Coming up with fresh content ideas for your blog isn’t always easy, but keep an eye out for questions in the comments. Save them, horde them, and when you need a quick post, take that question – copy and paste it into your blog and answer it – for the most part they perhaps have written themselves. It’s a bit like getting to skip ahead in line. Perfect for those busy days when your calendar is full but you want to get a blog post published.
That was easy, wasn’t it?
Of course, you want to answer your readers right away when you see the comment come up. Go ahead and do that. But keep a mental tab on this question and ask yourself this:
- Will other people have the same question? (99% of the time the answer will be yes)
- Is there more I can share on the topic?
If you answer yes to both questions (and odds are you will), then the commenter question qualifies for a follow up blog post. And that’s exactly what it is; a follow up to the original comment question and your answer.
Start by introducing the topic or question. Share the question and then let your readers know that you wanted to give a more detailed answer, thus the new blog post. Share the answer you gave the reader in the original comment and elaborate as you see fit. That’s it. A quick and easy blog post and for a portion all you had to do was copy and paste.
Format it, add a graphic and you’re ready to hit publish. Rinse and repeat with other questions as they pop up in your comments. Readers love these types of posts because they often had the exact same question, but they were too shy to ask.
If you find yourself with quite a few questions, you may even want to make this a new featured category on your blog. It will quickly become a valuable resource to your readers. It will save you time in the long run. By being thorough in your answer, it will not only apply to this exact question but a multitude of related questions. As and when they pop up in the comments, all you have to do is reply with a link to the post. Think of it as a way to create your own personal FAQ section of the blog.
