for your customers to read and implement.

A great way to improve any engagement is through video. It can be more engaging and easier to understand than written content. Be sure to embedded on the blog post. Keep in mind that blogs can still be more easily indexed by search engines, making them more discoverable by potential customers.

Showcase customer success stories #

Share success stories from your customers, highlighting how your product has helped a customer achieve their goals. But writing these is a tad bit more difficult as it involves a third-party (your customer). There might be willing to help you, but they might be time constrained. Some ideas to make help you get the most out of your customer success stories.

Streamline the process #

Reach out to customers via email to ask if they are willing to participate in a customer success story. If they agree, provide them with a template or questionnaire to fill out that will help them organize their thoughts and provide the information you need.

Get extra media #

If your customer is willing, ask them to provide photos or videos of (someone on) their team using your product or screenshots of the results they achieved. This will make the story more engaging and provide visuals for your blog post.

Use a case study format #

Instead of writing a long-form article, consider using a case study format. This includes a brief overview of the customer, their problem, the solution provided by your product, and the results achieved.

Extract a quote #

Instead of asking the customer for a quote or testimonial that you can include in the story, extract one yourself from the text. Send it over, and ask permission to use or any tweaks they want to make.

Testimonials add a great personal touch and provide you with something you can use in future marketing material.

Use the story to create other content #

Once you have a customer success story, you can use it to create other content. You can, for example, create a video, infographics, or social media posts to share the customer story in different formats. Be sure to ask permission before you create this extra content!

Make it a regular feature #

Make customer success stories a regular feature on your SaaS blog, say once a month. This will help you build a library of customer stories that you can use to demonstrate the value of your product.

Tip: use the scheduling feature in Spinal to create a content pipeline to help with this.

Do a survey or poll #

Ask your customers what they would like to read about, and use their feedback to inform your content strategy. Some ideas, tips and best practices:

• Open-ended questions allow customers to share their own ideas and feedback
• Use a variety of channels to gather feedback: email, phone (what?!), social media or in-person meetings (what?!!).
• Encourage customers to share their own experiences, challenges, and successes and look for patterns in, such as common pain points or frequently asked questions.
• Be open to feedback and be willing to change direction if necessary.
• Make the process of collecting customer feedback a regular part of your content strategy.

Look at your competitors #

See what topics your competitors are writing about, and try to offer a different perspective or more in-depth information. It’s important to avoid the trap of copying their ideas verbatim, as this can be bad for SEO. Here are some tips to help you stay original while still getting inspiration from your competitors.

Use competitor content as a starting point, but put your own spin on the topic. Offer a different perspective, or use your own data and examples. You can also use the content to point out any misconceptions or inaccuracies. When you found some article that you think can be more in-depth, go for it. Just make sure you actually provide more value and not just more words. You can also use the competitor’s content as inspiration to create different format, like an infographic or video.

Be respectful of their intellectual property rights. Don’t copy any texts, images, videos or other assets, it’s illegal and a violation of copyright laws. For SEO purposes be careful with using the same keywords in title tag, meta description and the URL (including the slug).

Remember, the most important thing is to provide value to your audience (as mentioned as step 0 in our SEO guide), so always focus on how you can help them solve problems or achieve their goals.

Written by July Forand

Published: 9 February 2023