Brainstorming blog post ideas

In this section, you learn which tools are available to you while you’re brainstorming post ideas or ways to frame your content.

Do some research on BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is an online tool that allows you to analyze what content is performing well on social media for a topic. The number of social media shares that a blog post receives is a good indication of content that the audience likes. The topics receiving the most attention from social media are the ones you should consider for your blog.

Start by searching keywords and phrases that your audience is likely to be searching for. With the BuzzSumo tool, you can also adjust the content type that you search for. You can choose from these categories: Articles, Infographics, Guest Posts, Giveaways, Interviews, and Videos. BuzzSumo allows you to adjust the date range for the content it searches, so if you’re searching for content that’s been making a buzz lately, or content that was published in the last year, your options are open.

Want to see how your competition’s content is performing? Type in its domain to see all its content in order of social popularity. Figure 4-1 shows the BuzzSumo ranking of content on Typepad’s blog by social popularity. Want to see what is performing well with people you admire in your industry? Search their names and BuzzSumo generates their most popular content.

Monitor your own data

The savvy blogger watches how the audience responds to content by monitoring data points. These data points help you determine what you should produce more of in the future.

Google Analytics is a free tool that allows you to view data about how your visitors are using your website. You can use Google Analytics to determine which blog posts on your website receive the most traffic, which posts people spend the most time on, and where the traffic comes from (for example, Twitter, Google, and email).

You should also keep an eye on the number of social shares on each blog post. If you use a content management system such as WordPress or Squarespace, you can install social sharing buttons that allow blog visitors to easily share your content with their network on sites such as Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. Figure 4-2 shows a blog post with high social engagement and shares. The data-driven blogger can find inspiration and create content that mimics posts with high social share count.

And finally, when distributing your content through an email newsletter, keep an eye on the open and click-through rates on each email. Content that interests your audience gets a relatively higher percentage of opens and clicks than content your audience finds less interesting.

Use information pulled from your internal data sources to shape your content calendar, prioritizing what the data tells you concerning your audience’s interests.

Establishing content segments

Your blog should not be reinventing itself from week to week and month to month. You and your audience can derive more value from your blog if you create a predictable structure to the types of content you publish. To offer a predictable structure, you create content segments. A content segment is a blog post format that repeats on a set schedule and follows a similar style and template.

You’re likely already familiar with content segments whether you’re aware of it or not. The radio, television, and print mediums have used segments for decades. For example, the Letters to the Editor segment is a staple of the newspaper industry that appears day after day. Buzzfeed, an online social news and entertainment website, runs a daily post called “Here’s What People Are Buying on Amazon Right Now.” Figure 4-3 shows Moz, a company that creates SEO software and resources for digital marketers, featuring a weekly video blog post called Whiteboard Friday.

Many post types are adaptable as segments. For example, you can run the link roundup post every week or month on your blog. Simply curate and compile a list of links that your audience would find interesting and publish it along with a description of what people can expect if they visit that link.

Segments are great pieces to have on your calendar for a variety of reasons. One is that you can offer outside writers consistent exposure on your blog. Another reason is that they’re easily repeatable and quickly consumable because the format is always the same. Your audience will recognize them and grow to expect them as you continue to publish them, providing people with consistent value.

Working with content creators

To produce the content necessary to grow your blog, you’re likely to need a team of writers. An outside writer is someone not associated with your brand who creates content assets for your blog. Those content assets are typically written articles, but the content can also take the form of audio, video, and images for your blog. Acquiring quality outside content creators gives your blog a broad range of perspectives and can help give authority and reach to your blog. This is especially true if the content creator is an influencer — that is, someone who has an above-average effect in his or her niche. Influencers often have a following of their own and are connected to key players in media outlets, consumer groups, or industry associations.

Finding content creators

One place to start when you’re hunting for content creators is to search for blogs that are similar to yours in topic. Use a search engine, such as Google, and enter one of the following search queries:

• [your blog topic] blogs
• [your blog topic] blogger
• [your blog topic] author
• [your blog topic] speaker

For instance, if your blog is on the vegan lifestyle, you can search for vegan blogs and find links to top vegan blogs and authors who have contributed to those blogs.

Don’t just search the first page of the search engine results page. Search deep into the results pages, many pages in — this is where you might stumble upon a good writer who may not be receiving very much traffic. These bloggers are very receptive to contributing content to other blogs to receive more exposure for their own blog.

You can also search for content creators on Twitter. Most content creators use Twitter to distribute links to their content. Use an app such as Followerwonk to search Twitter Bio’s for terms such as the following:

• [your blog topic] blogger
• [your blog topic] writer
• [your blog topic] author
• [your blog topic] speaker

Another way you can find content creators is to visit blogs that are writing about topics that are the same as, or related to, your own and contact their guest bloggers. Often, these are freelance writers and bloggers who would be willing to write for your blog for money and exposure to your audience.

Next, you may be able to find content creators from your best commenters. These are people who leave the most in-depth and thoughtful comments on your articles. Not only are these commenters engaged with you, they know your style, and they may be writers and speakers looking for exposure.

Finally, you can create a Write for Us page on your site or blog so that interested writers can contact you. But be careful: You can get many low-quality content creators sending requests from your Write for Us page, which is why you want to include guidelines. Listing what you expect from content creators helps to detract the ones who aren’t fit for your blog as well as draw the kind of authors you’re looking for. Here are the elements to include on your Write for Us page to attract high-quality writers:

• Acceptance of bylined articles: Most writers want to know that you will include a byline with a link to their website; let them know you do.
• Statement that you pay for articles: If you pay for articles, you increase the response rate by letting writers know on the Write for Us page. You don’t have to include how much you pay.
• Content categories: Outline the topics you want guest writers to write about.
• Examples: Link to sample articles that model the posts you want from guest writers.
• A form: Include a form that the interested writer can fill out to contact you. Ask for the writer’s name and email, at a minimum. To filter out low-quality submissions, ask interested writers to submit writing samples; we suggest ask for three writing samples.

MarketingProfs does an excellent job of creating a very detailed Write for Us page to help find quality content creators; see Figure 4-4 for an excerpt.

Editing the first draft

After a contributor has submitted a first draft (on time, you hope!), you approach the draft for a technical edit. This is the edit you perform to ensure that this piece of content is publishable in its current state, or can be brought up to standard without an overhaul of the content.

First, compare the final post to the headline and outline the writer submitted earlier in the process. Does it deliver on the promise in the working title? Does it stay true to the outline? Point out any areas of concern you have. Pay particular attention to areas that deviate from the stated promise in the working title or that the writer omitted from the expected outline.

Next, run down your guidelines to verify that the post meets your publishing criteria. Is the tone right for your blog? Does it deliver the types of content your audience expects from your blog? Do images meet the standard and specifications set by your guidelines? Does your writer have the necessary permissions secured to use images in the content?

After you established that the post does or does not meet your guidelines, go through the meat of the post to see what edits you need to make. What does the writer need to expand on? What should he remove? What can he clarify for the audience?

Decide whether the post needs to go back to the writer for further revisions and edits, or if you will publish as is or with minor edits from you or your editorial team. If you return the post to the writer, communicate a follow-up deadline in order to reach your publishing date. Your notes should clarify exactly what you’re hoping for in the revisions, and what edits need to be made.

Copyediting the post

After you have a publishable post (one that fulfills the promise and meets your standards), you should perform a thorough copy edit. Edit the post to meet your language style (do you capitalize certain words by company standards? Hyphenate words that others don’t?), or add clarifying sentences that you believe your audience needs to connect the dots.

Next, go through the post line by line, checking for misspellings and grammar errors, among other things. You should edit for formatting, flow, tone, and to ensure that links, images, and video work as expected. The goal of the copy edit is to ensure that the content is free of errors, including misspellings, grammar errors, and broken links.

Tapping into self-interest

The first headline formula is the self-interest headline. These are your bread-and-butter blog post titles and should be used frequently. Self-interest headlines are usually direct and speak to a specific benefit that your audience will gain by reading your blog post. These headlines start to answer the “What’s in it for me?” question, as well as help prequalify readers by giving them a clue about what the article entails.

Here are some sample self-interest headlines:

• Grow Your Website Traffic with the 3-Step Content Marketing Plan
• How to Retire in Style Even if You Haven’t Started Saving
• Top 10 Organic Food Markets in Austin, Texas

Piquing curiosity

If self-interest headlines work because they communicate a direct benefit of reading a blog post, curiosity-based ones succeed for the exact opposite reason. These headlines pique the interest of readers without giving away too much information, which leads to a higher number of clicks. Curiosity headlines create an itch that needs to be scratched, and readers have a hard time resisting reading the blog post. Be careful, though, because curiosity-based headlines can fall flat if you miss the mark. Because curiosity headlines are more ambiguous, you might annoy your reader when the content fails to live up to the expectations set by the headline. So make sure that your curiosity headline doesn’t mislead your reader.

Here are some examples of curiosity headlines:

• 25 Things You Didn’t Know Your iPhone Could Do
• Grill the Perfect Beef Filet with the “Butterfly Process”
• This is Why You Should Never Drink Raw Milk

It’s rarely a good idea to use pure curiosity in a blog post title. Instead, as with the example preceding headlines, combine curiosity with benefit to craft a powerful blog post headline. For example, you might be interested in reading a blog post about grilling the perfect beef filet, but the added curiosity created by the butterfly process makes the headline even more compelling.

Employing urgency and scarcity

The most powerful way to get someone to read your blog post is to impart urgency or scarcity with your headline. Headlines that communicate urgency and scarcity tell readers they must act now, or they’ll miss something. Don’t overuse this technique, or you’ll likely aggravate your audience. Use urgency and scarcity headlines only when you truly have a deadline, limited quantity, or limited availability.

Here are some urgency and scarcity headlines:

• Get Tickets Now! Woody Allen Speaking at Lincoln Center on October 15th
• Free Photography Classes: Last Chance for Open Enrollment
• New Book Reveals Ancient Weight Loss Secret; Supplies Are Limited

Issuing a warning

Often, people will be more motivated to take action to avoid pain than gain a benefit. Well-crafted warning headlines, such as the following, incorporate the promise that you can protect yourself from a threat if you take action:

• The Big Lie Hiding in Your Apartment Rental Contract
• Warning: Don’t Buy Another Ounce of Dog Food Until You Read This
• Is Your Child’s Mattress Harmful to His or Her Health?

Borrowing authority

A fundamental characteristic of humans is that we look to the behavior of others when making decisions. You can leverage this trait in your headlines by mentioning a person’s success story, citing familiar and influential names, or highlighting how many people are already using a product or service.

Smart marketers use this social proof — the propensity for people to make choices based on the choices other people have made — wherever they can. The more people making that choice and the more influential those people are, the more influential the social proof.

Consider these social proof headlines:

• Why 1000s of Bostonians Will Gather in Boston Common on December 8th
• What Dr. Oz Eats for a Midnight Snack
• The New Justin Timberlake Video Everyone Is Talking About

Revealing the new

Keeping your audience informed about new developments in your field builds authority and keeps your audience tuned in. Blog posts that center on the cutting edge need a headline that stands out and conveys the newness or urgency of the latest information. These headlines often work well when combined with a curiosity element and are known as news headlines.

Take, for example, these news headlines:

• Ancient Human Cancer Discovered in 1.7 Million-Year-Old Bone
• Vibrant New Species Discovered Deep in the Caribbean
• New Tool Changes Webinars Forever

Present an exceptional headline

In the “Applying Blog Headline Formulas" section, earlier in this chapter, we list the six categories that headlines often fall into. No matter which headline formula, or combination of formulas, you’re using, exceptional headlines have three aspects in common.

• The headline contains a promise of what people will gain from reading the post.

• Although the headline uses as many words as needed to convey the promise, it’s concise and avoids fluff words, which are redundant, unnecessary words or phrases that add little to the headline and slow the reader down, such as really, just, very, and rather. Here’s an example of a headline with fluff words:

  • Why It Is Very Important to Basically Avoid Fluff Words That Are Rather Empty and Sometimes a Little Distracting in Your Headlines and in Your Writing

  Here’s a better, more compelling headline:

  • How Fluff Words Drive Your Readers Away and How You Can Avoid Them in Your Writing
• The headline is compelling without being misleading or full of hype.

Headlines that don’t work well are often merely statements or incomplete phrases. For example, consider three blog headlines found on a fitness and nutrition website:

• Chocolate for Breakfast
• Benefits of Meditation
• Win the War Against Childhood Obesity

Notice how all three headlines are simply statements of (presumably) fact. They can be dramatically improved, and often by a simple alteration such as

• Chocolate for Breakfast?
• 7 Benefits of Meditation
• How to Win the War Against Childhood Obesity

Although these modified headlines aren’t perfect, they’re considerably more effective than their originals. Adding a question mark to the first headline is a better way to pique a reader’s interest. Putting a number in the middle headline eliminates vagueness and adds specificity. Finally, the addition of How to in the last headline turns a statement into a promise.

If you’re struggling to come up with a headline for your piece, you can often find one hiding in the opening or closing of the article. Look for the promise statement that conveys the benefit of the article in your introduction or conclusion. You’ll likely find the beginnings of a headline there.

Include a strong introduction

The weakest part of an article is often the introduction. Sometimes a blog post can go from being good to great if you just chop off the first five paragraphs to get the reader to the point quicker. Exceptional introductions contain the following elements:

• Intro copy is extremely easy to consume and develops a rhythm for the post.
• Intro copy draws readers in and compels them to read the entire article.

When writing your introduction, here’s a trick you can use: Open the post with a punchy, curiosity-building sentence. Keep it short (rarely longer than eight words). The first sentence is intended to create a greased chute (a term coined by copywriter Joe Sugarman) that starts the reader sliding down the page.

Here are a few examples of this type of opening line:

• You’ve finally found it.
• Here’s the big misconception …
• Stop me if you’ve heard this before.

After you get readers started down the chute, keeping them moving is much easier; getting them started is the difficult part.

Offer easy-to-consume content

One of the goals of a blogger is for people to read the entire article, from start to finish, and not bounce to somewhere in between. Blog content isn’t doing its job if it isn’t easy to consume. To ensure that your content is easy to read, be sure that

• The copy is formatted in a way that makes the article easy to consume.
• The transitions between ideas and subheadlines are smooth.

Blog articles aren’t like books. An exceptional blog should not consist of dense, long paragraphs with few to no images or video. Long, uninterrupted blocks of text are intimidating to a reader, not to mention visually unappealing. Help move the reader through the content by breaking up text with the following:

• Bulleted lists
• Numbered lists
• Block quotes
• Subheadings
• Artwork and images (such as pictures, GIFs, infographics, and embedded videos)
• Bold font
• Italics

Next, look for changes between ideas and other areas where readers might slow down or stop reading. At the points that may block readers, make sure to include transitions. Transitions help to tie the article together, enhance reader comprehension, and help keep readers engaged and moving down the page to the final sentence. Figure 4-5 shows an excerpt of a blog post that uses figures, headings, bulleted lists, a bold font, and short paragraphs to break up text and make the content easy to read.

A final point: Break up paragraphs. Long paragraphs in blog posts are like speed bumps, slowing readers down and deterring them from fully consuming the article. When you’re laying out your blog post, break up paragraphs that are longer than three lines to improve consumption.

Satisfy your goal

Although a blog has many goals, such as branding, providing your audience value, and establishing yourself as an authority, the main goal of a blog is to generate quality leads that ultimately lead to sales. The keys to higher conversion rates from blog content are as follows:

• Relevance: The offer you make in the post needs to relate to that article’s topic. The more congruent the offer, the more likely you’ll secure a conversion.
• Consumption: If the copy is difficult to get through, readers will leave your page in frustration.

To help meet the goal, be sure to include the following in each article that you publish:

• A clear call to action (CTA) that is relevant to the subject matter of the article
• Effective copy and design for the call to action so that it compels readers to take the desired action
• A call to action that is located in one or more prominent positions within the post, giving it a better chance of being seen

Figure 4-6 shows a call to action from The New York Times that pops up over the blog post, catching visitors’ attention before visitors leave the site. This CTA has a simple message and design that helps to grab attention and generate clicks.

Include quality media

The images, videos, and audio files that you include in an article make up the media of your post. Quality media that loads quickly is extremely important to the success of an article. Media that takes longer than three seconds to load, or is of poor quality, causes readers to become frustrated and seek out blog content that doesn’t make them wait or that looks fuzzy. Committing to the production of high-quality media is one way to stand out in an industry saturated with content. Therefore, be sure to include high-quality images, videos, and audio that are clean and crisp. Also, look for instances where media can further explain or enrich a point made in an article.

Hiring a full-time photographer or graphic designer may not be necessary, but try to avoid using stock images and video. Often, stock forms of media look too staged or forced, plus they don’t always match well with the topic of your piece.

Provide a compelling close

Your article’s closing paragraph can take your post from good to great. Effective conclusions tie the piece together. Therefore, by the close, any curiosity loops that your heading may have opened need to be answered, and you must have delivered on the promise of the article; otherwise, readers feel cheated and might form a negative impression of your brand. You can finish a post by using humor, wit, or insight, or otherwise incite emotions that compel readers to comment, share, or visit more pages on your blog.

The conclusion is the make-or-break portion of your article that makes readers decide to share the post, comment, click your call to action, or dive deeper into your site. Your closing doesn’t have to be epic, but be sure that the article doesn’t end abruptly. The simplest way to close a piece is to restate the intro and ask the reader to comment and share.

Use search engine optimization

Done right, effective search engine optimization (SEO) helps your blog posts rank higher in search engines, such as Google, which will improve your chances of having your blog posts found by your audience. To optimize your blog post, choose a relevant keyword or keyword phrase that is unique to your post and include that keyword in the

• Title tag
• Body text
• Image alt attribute
• Universal resource locator (URL)
• Meta description

Another important way to optimize your blog is to cross-link related and relevant sites to your blog article. You can link to other sites that aren’t associated with your brand but are relevant to the topic of the article. You can also cross-link to other blog posts you’ve written that elaborate on or enrich a point that you make in your latest post.

Categorize your topics

As your blog expands, you may find yourself covering a larger base of topics. This is where categorizing and organizing your blogs posts comes into play. For instance, an economics blog may cover a wide variety of topics, such as tax tips, financial planning, budget and saving, and others. To help readers find what they are looking for, include categories, also called tags, on each post you publish.

Including categories helps to improve user experience, which in turn increases the value that you bring to your audience. Although it’s often as simple as selecting a box by using your mouse, selecting the right category for your blog posts is an important checkpoint of any blog post audit.

Deliver on the promise

If the goal of the headline and introduction is to make a compelling promise, the job of the body of the blog post is to ensure that the article delivers completely on that promise. If the post doesn’t fulfill the promise made, amend your headline or get back to work on the blog post. Nothing destroys the reputation of your blog quicker than writing a great headline and failing to deliver in the article.

That said, this element of the audit is about more than simply delivering on the promise. You’re also making sure that every idea presented in the post is appropriately fleshed out and doesn’t leave your audience confused or needing more information to understand the point. Look for areas in the post that you can strengthen by adding

• Media (images, video, audio)
• Examples
• Data
• Internal or external links to more information

Go the extra mile with each and every article, and you’ll see results. Consider producing fewer posts that are exceptionally complete, as opposed to a high volume of content that leaves the audience wanting.

Keep professional consistency

What’s the voice or personality of your brand? Is it professional? Snarky? Academic? Whatever it may be, produce content that reinforces your brand. For instance, a law firm blog probably shouldn’t use curse words in its articles. But an edgy motorcycle blog has a better chance of getting away with using certain four-letter words because doing so might be more consistent with its brand. Therefore, whatever the topic of your article, be sure that it remains in line with your brand’s personality.

Also, and perhaps more important for some organizations, ensure that the newest blog post doesn’t contradict something else that you’ve published on the blog or anywhere else. For example, if you have a fashion blog with a post last year about the sins of wearing undershirts, but your newest blog post centers on the importance of undershirts and doesn’t address what has changed since your past article on the topic, you’re going to confuse and lose readers because of your inconsistency.