How to Increase Blog Traffic with Exceptional Content
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Thousands of content pieces are published across the web every day. Each piece is created to give client brands a powerful and effective way to reach their customers, gain loyalty and acquire sales along the way.
Content marketing engages and informs new customers, pays dividends forever, supports various levels of the consumer buyer journey and drives profitable action to your business.
One of the challenges bloggers face involves the actual content creation process. You may ask:
Try using this list to spark ideas for creating fast yet effective content:
By turning the table to your target audience and creating relevant content, you can resonate better with your customers. Publish a social media update on your blog’s social properties with an open-ended comment like:
“What kind of problems are you having with [X]?”
Then take the questions and answer each of them in a separate blog post.
You can also survey your current blog readers inviting them to share feedback and asking them what they would like to read next. These mini-questionnaires are easy to set up with conversational form plugin.
Consider providing your customers with a free gift, template, or entrance in a giveaway upon completing your form.
Pick an incentive that is relevant to your blog to make sure that it’s something your users will be interested in and watch the feedback coming in… Just make sure to follow through on your promise of incentives or that feedback might end up being entirely negative.
This way, you will also be nurturing relationships with your readers and generating some unique content.
Visual content is the bee's knees for digital platforms (smartphones, tablets and PCs) and infographics are a prime example of digital-friendly and linkable visual content.
Infographics drive links which are key to organic search visibility.
You may think that infographics are hard to produce, but with the help of some online tools like Visme, Venngage or even using Powerpoint, the creation process is simple.
Using infographics you can expand your marketing opportunities. It is also a great way to dominate more related SERPs in Google if you use simple image SEO practices. Infographics also make great lead magnets!
Everyone loves tools, but it is getting too difficult to choose one because there are so many software products in just about any niche. Create blog content that compares two products within your topic or industry.
Provide a detailed and objective look at the pros and cons of the product or service against another. Your candid review can also subliminally develop trust with your audience.
These types of articles are pretty easy to rank. Don’t forget to use basic SEO practices to rank your article for those brand-driven articles.
Collect interesting statistics on a subject matter related to your business and curate it into a blog post. Top 10, 20, 50 or even 100 lists are great - people like getting information in one, curated area.
These statistical lists are easy to make and resourceful for your readers.
Similar to the statistical list, listicles allow you to rank the top influencers, industry resources, blog posts you’ve created as a brand, curate “best of” or “worst of” content… The list goes on (pun intended).
You will have fun writing the content, and at the same time, your readers’ brains will appreciate the organized and easy-to-digest nature of the content. Don’t agree that listicles are effective?
If you have writer’s block from writing dozens of 500-word blog posts for your business, think outside your own wheelhouse. Ask high-ranked individuals from within your company, influential people within your industry, or even high-ranked individuals from complementary brands to be interviewed for your brand’s blog.
Your job: coming up with a list of engaging, unique questions, ushering the interviewee along in the process, and sandwiching the interview (or, in this case, group interview) with an intro and conclusion.
The process of doing this takes less time than writing a post yourself, and it will probably have more legs. Brush up on your interview skills if you decide to make it a more personal profile. Annie is a great example of doing personal interviews well.
Is it nearing the end of the year, and you want to produce content that stands out from the holiday clutter?
This idea easily combines with the above one: Crowdsource the opinions of multiple thought leaders within your organization or industry to predict future trends within your space.
Does your brand host or participate in Twitter chats? Twitter chats typically only last an hour, and the content published is soon washed away by more recent updates.
Make the content evergreen by publishing the Twitter chat on your brand’s blog and sharing using the respective hashtag for the Chat.
Interview an influencer in a live video, transcribe the interview, then publish it on your blog. You can take that idea even further and transcribe someone else’s interview and enhance that format with subheadings and takeaways.
Brian Harnish does that very well with Google’s Hangouts:You can use Google Workspace to create those transcriptions.
Too much of anything may not be good for your blog. If you start publishing interview after interview, for example, you may quickly lose your identity. So experiment with different cool formats, but keep your unique style.
However, if you find yourself enjoying a particular format and see great results from it, consider creating a separate project to focus on what really works.
If you decide to go that route, here’s a tip for you: Use Namify, which is a free tool to find fantastic domains. I think I have too many domains due to this little tool!
Remember that a successful content strategy will drive the type of content you need to create. Consistent, valuable information tailored to your target market will convert targeted consumers into buyers.
What other types of content does your organization use to drive traffic?
