Bloggers have to follow a deliberate strategy to produce results. For starters, content writers need to know how to create blog posts that people truly want to read.
Important Content Types for Blogging
In the beginning, writing a blog post simply meant writing a few paragraphs, adding a few links, choosing an image, and hitting the publish button… Done! Over the years, the blogging industry has changed significantly. Increased competition among business owners and bloggers mean content writers have to be more creative than ever to make their pieces stand out.
Table of contents
Quality Writing
Audio
Video
Images and Graphics
Downloads
Content writers need to make their content more rich and compelling as the average reader’s attention span gets less and less. With that said, there are five types of content you need to pay attention to if you are a content writer who wants to produce winning blog posts.
Quality Writing
Of course, written information is a must when talking about online content. This is the most abundant content to begin with. In addition, producing lines of text is what most people think of traditionally when talking about blogging. In today’s world, however, written content can be presented in a number of ways to make it more appealing and interesting to readers.
Pay attention to your writing style: How you write your blog posts can have an impact on whether people feel compelled to read your content or not. Generally, you want your writing style to match your brand identity, which helps to build trust with your audience. That’s why, as a content writer, you need to spend time getting to understand the brand, and what it stands for, before working on blog posts and other content on its behalf. Good grammar, spelling, and flow are also necessary for readers to be interested in your written content.
Include white papers: For B2B companies, white papers are important to help inform the public about new ideas and solutions. Extracting content from a white paper and turning it into blog posts can make this type of information easier to digest, as well as make the blog posts more compelling. Linking to white papers from your blog posts is also helpful and can encourage people to stay longer on your website
Case study content: A good case study is a powerful piece of “evergreen” content that tells a story relating to a real-world problem. People tend to love reading stories, especially if they can relate to the details. You can make your blog posts more interesting by drawing from case study content. You can also turn a case study into a series of blog posts, as well as include links to case studies from your blog posts.
Audio
If you think about it, people do a lot of skim reading when they come across written content online. Studies show that most people will read the first line in a blog post and then scan the main points, especially if they are arranged in bullets. If something catches their eyes in these few seconds, then they may decide to read the post in its entirety. This happens even if the content is filled with valuable information. The reason people do this is because they would rather listen to the content than read it. Adding audio helps to grab these members of your target audience and can lead to them spending more time on your website.
There are a number of audio content you can consider using in your blog posts. These include podcasts, which have grown considerably in popularity over the past few years. Narrating and recording your articles also give visitors to your website the option to listen instead of reading, and listening lessens the chance of them scanning through the content. Recordings of interviews and testimonials, as well as audiobooks can also be useful to people who don’t mind listening along rather than reading.
Video
There is a good reason why 87% of online marketers include video in their content mix. First of all, video is easily the most engaging type of content, generating at least 12 times more social shares than both images and text combined. Moreover, the use of video increases revenue almost 50% faster than not using video. Finally, almost two-thirds of consumers go on to making a purchase after watching a branded video on social media.
All these stats point to one thing – it is imperative that you add video to your blog posts if you want to increase engagement with your target audience and achieve more revenue. Using video in your blog posts is relatively easy. You can embed YouTube videos in your blog posts that are relevant to the topic being discussed. In addition, you can create instructional videos and tutorials, as well as videos promoting your products and services and embed them in your blog posts as well.
Images and Graphics
If nothing else, it is essential to add images and graphics to your blog posts. In comparing content with and without images, the data showed that having a great image resulted in 94% more views, on average, than not having any. That is more than enough proof why you should add images to your blog posts. There are several options when it comes on to using images in your posts. These include:
- Custom images, which can combine photos and filters, as well as text
- Professional photographs
- Infographics
- Gifs
- Slideshows / collages
- Stock photos
Whatever images you choose for your blog posts, you should ensure they are sized properly to suit your blog template and design, and that they are of good quality.
Downloads
After someone has finished reading your blog post, what do you want them to do next? Adding a call to action at the end is a good idea, but there is a high chance that most people won’t click on it. Adding downloadable content to your blog posts allows you to extend the relationship with your audience after they are through with reading your blog content. These materials add further value to the information shared in blog posts and helps you stay in the mind of people who have interacted with your content. Examples of downloadable content include:
- E-books
- Webinars
- Training programs
- Newsletters
- Lead magnets (samples, trial subscriptions, white papers, etc.).
More businesses are recognizing the role blog posts play in helping to increase web traffic. This means content writers need to seek out best practices to make their content more engaging and relevant to the needs of their target audiences.