Learning how to create content for your business is one of the best things that you can do to build trust, be viewed as an expert, generate leads and sales and grow your brand awareness. While social media is all the rage, we know that it has a very short shelf life before it heads to the social media graveyards and blogs are still the top traffic driver to your platforms because of their searchability. That said, here are 3 types of blogs to add to your content calendar now.
- Lists
- How To’s
- Industry Questions
Before we begin, you may be wondering if going into 2022, if blogs are still relevant. According to Linkedin’s research, over 77% of the entire internet reads blogs. Videos are great but here’s the thing…Google cannot watch videos! Making it unable to index your videos, it can index words.
Good SEO practice would be to embed videos onto your blog posts to take full advantage of the search engine’s power and give your audience the option to watch the video. People can only watch what they can find and if your videos cannot be found, then you lose out on building your organic traffic. As a business owner, hoping for your videos to go viral or for the algorithm to show your videos on feeds, isn’t a good strategy to rely on.
Blogs are still super relevant because of the fact that people with hearing disabilities or those who may have harder to understand accents, can still get their points across and it is well received. This is also why adding captions to your videos is a great practice as well but since Google can’t read your videos, it will also be the best move to have a written blog on your website, with an embedded video and captions.
Now, let’s dive into the 3 types of blogs to add to your content mix now.
List Type Blogs
List-Based blogs are the most viewed content online and it’s very easy to understand why. Humans love to skim! Whilst videos are great to build trust, they also require time to consume and aren’t the most friendly when trying to scrub through to get specific information, unless the creator has timestamped the content but then the viewer still has to take their time to consume.
List-Based blogs are the most skimmable content on the internet. They allow you to go in-depth and allow for a viewer to quickly go through the content at their own pace and then decide if they want to go back and read over the entire article.
When going through your market research data, look for questions/queries that your audience is having that you can turn into list content. This type of content can also serve as the base structure to turn into a concise video or quickly turn into a carousel/slide deck for both Instagram and Linkedin.
Start adding List-type content to your mix asap.
How-To’s
Nothing puts you in the fast lane to becoming a sought-after thought leader in your niche, then How-To type content. Teach your audience through How-To type content and when you are going through your market research, look at the data and see what types of things your audience wants to learn how to do.
If you are really skillful, you can learn how to create List-Type How-To content.
Ex…How To Create 3 Different Types Of Blogs On Your Website
That makes it easy to skim but also gives your audience instructional content. You will never go wrong by teaching in your content and becoming a thought leader in your industry. This is still the number 1 way to become the most trusted expert in your space.
Industry Questions
The most popular intention that people have when going to a search engine is to find information. The goal of any business should be to learn how to drive traffic to their platforms to build trust, educate, sell through e-commerce or provide research help.
A great way to educate, build trust and help with research is to look at your market research data and begin answering as many of the industry-related questions.
If you can turn your website into a resource center for your niche, you will have a higher chance of converting traffic into subscribers and subscribers into clients. Review research data at least once a month and look for all of the new questions being asked, that way you can turn them into blog content.
Ensure your headline reflects the specific question being asked to increase your searchability through the search engines.
If you want your business to be found at the right time your ideal customers are experiencing problems in your niche, learning how to create the content that people want is the key to your growth. Since these 3 content types are the most popular types of content that people want when looking to follow an expert or get help with their problems, it’s worth getting these content types onto your platforms.
If you want some additional ideas, my mentor Neil Patel has a list of additional content types that he swears by. Check them out here for more inspiration…5 Kinds of Posts Your Blog Needs.
The goal for any business or NGO with a message should be to try and be as Googleable as possible. Do your best to be on the search results page for as many of the queries in your industry.
That is a surefire way to become the most respected leader in your industry and for your audience to treat your platforms as a resource center. Always coming back to stay up to date in your niche.
If you want to reach out to me, contact me here.