Do you get stuck when it comes to writing new blog posts or newsletters for your business? Everybody does at a point in time.

I have compiled a list of 25 topics you can use as a basis for writing your next 25 articles.

In this post, I have substituted “community” to replace “customers, clients and subscribers”. So when you see ‘community’, it may mean any of the three words.

Fasten your seat belt and let’s begin ;

1. What we did when customer ‘X’ …; Who is customer X and what did they do or say about your products? Where did they do or say it and why did they do or say it?

2. Product/service updates we’re working on. So your already awesome products are getting even more awesome features. Your community needs to know about this.

3. Why our competitors can’t compete with us. Show your customers your remarkable side. A truly remarkable company is almost like a monopoly. Do you agree?

4. What our customers complain most about and what we are doing about it. Your customers are not happy about … and what you’re doing to make it better.

5. What our customers praise us for and what we think about it. Your customers say you are the best at … Your products helped them to … And you say you …

6. What we wish our customers will help us achieve more of. In other words, you will be telling your customers that you need their help and they will be glad to help. At the end of your message, ask, “will you help us?”

7. About our product’s raw materials. What important roles does each of your raw materials play in your products? Educate your community on what they are using.

8. How our company is using social media. Social media is going to help you do what? Use the right words to build up your content. Instead of saying it will help you sell more, say; it will help you reach more customers. If you say ‘sell’ your message will sound self-centered. It’s cool to see more people will be taking the same actions your community took when they first met you.

9. What features we have on our Facebook fan page. So you have analytics, a cool video, cool design and a newsletter on your Facebook fan page. That’s so cool. Before saying “go and take a look at our fan page”, tell them the cool things you have put on there. Most will go and really take a look.

10. Videos we shared on our Youtube channel this day/week/month/quarter/year. Okay, so you’re on Youtube and you have a channel. Have you told your community about it? Many people don’t. Instead integrating, they disintegrate. Tell your community about your Youtube channel and the videos you share there.

11.What people say @ us on Twitter. Show your community that there are conversations going on with you on Twitter. Some will automatically follow you and say something @ you.

12.Our best selling items and why they sell so well. You have bragging rights. Use them. Want to sell more of your products, brag and sell more.

13. What lessons other businesses can learn from us. Flaunt your strengths and achievements to your community. Add that you couldn’t have done it without them.

14.What our last survey showed us about our customers. You surveyed your customers, now show them the results and let them know what you will be using the results for. As a customer, I hate it when I participate in a survey and don’t get to see the results. Don’t be mean. Please share .

15.Why and how we chose our brand ambassador. What are the responsibilities of your brand ambassador(s)? How did you choose them? Choose your brand ambassador from your own customers please.

16. Who our partners are and why we partnered with them. Tell your community why you need your partners and why it matters to them.

17. How we built our communities on social media and networking sites; Show them how you gathered all your following. Show them how you cheated or failed to cheat . Show them some stats to serve as social proof, if you numbers are high.

18. How and why we got featured in the news or a top blog. Show your community how likable you are. This will let them take you serious and they will see you as an authority in whatever you got in the news for. Link to the news source.

19. New businesses/ services we are building. What’s happening in production? Give just a little detail to build anticipation.

20. When our next contest will be hosted and what we will be giving away. Build anticipation and get your community coming back to see if there are any updates concerning the competition. WildfireApp can help you run a fancy, buzz filled contest campaign.

21. What your company’s customer traditions are; Maybe you give away a bundle of products for cheap during your birthday or you organize meetups during your birthday for your customers to meet each other or you … etc.

22. How to use ‘your product’s name’ to … Show your customers different ways they can use your products. If your products are customizable, show them how they can customize them.

23. How we celebrated our birthday in-house; What did your company’s employees do on your birthday? Share some multimedia will you .

24. How and why we choose our customers for our adverts; Show your customers the reason why you care about them.

25. Customer interview #1; yea, interview customers on your blog, ask them what they think about your products, how they use your products, what they will like to see in your products, etc. This will serve as testimonials and will add some humanness to your website/blog. Reward interviewed customers with a heavy discount or free stuff from your product line. They will send the word out and … you know what will happen . Don’t forget to change “#1″ to “#2″, “#3″ and so on as you interview more customers.

That was fun. Now you have 25 topics to write on. Get started today. Do you see yourself using these post ideas on your blog or newsletter? What do you normally struggle with when it comes to blogging or writing newsletters? Share your views.

Blog auditing can be explained as an examination of all aspects of a blog to measure its effectiveness. It is a way of finding and fixing faults concerning your blog. It is an essential technique for general blog improvement.

You will need to take a pen and paper or open a word editor to take notes and answer the questions in this article.

I have divided each the audit questions into easy to adapt categories so that you will be able to understand the audit better. You should also divide your audits into these categories.

Now that we are all set, let’s start.

Design Audit

• Are my colors well blended? Ask yourself if your brand’s colors is well blended with your website colors. For example, if you have a brown website design and a pink logo, that is “yuck”.

• What can I cut out from my sidebar? So many people put unnecessary widgets on their blog’s sidebar that does nothing but to clutter the design of the blog. Remove the irrelevant widgets and leave only the relevant ones. I consider the calendar widget irrelevant. What widget do you find irrelevant? Remove it from your blog, fast.

• Do I have the essential pages set up? Basic pages you need for your blog aside your homepage are: “About” page and “Contact” page. You can have additional pages you find relevant. Examples are: “Resources” page, “Services” page, and a Customized 404 page. Michael Dunlop from IncomeDiary recently wrote about 20+ Blog Pages Every Blogger Needs To Have.

• Are comments and trackbacks separated? Comments+trackbacks in the same box= Clutter. Separate comments from track backs. Read Separate Trackbacks from Comments on Your WordPress Blog to help you do that if you don’t already have them separated.

• Do I have an author box? An author box gives your readers a brief description about the person who wrote the article they just read. When you have guest post writers, author boxes introduces them to your readers.

Subscriptions Audit

• Are my subscription boxes well placed? Make sure your subscription boxes are well placed. To increase the number of people who subscribe to your blog, place your subscription boxes in multiple areas. Very good places you can place your boxes are: directly after posts (before the comments box), in your sidebar, a “Subscriptions” or “Join Us” page.

• Do I have bait for my subscription boxes? By bait, I mean a freebie or any other valuable offer. Have a reward for people who subscribe to your newsletter, follow you on Twitter and “Like” you on Facebook. Common rewards people give out are eBooks, e-courses, website themes, et cetera.

• Do I have any social proof to show? Apart from baits, sometimes you will need to show visitors to your blog that other people read your content. You can do this by showing your subscription numbers; Facebook fan page subscribers, Twitter followers and RSS subscription numbers. If you don’t have large subscription numbers, don’t show it on your blog. Other ways of showing social proof are: Top commentators, number of times your articles have been read, recent visitors using Mybloglog or Amungus, et cetera. There are plugins that can help you display these info to people.

Content Audit

• Is my content easy to read and understand? Cut out jargon, write concisely and cut out big vocabulary. It turns people off. Make your content as easy to understand as possible. Images and graphics can also be added to make your content easy to digest.

• What calls to action can I use on each page? Make your blog like a book. When someone visits your homepage, where will be the next place you will want them to go to? Perhaps your “Subscribe” or “Join us” page or maybe straight to your pillar article pages. On your article pages, perhaps you will want to “call” people to subscribe by placing your subscription box in your article. Use the appropriate design and calls to action to move your visitor from page 1 to page n.

• How can I increase page views? You can increase page views by installing a “related posts” plugin or by linking to your older articles. Setting up a “resources” page has also been known to increase number of page views.

• Are my headlines catchy? Do your headlines have “read” appeal? Your headlines should grab the attention of the people you are writing the article for. If you are not able to grab their attention with your headline, they may never read your content.

• Do I have link bait content? Contents that have tremendous value are considered link bait. This is because they are more likely to be linked to by other bloggers. Examples of link bait content are “How to” articles and list posts.

• Is my content well formatted? You need to have a formatting style and stick to it. Consider colors you will use as sub-headings, headline tags you will use, your in-post thumbnail positions, et cetera. Once you’ve made your choices, stick to it.

Monetization Audit

• Is my current monetization method working? Do you have banner ads on your sidebar with affiliate links in them? Have you made any sales in the past month or 2? Do you have Adsense on your blog? Are you making enough from it? If your monetization methods are not working, change them, don’t quit your blog. I used to monetize my blog wrongly but now, I have found a better way to monetize it.

• What other monetization methods can I employ? You can choose any monetization you find suitable from the following list:

1) Making and selling digital goods such as eBooks, video tutorials, graphic design, web templates, et cetera.

2) Starting a membership site

3) Providing services like writing, coaching, setting up blogs, or any service related to the niche you blog about.

4) Selling ad spaces privately.

5) Selling other people’s products; a.k.a. affiliate marketing.

Before you start with any of the monetization methods, make sure you have some proof of success. Say,

1) When you are doing affiliate marketing or Adsense, you need to make sure you have enough traffic if you want to get real results.

2) Before you can sell banner ads, you have to be able to show advertisers that people read your site by showing them some stats.

3) Before you start a membership site on your topic, you should have had some success or experience that you can show and tell people about.

4) Before providing coaching services, you should have enough knowledge and experience about the service you are selling.

Marketing Audit

• Do I have guest posts out on other blogs? Guest posting is one cool way of getting your blog noticed. It also helps you get more inbound links and helps increase your page rank and search engine rankings if you optimize your byline.

• Do I have a well branded social media presence? Do your Social media profiles have your logo on them? What about your Fan page names, Youtube channel names and Twitter handles? Do they have your brand name in them? What about your Facebook fan page landing pages, Twitter backgrounds and Youtube backgrounds?

• Is my blog showing up in all the major search engines? You need to submit your blog to the major search engines. Make sure your site is showing up in the search engines. Check your analytics results to see if you are getting any visits from some search engines. Search for your blog in the major search engines. If your blog is not there, submit it.

• Do my comments on other blogs start conversations? Don’t just leave “Thank you” comments. They are boring and so common. Leave insightful comments that generate conversations. This can help you build new relationships with other bloggers.

Measurement Audit:

• Do I have analytics installed?  Are you tracking your blog’s visitors? If you are, that’s great. If you are not tracking, better start now. Set up your analytics system and track your visitors. If you can add heatmap tracking, it will give you more insight about what you visitors do on your blog.

• Do I have brand mention alerts set up? Set up alerts in Google Alerts and SocialMention so that you can get notified of any mentions of your brand online. You will get email notifications when someone mentions your brand on Twitter, on their blog, in forums, on Facebook, and any other online places you can think of.

• Which content of your post types get the most comments? Can you work on more post types like those ones? Which posts get the most search engine visits?

• What keywords do you rank high for? By high ranking, I mean page or 2 in Google. Can you improve that ranking? You can check your rankings out by setting up Google Webmaster Central to track that data for you if you don’t already have a system to check that.

Conclusion Au…(uh-um):

After performing the audit, develop a day to day plan to help you fix the stuff that you have not already worked on. You can develop a 10 day plan, 20 day plan or even 30 day plan to help you fix your blog.

What questions will you add to these when performing a blog audit?