4 Content Types That Will Make Your Blog Rock
A big reason blogs fail is they don't publish the right types of content. These four content types offer some serious benefits for improving your blog.
Contact
Print- Brand building and brand awareness;
- Positioning your company (or individuals at your company) as thought leaders in a space;
- Positioning your company as an authoritative source of information for your niche;
- Connecting with your customers and building relationships;
- A platform to spread the word about company news, updates, events, and accolades.
- Generating inbound links, which help to drive referred visits and improve your site's SEO value and search rankings;
- The ability to rank on more searches in more search verticals for a wider basket of keywords that are relevant to your business.
All of this helps your business to achieve its ultimate goal: selling more products and services.
Now, many small businesses owners do in fact blog, yet they lament blogging and claim it doesn't work. I've been doing professional blog strategy consulting for more than five years, and in my experience one of the primary reasons business bloggers don't see results is they don't publish the right types of content.
In this article, I want to take a look at four different content types that every company can leverage to get more out of blogging.
Blog Content Types, Benefits, and Practical Applications
1) Interviews and Group Interviews: Conduct an interview with an influencer, prominent blogger, thought leader, or group of thought leaders in your particular industry or niche.
When it comes to blog content, I'm a big fan of leveraging content that works harder for me, and allows me to scale my efforts and produce exponential results. Conducting interviews is a good example of content that provides a multitude of benefits, including:
- User-generated content: You write the questions, they write the answers;
- Ego stroking: Most people are flattered to be the subject of an interview/spotlight;
- Relationship building with prominent people in your industry, which has added benefits like:
- Brand evangelism: They can become brand advocates;
- Inbound links: They will potentially link back to the interview from their site/blog;
- Social activity: They promote the interview via their social media accounts.
When it comes to conducting group interviews (with a bunch of interviewees), the benefits and results are even more pronounced because you're building relationships and connections with an array of people in your industry.
Practical applications: The biggest stumbling block here is most website owners don't know whom to interview in their niches, so I always like to give examples. Say you're in the senior living space, you could interview someone who's an Alzheimer's expert for an article on choosing the right assisted living facility for Alzheimer's patients, which could coincide with National Memory Screening Day for some built in promotion.
If you're looking for examples of group interviews and group interview formats, here are two great examples of group interviews to get you started.
2) Link bait: Content designed specifically to generate attention and inbound links to your website is what's commonly known as "link bait." Specific types of link bait include:
- Infographics
- Lists
- Videos
- Authoritative guides and industry reports (research and stats)
- Polls and surveys
- Contests, sweepstakes, giveaways
- Interviews
- Free tools and widgets
- Hot topics
- Quizzes
- Awards
- Humorous articles
- Rants
- Attacks: picking a fight with someone in the industry, calling someone out
Note: Read my AllBusiness article "12 'Link-Bait' Techniques to Boost Your Site's Search Rankings" for even more information.
Practical applications: The examples I could list here are endless, but when it comes to infographics, Mint.com publishes some excellent graphics. With industry reports and authoritative guides, I'm a fan of the security guides from Veracode, like the "Cross Site Scripting (XSS) Tutorial and Cheat Sheet." The Oatmeal and Stuff White People Like are great examples of humor that generates a ton of sharing and attention.
Another link bait type I love are lists, which work for any industry, whether you run site that compares heating oil prices (ex. "14 Ways to Reduce Your Heating Bill this Winter") or a even a site that makes silk lingerie (think fashion, for example "The Top 21 Fashion Bloggers on Tumblr").
3) Curated, weekly roundups: Weekly roundups are collections of the best articles and blog posts that have been published in your specific industry or niche.
What I really like about curated roundup blog posts is they're pretty easy to pull together, and they offer a variety of benefits from relationship building to ego-stroking and link building -- and no matter your niche, even if it's a topic as mundane as pest control or planning corporate events.
Practical applications: Here's a great article on leveraging curation-type blog posts that includes a range of tools and tactics to launching your own weekly roundup.
4) Guest posting: You allow people to contribute guest articles to your blog.
The key benefits of publishing guest articles from other people is that you're getting FREE content for your blog, and you don't have to lift a finger (well, except to vet the article). Plus, posting guest articles on your blog helps to build a relationship with the guest blogger and also helps to build an active and engaged community with your audience.
How do you promote the fact that you're accepting guest bloggers? Advertise on your blog, promote it your company Facebook page, your Twitter account, and even include a note in your email marketing efforts or newsletters to clients.
