Blogging can be an emotional roller coaster.
When you get a lot of positive comments, shares and high engagement metrics, all your hard work is worth while.
But it sucks when your writing is mostly ignored.
We’ve all been there. You check your analytics with eager anticipation only to be greeted with disappointment. No comments. No shares. Few page views. High bounce rate.
While there is no way to completely guarantee the former, you can stack the odds considerably in your favor before you even write a single word.
How?
Choose the types of posts proven to drive massive engagement.
The Expert Roundup
This type of post is a collection of insights from industry authorities. It works for several reasons.
First, it instantly adds credibility to a post. It’s not just you giving an opinion. It’s a recognized and respected third-party expert. Their words carry more weight with readers and yours or mine.
Second, people like to associate themselves with successful individuals. That’s exactly what readers do when they share an expert roundup.
Finally, it puts these influential experts in your corner. After all, who doesn’t like to be recognized and appreciated? Often, the experts in the roundup will share the post with all their followers, which can give you a huge traffic spike. Even more importantly, it opens the door to a potential relationship with those power players.
That’s what Tor Refsland found when he published a roundup.
The results were impressive, including 20,231 views in just 6 days, over 1,500 shares, 84 comments and 185 new email subscribers.
Here’s how to do your own roundup post:
Step 1. Identify experts and influencers in your industry.
You can probably think of a few top influencers off the top of your head. That’s a great place to start. Then you can fill out your list with a tool like BuzzSumo.
BuzzSumo also shows you how many followers each influencer has. Choose influencers with a large following to increase your potential reach.
Another way to find influencers is to search for other roundup posts in your niche. People who have contributed to these types of articles in the past may be willing to do so again.
Step 2. Find their email addresses.
There are a few ways to do this. The easiest is to sign up for the influencers’ email lists, if they have one. If they don’t, then you can try guessing. HubSpot Sales can help you determine if the address you enter is valid.
If all else fails, you can try a paid solution like BuzzStream, ContentMarketer or VoilaNorbert.
Step 3. Reach out with a brief email.
These are busy people, so you need to make your request quick and easy. Get right to the point and limit yourself to one specific question.
Tip: If you have trouble getting enough responses to your email, you can supplement your answers with quotes an expert has already given. You can often find what you need on their websites or in published interviews.
Step 4. Write your post.
The responses will make up the majority of the post. Be sure to include a photo and short bio of each expert to leverage the power of their personal brands. Then simply add a unique introduction, conclusion and headline.
Step 5. Be sure to let your experts know when your post goes live.
This way, your influences can share your post with their followers and drive traffic to your site.
The Case Study
It should be pretty obvious why case studies are so appealing to readers. They offer real, tangible proof. If someone else was able to achieve these results, they could, too. And it’s easier to visualize a real example than a best practice in the abstract.
It doesn’t have to be a formal case study to be effective, either. It can even be your own journey. All you really need are specific outcomes and the path that led to them. Here are a few examples.
Case Study: How I Increased Traffic 272% In 30 Days (Without Spending A Penny)
This article was shared nearly 8,000 times on social media and generated 120 comments on Robbie Richards’ blog.
Brian Dean from Backlinko was able to produce multiple case studies on his skyscraper technique. Here are two.
Link Building Case Study: How I Increased My Search Traffic by 110% in 14 Days
White Hat SEO Case Study: How To Get a #1 Ranking
If you want to know how successful these have been, just type the term skyscraper technique into Google and see how many other sites have since written about the subject. Dean coined the term.
To write your own case study post, find a quantifiable result and determine the path that led to it. It can be something you achieved or results someone else got, like in the second Backlinko example above.
Follow these tips to make your case study truly stand out:
- Make sure the results are impressive. Few people would bother to read an article titled How I Increased Traffic 3% in Two Years.
- Provide step-by-step instructions, including images when appropriate. People don’t care what you or your client’s accomplished if they can’t replicate that success.
- Back up your claims for added credibility. For instance, if your case study is about how you increased traffic, you could include a screenshot from Google Analytics showing how your site visitors increased.
The Experiment
Admit it, whenever you come across an article like Water Fasting Results: Why I LOVED Not Eating for 5 Days, you can’t resist taking a peek. Even if you have no interest in doing this yourself, you want to learn more.
This burning desire comes from a curiosity gap. And experiment blog posts create them naturally. It isn’t quickly closed in the first few paragraphs, either.
Experiment stories can hold uncertainty and suspense throughout the length of the experiment. Each step in the journey has the potential to derail the entire experiment or lead to an epiphany.
But that’s not the only reason people can’t resist experiment posts.
When you play up the human element, your article becomes more interesting, more relatable and creates a stronger emotional response. Take Drew Manning for example. The fitness trainer purposely gained and then lost 70 pounds to inspire a client.
The story does more than just inspire, though. Having never been overweight before, Manning became more empathetic to his clients. His emotional journey mirrors what many of us go through. That has just as much to do with the popularity of the story as the remarkability of his feat.
If you want to get extra mileage out of your experiment, you can have your audience follow along as it happens. Announce what you are planning to do and post regular updates throughout the length of your experiment. That’s what Neil Patel did with his $100,000 Challenge.
This gave him a monthly topic on his editorial calendar for a full year. Even more importantly, it built anticipation among his readers. Those following along were sure to check back in for the latest update.
The Research Post
Posts based on studies, benchmarks and data analysis always seem to do well in just about every engagement category. They are credible, newsworthy and shareable. Not only that, but they tend to get a lot of backlinks from sites that use the data as supporting information.
These types of posts have been a staple at Hubspot. In fact, they have worked so well, that the inbound marketing company now has an entire subdomain devoted to it.
If you want to publish your own research post, you have three options.
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Use your own data and write about your findings.
This is the most labor intensive, but it does establish you as an authority on the subject. After all, you are the source for the data. If you’re a SaaS of technology business, you might be able to collect data from the way your clients use your solution. For instance, an email service provider could provide insights on best practices for deliverability by looking at the combined analytics of their customer base.
Another option is to survey people in your industry and publish a benchmark report. If you’re willing to put in the time and effort to collect, parse and analyze enough data, any type of business could pull this off.
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Collaborate with another company.
Working with another company on a co-branded research project has several benefits.
It’s a great way to gain access to proprietary information. Approach the company who controls the data and offer to do the work analyzing and creating original content.
If you are the one with the relevant data but you don’t have the time or resources to turn it into reader-friendly content, you can partner with someone rather than hiring contractors to do the work. Many companies are willing to do this because the benefits of a co-branded article, report or infographic is more valuable than their time for the work put into it.
It’s a great way to increase your reach. Chances are whoever you partner with will promote the content to their customers and followers. Many of these people you wouldn’t be able to reach on your own.
Last, but not least, you leverage the brand authority of your partner. If you can collaborate with a well-known and respected brand this may be the most valuable reason to take this approach.
Even if you are already an authority in your niche, you can partner with an authority in a related topic. Moz and BuzzSumo are both big brands in the content marketing world, but they focus on different aspects. By collaborating on this research, they were able to capitalize on both of their strengths.
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Curate research.
Your final option is to take research that already exists and deliver it in a uniquely valuable way. This is probably the trickiest approach of all.
Since the data isn’t proprietary, you face more competition. You need to create a reason for readers to get the information from your content instead of all the other options out there. Here are a few strategies to consider.
Combine data from several studies for a more authoritative resource. CoSchedule did that for “What 16 Studies Say About The Best Times To Post On Social Media” and got over 4,800 shares (hopefully perfectly timed! : ))
Repurpose the data or analysis into another format. Can you turn that great infographic you found into a compelling slide share branded for your company? Or expand on a research-based blog post and offer a report or e-book? Just make sure to change up the words and images a little so you aren’t completely ripping off another company’s work.
Give the data visualization an upgrade. Humans process images 60,000 times faster than words. So improving how the data is displayed can have a huge impact on your content’s appeal and value. Check out these examples for inspiration. Handle your data visualization as well as these, and you’ll be the clear choice for your target audience.
Conclusion
I won’t lie. Creating popular posts isn’t an easy task. Nothing worthwhile ever is. But the payoff is well worth the effort.
Fortunately, you don’t have to create all of these at once. Choose one type to try and get to work. Remember to promote it and track your results.
I’d love to know how it goes.
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