No-Fail Content Strategies For a Blog

The Most Working Content Strategies for Your Blog

The blogosphere – it’s getting pretty crowded out there. And it’s just like anything else when there is lots of competition. The winners are those who come up with the new, unique ideas and strategies. So, if your blog is languishing out there with no growth in traffic, you obviously need to do something different. Here are some very practical strategies you could begin to implement today to change the popularity of your blog.

Give the Readers What They Want

You may think your blog has great topics. They may be great topics for you, but you are not writing for yourself. You have to do the research to find out what your target audience is talking about, what it is interested in. There are plenty of sources for this. Get on the blogs of your competitors and read the comments and conversations that are going on. Use Buzzsumo – you can type in keywords and find the most read blogs related to them. Then fashion your blogs along the same topics. Get on Quora. You can search by keywords there too, and up will pop questions that people are asking about those topics.

Lighten Up

A blog that is full of seriousness can be a “drag.” When you fill your blog with dry content, people are not engaged or entertained. If you adopt a conversational tone and insert some humor and/or cool quotes, people will stay engaged and, even better, will want to share your content with others.

Simplify

You may have received wonderful grades in English composition, but most of your readers did not. Their reading and vocabulary levels are pretty much at the middle school level, and you need to match that level. Long compound sentences were great for research papers you used to write. They are not great now. You have to simplify your style, like you are writing a letter to a 7th grader.

Get Your Readers Interacting

You need to get conversations going on your post. Ask questions at the end of your posts – questions that will stimulate opinions, views, and stuff to contribute. Everyone likes his/her voice to be heard – encourage your readers to do that.

Speaking of Interaction

Do you have stuff in your posts that will allow readers to actively participate? How about some polls or surveys, and they can provide an email address so that you can send them the results? Now you have them engaged in your post and you have just gotten an email address for future contact. Win-win. And while you are at it, ask your readers to share those polls and surveys with their social media communities – let others spread the content that you have.

Titles

The first engagement you get from a read is that title. It needs to be compelling and intriguing. What can you say in just a few words that will make a reader want to go on? Many successful bloggers say they sometimes spend more time coming up with great titles than they do with writing their actual posts. If you are not the creative type, find someone who is, or use some of the title generator tools at your disposal – many of them are free.

Openings

Your opening sentence or two should continue that engagement. Say something shocking; say something really funny; write an anecdote; insert a wonderful quote. Open with something that keeps interest.

Storytelling

This is one of the best strategies for blog posts. Tell your story; tell stories about your team; tell stories about your customers. Everyone will read a good story – humorous, sad, poignant, or scary. These things appeal to emotions, and when emotions are involved, people are engaged.

Feature Your Customers

Happy customers can bring much to your brand, and writing posts that feature those customers gives lots of human interest – the more human interest you can generate, the more readers will like and share your content.

Visuals

This cannot be emphasized enough. If you are not inserting visuals into your posts, you will just not attract people who want to read what you have. Photos and images are good; infographics that can replace text are great. The less people have to read and the more they can see, the better. You must have at least one great visual with every post. And there are super tools out there now that will let you create your own.

Format

There are several format strategies that you should incorporate:

1. Have scrolling sharing buttons: This is a simple plugin – the buttons will follow the reader down the page. If a reader comes upon something that really “hits home,” and wants to share it, there is no searching for the share buttons. And only put three or so – buttons to social media where your customers hang out.
2. Divide up your text into lots of short paragraphs with bolded sub-headings. People want to scan your stuff until they find something of interest. The same goes for lists that are numbered or bulleted. Break up that content so that nothing looks like an essay
3. Use your rails – right and left. You can put interesting stuff on the sides that will attract attention – a hot of yourself with a short bio; a picture of your dog with a great caption; some great quotes or short jokes. And change those jokes and quotes out often so there is always something new to come to your blog for.

These strategies are things that you can incorporate quickly and easily. And they don’t cost anything! You can compete with the “big boys” if your blog is a place for interaction, conversation, great information and entertainment. All it takes is a commitment and your time.