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Create Blog Content that Drives Engagement and Generates Leads

Learn to create blog content that drives engagement and generates leads. This training will walk you through the steps for finding writers for your blog, methods for cranking out blog content quickly, and tactics you can use to monetize your blog.

Create Blog Content that Drives Engagement and Generates Leads

What You’ll Learn:

  • Build engaging blog content quickly
  • Add methods and strategies to scale your blog and generate new leads and traffic
  • Curate and nurture an engaged email list through blog content
  • Retarget (remarket) and drive highly relevant traffic back to your offers with your blog’s content

Understand the Purpose & Role of Blog Content

Understand the Objective

In this article, we’re going to help you learn how to quickly crank out share-worthy, clickable blog content that brings in more traffic and converts more of that traffic into leads and sales.

But before we dive into the details of HOW to quickly create great content, first we need to touch on WHY it’s so important to create content in the first place.

The fact is, businesses today need a blog more than ever.

Why?

In the next lesson, we’ll detail the big 3 reasons why we create content at DigitalMarketer across all of our brands.

Why You Need Blog Content More Than Ever

Reason #1: Content Helps Maintain a Healthy Email List

These days, email marketing is an essential part of just about every business.

An engaged email list can be a huge asset to your company. But to keep your email list engaged, you need to send them valuable and entertaining content regularly.

That’s where your blog comes in.

Sending valuable, the interesting blog content to your subscribers will foster your relationship with them. You’ll train them to open and click on your emails…

Sending valuable, interesting blog content to your subscribers will foster your relationship with them. You’ll train them to open and click on your emails…

Then when you send a promotional email, later on, your audience will be much more likely to open and click on that email, too.

As a rule of thumb, you should try to email content to your list at least once a week or so.

Reason #2: Content Sells

A lot of marketers seem to have the impression that content and promotion are 2 totally separate things. Almost as if there’s this big wall between them.

But there is no wall.

Content sells. Absolutely. And this is particularly true when we’re talking about your own content, published on your own website.

Because when you’re publishing your own content, you can blend the content and the promotion. You can map your content back to an offer so that your content does more than entertain and engage—it actually pre-sells your visitors on the value of your offer.

We’ll talk about this later in the article, but for now, the main concept to grasp is that content—when it’s done right—will absolutely increase your sales.

Reason #3: Content Is Key to Retargeting

Blog content is an incredibly powerful component of retargeting (AKA remarketing).

In fact, this might even be the #1 biggest reason why we create content today.

The combination of content and retargeting is a game-changer because it gives you an incredibly effective way to drive highly relevant traffic back to your offers.

Once again, we’ll dive into the details later on in the training. So if you’re looking for the details on how to implement this—keep reading!

These are just a few of the reasons why it’s so important to create content regularly.

Of course, these aren’t the only reasons to create content. There are other, less measurable benefits as well—like fostering goodwill, credibility, trust, and authority with your audience.

But we like to focus on the 3 reasons above because they produce a measurable impact on your business.

So as you’re implementing this article, keep these 3 things in mind. And even better, keep an eye on your email metrics, your sales, and your retargeting campaigns as you begin to crank out more and more content over the coming weeks.

Create Blog Content

Create Blog Content Quickly

In this lesson, you’ll learn several methods of creating high-quality content… quickly.

Choose and use the content types that make the most sense for you and your business.

Remember, the key is to create high-quality content that can be…

  • Sent to your email subscribers to keep your list happy and healthy
  • Used to ascend traffic to Lead Magnet opt-ins and low-dollar offers
  • Used to segment your email list and retarget with ads based on a known interest

`We’ve put together 5 blog post templates that will allow you to create high-quality content FAST. The beauty of these templates is that you don’t have to sit down and write a long post all by yourself; instead, most of the content comes from other sources—such as other contributors, embedded videos or images, and so on.

Without further ado, check out the 5 types of blog content you can create quickly:

Post Type 1: Crowdsourced Post

A crowdsourced post is one of the easiest ways to quickly create fantastic content.

Essentially, the idea is that you reach out to a handful of experts in your niche, and ask them all to contribute to the same post. In most cases, you ask them all to weigh in the same topic or question the post is about. Like reaching out to executives in your field and asking them how they organize their calendars to be highly effective.

First of all, since the content is crowdsourced, the majority of the post is written for you.

And if you ask each expert a few different questions, you can even create multiple posts at once! For instance, if you ask each expert to answer 3 separate questions, you can break each set of questions out into a separate post—and have 3 blog posts completed with practically no extra work.

Finally, one of the best things about a crowdsourced post is that your experts will promote it to their own audience once it’s published. So right off the bat, these posts are more likely to generate more traffic and shares than a typical post.

Create Crowdsourced Post

Post Type 2: Content Aggregator Post

Next up is the Content Aggregator Post. As you’ll see, this is another super quick and easy way to put together a brand-new blog post.

To create a Content Aggregator-type blog post, all you need to do is take some content from other areas and put it together in one spot (your post). You’re not creating brand-new content; instead, you’re aggregating content from other sources.

This usually takes the form of a list post, and the headline typically tells you how many items are on the list.

Keep in mind, the authors most-likely did NOT write all the content in these posts. For the most part, they went out and found content that we knew our readers would appreciate, and put it all together in one place. The value that readers get out of this post is that all the material is sourced for them, saving them time. Something they’re interested in located, conveniently, in one place.

And that’s really all you need to remember for Content Aggregator posts. You’re using someone else’s content, so you need to give them credit and link back to their original article. But as long as you do that, this post is a win all around for everybody: they get a link back to their website, you get a quick and easy blog post, and the viewer gets an engaging article on a topic they’re interested in.

Create Content Aggregator Post

Post Type 3: Interview Post

Next up is the Interview Post. And this is exactly what it sounds like! You simply interview someone in your niche (preferably someone well-known) and publish the results on your blog.

Interview Posts are an especially easy type of post because you don’t have to come up with the actual content—that comes from the person you’re interviewing.

If you’re able to get a well-known person in your niche to agree to an interview, their expertise will lend massive authority to your post. And in most cases, they’ll also share the interview with their list, helping you to reach an even wider audience.

An interview post can also be a good way to get someone who’s never been on your blog before to contribute. If you’d like someone to contribute to your blog but don’t think they’d be willing to write a post…

DON’T ask: “Will you write a post for my blog?”

DO ask: “Can I interview you?”

The first question sounds like work—and nobody wants to do your work for you.

But the second question strokes the person’s ego. It makes them feel important. So to maximize your chances of your request being accepted, always ask the person if you can interview them.

It’s also best to conduct your interviews via audio, like over the phone or a Zoom call, because this will be the fastest and easiest thing for your guest.

Unlike a more formal video recording, an audio recording is more relaxed, less intimidating, and doesn’t require the production of a video. In other words, the interviewee can interview in their pajamas or not have to worry about having an interesting backdrop. They can interview in a way that’s more comfortable and convenient for them, making it more likely they’ll say yes or not cancel on you last minute. Again, you’re trying to make as little work for them as possible. As long as the content they provide is solid, you’re golden.

Just jump on a call for 15-20 minutes and make sure you record it. That way, you’ll have an audio version of the interview, which you can have transcribed to turn into a text-based post. When it’s all said and done, you’ll have a fantastic blog post that took very little time to create.

Create Interview Post

Post Type 4: Quote Post

In a Quote Post, all you do is find a handful of useful quotes that relate to a topic your audience is interested in. Put them together in one post

Now in all of these examples, they went above and beyond by creating shareable images of the quotes or a click-to-tweet feature to encourage the sharing of this post, and thus increase the post’s traffic and exposure.

This is a nice touch, but it’s certainly not necessary.

Quote Posts tend to perform well because they allow you to share quick bites of valuable content in a way that’s easy to consume and share.

Create Quote Post

Post Type 5: Embed Reactor Post

The Embed Reactor is another easy blog post type that allows you to leverage other people’s content in your own blog. The concept here is pretty simple: just embed a video, slideshow, or infographic into your blog, and then write your reaction to that content.

That’s why it’s called the Embed Reactor: first, you embed some content, then you react to it.

YouTube videos are a great source of content for Embed Reactor posts, but you can also embed and react to slideshows from slideshare.net or infographics from visual.ly.

When you do this, don’t feel bad about using someone else’s content. There’s nothing wrong with it! In fact, one of the main reasons why people post content on sites like YouTube, Slideshare, and Visually is because they want more people to see their content. So by embedding their content into your post, you’re actually doing them a favor. Be sure to provide a link and mention your source to the content you’re embedding, this will cover your bases.

Just remember to follow up the embedded content with your own reaction, so that you’re adding something unique and personal to the topic.

Create Embed Reactor Post

Now you know 5 ways to quickly create effective blog posts. But of course, there are many other types of blog posts you can use.

Next up, we’re going to dive into what we call “Pillar Posts.” These are in-depth posts that provide massive value to your readers and generate long-lasting organic traffic to your blog. A good Pillar Post can bring in new visitors to your site year after year after year.

Create Long-Lasting Content

In the last lesson, you learned how to create stellar blog content quickly. Now we’re going to shift gears and talk about long-lasting content—content that continues to generate organic traffic for months and months, sometimes years, after it was first published.

Long-lasting posts are often big, meaty posts. They’re long, easily over 1,000 words. They’re useful, actionable, well-written, and engaging. They’re filled with relevant images and audio/video files to support the points you’re making in the text.

We’re not going to lie to you: long-lasting posts take time and effort to create. But their benefit is that they have a lasting ROI. Whereas many blog posts have a lifespan of just 24-72 hours, long-lasting posts can continue generating traffic, providing massive value to your audience, and building your credibility and authority for years.

Some of our long-lasting posts at DigitalMarketer are still generating massive organic traffic, even 5 years after they were initially published.

Some of our long-lasting posts at DigitalMarketer are still generating massive organic traffic, even 5 years after they were initially published.

For that reason, we sometimes think of these posts are “redwood content,” since, like redwood trees, these posts live for a long time and keep growing year after year.

But to accomplish that, you’re going to have to keep your pillar posts alive and continuously updated.

Google likes it when you tend to your content. If Google sees that you haven’t updated a blog post in a long time, it’s going to view that post as less relevant because it will seem out-of-date. And your organic rankings will slowly start to drop over time in favor of other posts that have been updated or published more recently.

But if you continue to update that long-lasting post, that will send a clear signal to Google that you are tending to this post. It’s updated. It’s still relevant. And as a result, Google will continue showing love to your pillar posts by ranking them in a high position among the search results.

That said, you should NOT be updating your posts just for the search engines. Instead, update your posts for the people who are actually reading these posts—your audience. Because in the end, they’re the ones who really matter.

In the first module of this training, we talked about the most important reasons why you need blog content. Reason #2 was because content sells.

And in this lesson, you’ll learn exactly how to sell through your content.

To be more specific, you’re about to discover how to effectively use content to generate new subscribers and customers through the use of a relevant call to action (CTA).

A CTA could be any sort of offer that you make to the visitors on your blog. Usually, this is an offer to either buy a product or sign up for your email list.

Many blogs fail to include a CTA at all. They publish posts that provide good information but never ask the visitor to do anything.

This is a mistake.

Your blog visitors WILL ascend to the next level of the Customer Journey, but they’ll only do it if and when you specifically ask them to.

So how do you know what CTA to include in your blog posts? There are 2 key considerations to keep in mind:

Choose an Entry-Level Offer

Don’t try to sell a $2,000 product from a blog post. Even $200 is much too high-ticket for the vast majority of blog visitors.

It’s asking too much too fast.

Think of it like this, you’re asking someone to go from engaging with your free blog to dropping $2k. That’s a big ask. As our CEO Ryan Deiss likes to say, you’re proposing marriage on the first date.

When choosing your CTA, you need to follow the sequence of the Customer Value Journey. To do that, ask yourself, “What’s the next logical step for the customer to do, once they’ve read this blog post?” Once you’ve determined that, think of an offer you have that relates to that next logical step.

And with your blog—a free product—the next logical step is often to turn those visitors into subscribers or low-dollar customers.

With that in mind, the best blog CTAs are typically either:

  • An entry-point offer (a low-dollar product, typically around $1-$20), or…
  • A Lead Magnet (a free resource, like a template or checklist, given for signing up to your email list)

The key here is that these offers have a low barrier to entry. All you’re asking from the visitor is a couple of bucks or an email address.

This type of offer will maximize your conversion rate, helping you to convert the highest possible percentage of visitors into leads and customers. Leads and customers you can nurture and ascend to your core offer.

Choose a Relevant Offer

The more closely related your CTA is to the topic of your blog, the better it will perform.

This sounds obvious, but it’s extremely important and it bears repeating.

If you’re publishing a post about weight loss, the offer should have to do with weight loss in some way—perhaps it’s a weight-loss recipe book or a cardio workout.

If your post is about how to get started playing the piano, then your offer might be for a quick video lesson on how to play your first scale. Or a free ebook on reading sheet music.

No matter what niche you’re in, you want your CTAs to match your blog content as closely as possible.

Keep in mind, this will probably require you to create multiple entry-point offers and Lead Magnets. For example, here at DigitalMarketer, we publish content on a variety of topics—like email marketing, Facebook ads, content marketing, copywriting, and so on.

To make a relevant offer for each blog post, we need a Lead Magnet offer for EACH topic. That can be time-consuming on the front end, but it’s well worth it when you’re able to convert a high percentage of new blog visitors into email subscribers.

An Example from the DigitalMarketer Blog

Let’s take an example from our own blog. We’ll be looking at this post: DigitalMarketer’s 101 Best Email Subject Lines of 2018.

The topic of this blog, obviously, is email marketing. As a result, we know that anyone who clicks through and reads this article is interested in learning more about email marketing.

And that’s exactly why we were careful to include a CTA related to that topic:

And that’s exactly why we were careful to include a CTA related to that topic

The link takes you to this landing page, where you can download our “Ultimate Email Marketing Metrics Guide” for free if you opt into our email list.

The link takes you to this landing page, where you can download our “Ultimate Email Marketing Metrics Guide” for free if you opt in to our email list.

The beauty of making an offer like this is that it gives you a chance to follow up with these people over time. You can foster a long-term relationship with them. You can send them more content, building up your authority and credibility. And of course, you can promote relevant products.

For these reasons, your chances of convincing this person to buy from you will be much higher over the long-term if you focus on a relevant entry-point offer or Lead Magnet offer.

Find Writers for Your Blog

When it comes to finding writers and contributors for your blog, you may have questions like…

Who should these contributors be?

How can I find them?

And how do I convince them to write for my blog?

Not to worry, because this is the lesson where we’ll answer all those questions and more.

How to Find Contributors for Your Blog

First things first, you have to actually find those people who will be willing and able to do a fantastic job of creating high-quality content for your blog.

Here’s the main principle to keep in mind when looking for contributors:

You want to find people who are already writing articles similar to the content you want for your own blog.

This means you ideally want someone with:

  • Decent to good writing skills
  • Experience writing for a blog
  • Subject matter knowledge

It also means that anyone who is not already writing content about your topic is probably not going to work out the way you expect.

So how can you find this elusive person? It’s really not as difficult as it might sound, as long as you know where to look.

Here are our top 5 places to find blog contributors. And keep in mind this list is ordered from best (#1) to worst (#5).

The 5 best ways to find contributors for your blog:

Poach Them from Another Blog

This might sound unethical or illegal, but it’s really not. Searching other blogs for writers is one of the most effective ways there is to find contributors of your own, and it doesn’t harm anyone (after all, they can continue writing for the original blog). So start looking at the writers on blogs that are similar or related to your own blog (or what you want your blog to be).

For example, if you run a photography blog, you might head over to Digital Photography School to look for writers. On their blog you might stumble across this post:

For example, if you run a photography blog, you might head over to Digital Photography School to look for writers.

You read the article and you realize it’s well-written, full of good content, and thoughtfully organized. Even better, it received 32.8k shares, which means it’s performed really well. Like, really, really well.

To find the writer, usually, you just have to scroll to the bottom and find their byline. It should look something like this:

To find the writer, usually, you just have to scroll to the bottom and find their byline. It should look something like this

In this case, Johny seems like he might make a great contributor to your photography blog—so all you need to do is visit his website and send him an email. Let him know you loved his post, and ask if he’d be interested in writing some similar content for you.

Google Blogs in Your Niche

A second way to find blog contributors is to find bloggers in your industry who are already writing consistently, but who have a smaller blog, and therefore, might be looking to grow their audience or may not be having the kind of impact they want.

Continuing with our example from above, perhaps you search for photography bloggers and land on the blogs of someone like Kristen Kalp, Zack Arias, or Lin & Jirsa. Take a look at their content and decide if it would be a good fit for your audience.

If so, shoot them a message and ask if they’d like to be a contributor. If they’re serious about growing their own blog, there’s a good chance they’ll jump at the opportunity to increase their exposure and gain a valuable backlink to their website.

Once again, the key here is that you’re finding people who are already writing about your topic—so you can depend on them to deliver high-quality content on demand.

Visit Followerwonk & Search the Bios

Followerwonk allows you to search through Twitter bios to connect with people. And you can use it to follow the same process for option #2 on this list—only in this case, rather than searching Google, you’re searching Followerwonk’s bios.

A quick search for “photography blogger” brings up 4,318 results. Now surely some of these people would be interested in contributing to your blog!

A quick search for “photography blogger” brings up 4,318 results. Now surely some of these people would be interested in contributing to your blog!

Create a “Write For Us” Page

Another option is to include a page on your website inviting visitors to write for you. We used to use this strategy at DigitalMarketer but later took the page down when we no longer needed it.

Here’s an example of a “Write for Us” page at GetResponse.

Notice what they include on this page—you’ll want to make sure to specify a handful of details, such as:

  • What you offer/why they should want to write for your blog
  • What kind of content you’re looking for
  • What your rules and guidelines are
  • Instructions on how to get started

Regarding that final bullet point: we highly recommend asking for a couple of sample articles. This way, you can make sure the person is legitimately capable of delivering the kind of content you’re looking for.

Use an Outsourcing Site

Finally, you can also turn to outsource websites like Upwork.com or Fiverr.com to hire writers to create content for you. The plus side of these sites is that you’ll have no problem finding plenty of writers—many of whom will be willing to work for an extremely cheap rate.

But be forewarned: this option is #5 on our list for a reason.

We’ve tried outsourcing writing in the past using these kinds of sites, and the results were extremely inconsistent. Now and then you might find a great writer, a diamond in the rough… but you’ll also find yourself wading through badly written content.

These sites can also be a time-suck. You can find this diamond in the rough writer, but it takes a lot of time. It’s almost like going through an interview and hiring process.

So consider this a last resort and don’t outsource your writing until you’ve tried the first 4 options in this list.

How to Pay Your Contributors

As you know, writing a blog post isn’t easy. It takes work. And no one is going to write blog posts for you unless they’re getting something in return.

For the most part, as a blog owner you have 2 things you can offer them:

Money

Money is pretty self-explanatory. You can simply pay someone to write posts for you.

The amount you pay can vary wildly and will depend on several factors. How specialized is the topic? It’s much easier to find a fitness blogger than it is to find someone to write about nuclear physics. So it only makes sense that you’ll need to pay more for a blog contributor who’s a nuclear physicist.

Quality is another consideration. Of course, more money doesn’t always mean you’ll get higher-quality content. But generally speaking, very low-priced writers will be less skilled and experienced than those who charge more for their services.

When it comes to paying a writer, we’ve found that a writer will often tell you his/her going rate. And you’ll have to determine if their price is fair/within your budget. For us, in our industry, we’ve found this rate is typical $200-$400 per blog post. This varying rate depends on the needs of the post itself (a post that requires more research will require more payment) and the writer’s experience.

In our experience, it’s better to pay near the top end for high-quality content. Because if you do, your content will stand a better chance of performing well, your audience will grow bigger, faster, and eventually, you won’t need to pay your writers at all.

Instead, you’ll be able to pay your contributors with…

Exposure

This is another huge benefit contributors can get from writing for your blog. By writing posts for you, they’ll be able to spread their name and message to a wider audience.

It’s a win-win situation because you get free content and they get more exposure.

Once upon a time, we paid our contributors at DigitalMarketer. But today our audience is now large enough that we’re able to attract world-class contributors without paying them. (Although we still spend money to edit, polish, and promote our contributors’ posts.)

So keep that in mind. While you may need to pay contributors now, the day may come when writers will be chomping at the bit to write for your blog just to get in front of your audience.

You’ve Published Your Blog Post, Now What?

Use Internal Links Often

You’ve published your blog post—congratulations!

But you’re not quite done yet.

Creating and publishing your blog post is a big achievement. But if you stop now, then odds are very few people will ever see that post you worked so hard on.

That’s why you still need to do some work to optimize, repurpose, and retarget your content to generate long-lasting traffic that will help grow your audience, your influence, and your business over time.

You’ll learn how to do that in this section, starting with the importance of using internal links in your blog posts…

The best-performing blogs make frequent use of strategic internal links. An internal link is simply a link that sends visitors to another page on the same website.

These internal links create numerous benefits, such as:

Improving SEO and helping your blog to generate more organic traffic

Keeping readers engaged with additional relevant content

Educating visitors on important topics they need to understand

In this video, Amanda Powell is back and will explain why internal links are such an important piece of your blog strategy and give you some tips on how to use them on your blog:

Share on Social Media

You’ve hit publish and now your post is live. Besides using internal links, you’re going to want to use social media. An effective social media strategy will help get your post out into the world, driving traffic to your site and increasing engagement on your social media channels.

In this lesson, you’ll learn a 3-step system to effectively post (and repost) your content on social media. We’re going to focus mainly on Facebook and Instagram since they’re 2 of the biggest social channels out there. But you can apply the same strategy to whichever social channel is the best fit for your business.

Step 1: Share Your Post with a Strong Call to Action

The first step is simple: just share your post on social media.

Give a quick bit of copy and include a CTA to go read the entire article. Also, don’t be afraid to use emojis and to grab people’s attention, drive engagement, and give a more native look to your posts.

In most cases, you’ll need to supply an image of some kind. As you can see in this Facebook example, we use custom images (as opposed to stock images) for our posts to give our brand a consistent look and feel:

In most cases, you’ll need to supply an image of some kind. As you can see in this Facebook example, we use custom images (as opposed to stock images) for our posts to give our brand a consistent look and feel:

But you don’t have to create your own custom images. Use the best image you have available and refine your look over time.

The process is a little different on Instagram, mainly because of the rules about including links. Since DigitalMarketer has over 10K followers, we can add a link directly to a Story. So when people swipe up, they’ll be taken to the blog post:

So when people swipe up, they’ll be taken to the blog post:

If you have fewer than 10K followers, you can still drive traffic. Just change your bio link to the URL of your new blog post and include a CTA in your Story to check out the link in your bio to learn more. Make your creative and copy compelling enough that people will take that action.

Here’s an example of a blog link in the bio:

Here’s an example of a blog link in the bio.

And that’s all there is to Step 1. The next step is to…

Step 2: Monitor Your Performance

Keep track of every post you share, and analyze their performance. Your goal here is to identify the top-performing posts so you can wring the maximum possible benefit from them.

Note that when we say “top-performing posts,” we’re referring to those posts that generated the most:

  • Link clicks
  • Shares
  • Comments

This is important because these are the posts that you’ll focus on in the next step to generate even more traffic.

Step 3: Repost Pillar Blogs & Top-Performers in New Ways

Now that you know which blog posts are doing the best job of resonating with your audience, it’s time to take those blog posts and break them up into different creatives to continue to drive even more traffic.

One highly effective strategy is to simply repost the article in a variety of different ways. Here are some of the changes you can make to repost on Facebook:

Change the CTA (for example, ask a question).

This blog post was one of our top performers on Facebook, so we reposted the link with a question that would make readers go, “What is that?”

This blog post was one of our top performers on Facebook, so we reposted the link with a question that would make readers go, “What is that?”

This second link share actually performed better than the original one.

Post compelling quotes from the blog.

In this example, we shared a quote from the author of the blog post along with the link. We have a graphic designer on staff to create these quote images, but if you don’t, you can easily create a quote image using Canva, Stencil, and other inexpensive resources.

We have a graphic designer on staff to create these quote images, but if you don’t, you can easily create a quote image using Canva, Stencil, and other inexpensive resources.

Take a few tips from the blog and create a mini-infographic.

We took 4 separate insights from this blog post and then created a tip image—basically a tiny infographic—from the blog post content. This can make for a compelling and share-worthy graphic.

This can make for a compelling and share-worthy graphic.

Here are a few other ways you can repost links on Facebook:

  • Share a different image from the blog
  • Create a video slideshow with images from the blog
  • If you have an infographic on the blog post, break that up into snackable images to share separately

You can use the same general strategy on Instagram with just a few easy changes.

Repost the Story with stickers.

You can just take the same Story and add some flash with stickers, emojis, and additional copy. If it fits with your brand, you can have a little fun with it. We took the original Story image and added the “Cat Reading GIF” and the “yasss” sticker:

We took the original Story image and added the “Cat Reading GIF” and the “yasss” sticker:

Here’s another example that’s a little less silly. We took the original Story that we had already posted, and reposted it adding copy and the “now reading” sticker:

We took the original Story that we had already posted, and reposted it adding copy and the “now reading” sticker:

Post quote images.

Remember how we posted the quote image and tip image on Facebook? Well, this works even better on Instagram! Take those same images and post them on Instagram, using them to drive traffic to your blog post and start valuable conversations.

You can’t link directly to the blog from an Instagram post, but you can still include a strong CTA using one of these 3 methods:

Method 1: Send a DM (direct message) containing the blog link to anyone who leaves a comment.

Here’s an example of how that looks:

Here’s an example of how that looks:

Notice the caption. “Want 5 more posts + examples? Let me know and I’ll DM you the link!”

Then, simply send the link to everyone who leaves a comment:

Then, simply send the link to everyone who leaves a comment:

This can be time-consuming, but it’s well worth the effort since you’ll be sending highly interested people back to your blog post.

Method 2: Update your bio to link back to the blog post.

Then, simply add a caption to your image that says: “Check out the link in our bio for more!”

Method 3: Post another story with a link to your blog post (if you have 10k followers).

If you have enough followers, you can always post another story with a link back to your blog post. Then, add a CTA to your image caption that says: “Check out our story for more!”

Here’s what that might look like:

Add a CTA to your image caption that says: “Check out our story for more!”

As you can see, sharing blog content on social isn’t “one and done.”

Instead, you’ll get the best results—and generate the most traffic—by breaking down each post into several bite-size chunks and testing multiple CTAs.

This way, you’ll be able to share your best posts multiple times in a variety of different formats, allowing you to appeal to a larger percentage of your audience.

Repurpose Your Top Performing Content

Many content creators operate under the impression that every single piece of content they publish must always be 100% brand-new and original.

Believe it or not, this is NOT the case!

In fact, it’s possible to squeeze more ROI from your content by reusing and repurposing your best-performing posts into other formats and mediums.

How does this work?

It’s conceptually similar to the process you learned in the previous lesson. Except instead of reposting the same blog multiple times on social media, this time you’ll be using the original blog post to create additional pieces of content.

Step 1 is to find a post that performs well. If you notice one of your blog posts is generating higher-than-average traffic, comments, likes, shares, etc., that’s a good sign that this topic is resonating with your audience. And that makes it a great post to repurpose.

How, exactly, do you repurpose a blog post?

Essentially you just convert the content into a different format. This way, you give people another place to find it and another way to consume it.

  • Some of the new formats you might use include:
  • Turning it into a Lead Magnet to generate leads
  • Recording and publishing it as a video on YouTube
  • Creating an infographic
  • Building a Slideshare presentation that you use for a webinar
  • Making it into a case study that you present at a conference

Essentially you just convert the content into a different format. This way, you give people another place to find it and another way to consume it.

So we took the same content and published it as a PDF Lead Magnet, allowing visitors to download a copy if they gave us their email address. Here’s what the landing page looks like:

So we took the same content and published it as a PDF Lead Magnet, allowing visitors to download a copy if they gave us their email address.

But we didn’t stop there. We also recorded a YouTube video on the topic, sharing some key insights and linking back to the blog post:

The idea is simple: when you find a blog post like this that works really well, take maximum advantage of it by leveraging it in as many different ways as you can. This way you can get more ROI from your best ideas, while also being able to churn out new content more quickly and easily.

Now, don’t get us wrong: you DO need to create new content consistently. Absolutely.

But you don’t need to reinvent the wheel every single time. Especially when you’ve already got existing pieces of content that your audience loves and would gladly consume in different formats.

Because, remember, not everyone in your audience is going to read every blog article you publish, or even read your blog at all. So taking a piece of content from your blog that you worked hard on and is generating good results for you there, and turning it into other forms of content that you can use to reach other areas of your audience will only help your overall marketing strategy.

Retarget Your Audience

In this final lesson, we want to introduce you to one of the single most powerful content strategies:

Using content plus retargeting to generate leads and sales from your blog.

Remember when we said near the beginning of this article that “content can sell”? Well, this is one of the most effective ways we’ve discovered for monetizing your blog.

In this video, Amanda will explain why retargeting your content is such a powerful strategy and how you can use it as a step to generate sales. So your free blog can help you nurture your audience and make money.

And that’s it! You’ve made it through the Blog Content Playbook.

You’ve come a long way in a short amount of time. And now you have several ways to create content very quickly. You also have several ways to repurpose top-performing content to generate more traffic and sales from your blog.

  • Remember, you can use your new content to…
  • Keep your email list happy and healthy
  • Generate traffic through search engines and social channels
  • Segment your email list and blog visitors
  • Retarget with ads based on a known interest to generate sales

With all this new information on creating an effective blog, your next step is clear…

Run the Play

The key thing to understand about your blog is that it’s going to be a long-term investment. There’s a reason we ended up calling it an “engine.” Just like a car, you have to do considerable, routine maintenance to keep it running at its peak performance. To rake in those consistent leads, drive organic sessions, and optimize for SEO you need to ensure you are maintaining your blog content engine weekly!

For this “Run the Play” section, we are going to focus on three separate phases: Plan, Build, and Launch. While the Build section of this checklist will take a majority of your time (and some consider the most fun) it’s important to understand that the Plan and Launch section of this checklist will be CRUCIAL to your Blog Content Engine success.