Are you suffering from blogger’s block? Or, just wondering how to liven up your blog so that you can find a better connection with your audience? If so, you’re not alone. Most content marketers struggle with this at some stage of their journey— maintaining a blog that’s consistently exciting isn’t easy. Luckily, over the years at Justwords, we’ve been able to figure out certain types of content that can immediately boost your blog calendar. What’s more, with different types of content, you can even recycle old content in new formats — like old wine in a new bottle, so to speak. So if you’re looking to make your blog richer or increase blog traffic, make sure you incorporate these 10 types of content. How-to articles/tutorials An effective how-to article is one of the best ways to draw attention from your readers. Here’s why: Many queries on Google are related to learning to do something — whether that’s changing a tire, baking a cake, or writing a good blog post. A how-to post guarantees that you will be found by people looking to solve a specific problem. “How to” posts come under the category of “evergreen content”. This means that as long as you keep making minor updates, your article will continue to be relevant to users, even if they are reading it 3-4 years down the line. This increases the longevity of your post and brings a steady stream of traffic. It’s a great way of informing people about your business. If your how-to post is essentially a summary or short glimpse of what your business does, you’ll definitely be in the minds of users when they’re looking for a paid solution. Also Read: 8 Proven Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Blog in 2020 Topical, curated content You don’t have to do Content creation from scratch — curating a newsletter with high-value content from thought leaders in your industry is a great way to add that extra zing to your blog. You need to keep a few things in mind here: Choose quality over quantity— only share articles that add value to the users. If you spend time in researching quality content, it will help build your credibility as an industry expert. The format and theme of the newsletter are critical — it’s the way you link different pieces together and showcase them through a particular lens that really matters. The frequency of a curated newsletter depends on the nature of your content, and how easy it is to find quality content in your industry — it can be weekly, fortnightly, monthly or even daily. Also Read: How to Write Content That is Future-Proofed for Google Algorithm Updates Product Reviews and Comparisons If it makes sense in your content marketing plan, product reviews or comparisons are a great idea. Customers are always looking for reviews before they make purchase choices so this one is guaranteed to get you those eyeballs. These blogs are also fairly straightforward to execute and can become a staple part of your blogging calendar as long as they don’t detract from the overall messaging and aesthetics of your blog. Of course, once you become a regular with reviews, chances are that you’ll be inundated with free samples of products, which is a nice little bonus! Also Read: How Customer Reviews Can Bring a Whole New Meaning to Your Content Marketing Infographics It is said that 70% of all sensory receptors are in your eyes — which means that humans are visually wired. What’s more, color visuals are likely to increase our willingness to read something by 80%. In short, anything that’s extremely visual is appealing — and that’s why infographics are becoming so popular. Some things to keep in mind: Infographics are a combination of great content and great design. It’s important to have a great theme, a particular format for presenting the content, and some great data to back you up. At the same time, you need a top-notch design— consider using a professional graphic artist to build those infographics. If you can’t create your own infographic, you can still share existing infographics. Most of them are ready to be embedded — so add a paragraph or two of your own perspective, and share an existing infographic. Also Read: Visual content formats that can triple your content marketing results Case Studies Case studies are one of the most effective ways to demonstrate your value to potential users. If you’ve already achieved fantastic outcomes for someone, a prospective customer needs to know that. Keep the following in mind when designing case studies: It might be tempting to throw in all the facts about a particular case. But it’s more important to design a compelling narrative that draws readers in. If a user reading your case is able to connect with the situation being presented, your job is 70% done. Focus on outcomes — big, important metrics make a huge splash. Showcasing the impact you had in a real, meaningful way will go a long way in finding the right customers. Don’t try to show off your work. Be more focused on showcasing the actual solving of customer problems through the case. Using these content types is a sure-shot way to get more blog traffic and add some freshness. Best of all, many of these content types can become a recurring feature in your blogging calendar. If there are any other content formats that you’d like to add to this list, let us know in the comments below!
Tag: how to increase blog traffic
8 Proven Ways to Increase Traffic to Your Blog in 2020
Currently, there are close to 250 million blogs in the internet-verse. Many of them are vying for your target audience’s attention. However, there are only a few blogs that enjoy a constant flow of traffic and engagement. If you want to make your blog among those select few, read on. Blog marketing needs skills, persistence and patience. Of the strategies mentioned below, some will get you high traffic quickly while others will put your traffic on a slow increase. You’ll have to use a mix of both these methods to start reaping benefits from your blog. 1. Check the UI/UX of your blog If you started a while back, chances are that your blog wasn’t fully mobile responsive. With mobile being the medium of choice for 70% of the audience in most markets, it is important to have a clean responsive design. In addition to this, readable fonts, large alluring imagery, content chunking, lead capture mechanisms are some of the basics that need to be in place. Don’t forget to check the page speed of your blog to remove any unwanted code and manage the size of the images you upload. Having these hygiene checks in place seems to be the most obvious thing to do but still many bloggers don’t pay as much attention to it due to paucity of time. 2. Get your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) practices in order SEO is the slow burn way to increase traffic to your blog. The optimization you do today is likely to drive traffic in the next few years. SEO best practices suggest that each page on a site should be optimized for one particular keyword. Blogs come in handy when you have a lateral keyword strategy. They help in introducing your product, telling a story, drawing a happy picture with testimonials and reeling in a prospect. To ensure the blog continues to draw traffic, build quality links to all the inner pages. 3. Build a marketing plan for every single blog post This one is a difficult strategy even for seasoned bloggers. At times, most bloggers are caught between writing a new blog every week while also marketing the new one or the one before that. In most cases, the mandatory posting to social happens once, maybe twice, and then the article disappears into an obscure corner of your website. To get out of this rut, the best way is to have a plan for each blog. Here are a few ideas on building a plan Target each blog to a different niche of your base: If you blog about parenting, you can break down topics into categories like health and nutrition, academics, extracurricular activities and emotional wellbeing. A blog under each of these topics can be marketed by tying up with leading websites in the category to push traffic to your blog. Eventually, you’ll have a rich link history built to your websites. Put the basics in place for every blog: Have a scheduler in place to ensure each blog is visible by different audiences across social channels. Maintain a re-marketing sheet: Once a blog has run its course of initial visibility, add it to a re-marketing sheet. Use topics that are over 4 months old to occasionally re-post on social. Update your seasonal posts: If you’ve created a blog on the top Diwali sweets, do some general rewriting and post it as fresh content. This helps you to recycle old content with minimal fuss. Also Read: 10 Incredible Blogging Stats to Inspire You to Blog in 2020 4) Publish posts regularly A little bit of procrastination and a whole lot of ‘I don’t have time’ generally leads to blogs being published with delay. Having a schedule is an interesting way to get your reader base habituated to expecting blogs from you at fixed intervals. The best way to do this is to go all out and start a weekly or bi-monthly newsletter which includes the blogs you have published. With deadlines looming close, you will force yourself for faster closures and publishing cycles. Start with a simple schedule like publishing a blog every Friday and sending out an email to your subscriber base on a Saturday. This gives you the entire week to be productive and close a blog post on time. 5) Connect with other bloggers While one blogger can add value, a group of bloggers of the same niche can be an invaluable resource when it comes to brand collaborations. Grow your subscriber base so that you can hold your own when you interact with other bloggers. Through offline events or with thoughtful comments online, you can slowly and steadily build your blogger connect to network. Eventually, cross-linking to resources can be a valuable way to drive incremental traffic. You can also take this a notch up by guest posting on others’ blogs or allowing guest posting on yours. 6) Create rich content for your blogs A story can have different narratives depending on the channel used for the narration. From text to video, to images to cinemagraphs to infographics, every piece of content can give a different cut to a specific user base. Aim to imagine the formats of the story before making it completely. That way, you will be able to make some changes on the go. Also Read: Move over blogs, articles. Here are new content formats to consider 7) Promote on social Though this one is obvious, we don’t see a lot of people doing this right. If you are writing for an international audience, you can use buffer or Hootsuite to schedule posting at times that can work well for other time zones. Tagging your relevant target base on social is a great way to get them to repost/retweet your blog. You can also run contests that have answers hidden in your blog. You can run a Q&A session with an expert or ask your target audience for feedback and comments. The plan is to know which one you want to try for which post