Try Writing Some of These Types of Content to Expand Your Readership
How many posts has your company blog accumulated over the years? Dozens? At some point, you’ll run into a common issue faced by many marketers and business owners: a lack of ideas for fresh content. The solution is to diversify your content by exploring outside of the standard informative blog post format.
Here are some alternative forms of written content for you to try out. These are all forms of content that often go viral—when you add them to the mix, you give yourself more options to choose from while planning your content schedule, and also boost your ability to generate leads.
List Articles
You’ve seen them all over the internet, popularized by sites like Buzzfeed and numerous imitators. You may have even disparaged these kinds of articles as “clickbait.” However, this form of content grew so common for a reason: it really does get readers to click, and with good reason.
Readers love content that communicates the point clearly and lets them get the relevant info as efficiently as possible. List articles make this easy, providing a user-friendly format that the reader can quickly scan and understand. They work well for the same reason that it works well to break up your regular posts with clear headings, bolded text, bullet points, etc.
Don’t worry, you won’t be diluting your brand or producing “clickbait,” which “baits” clicks with misleading or sensational headlines with no substance behind them. Use list articles to make your useful, relevant content more accessible, and your readers will thank you by spreading it around.
Book and Product Reviews
Another type of content that often entices readers to share and discuss is reviews. Readers often consult reviews for buying advice, and share reviews when debating peers on whether to purchase something. These generally are either product reviews or book reviews, each of which requires its own approach.
Book Reviews
If your readership includes the types of people that read books, writing book reviews can be a great way to engage readers and position yourself more as a thought leader. You’ll recommend books that are useful, critique ones that aren’t as good, and share the value you find.
Don’t get caught up discussing every detail of the book, though. It may help to loosely follow this format:
- Introduce the book
- Introduce the author
- Summarize the major points of the book
- Share what’s good about the book
- Share what’s not as good about the book
- Make a recommendation for or against the book
- Link to the book with a call to action
This should keep you on task and help produce a review that gives readers a clear and useful evaluation of the book. Finally, keep in mind that a review will be even more successful if you target new releases, or better yet interview the author and/or get a hold of a pre-release review copy.
Product Reviews
A product review helps establish you as an expert and a thought leader, but isn’t as limiting. Not every readership likes books, but ever industry has a range of products and services to try out. As a professional, you’ve been working in this industry every day for years. Your experience positions you as an ideal guide for others looking to navigate the industry, and product reviews are a great tool to achieve that.
The product review should follow the same general format as the book review described above. Introduce the product and producer, describe its features, share the good and bad, recommend one way or the other, and end with a call to action. Also similar to a book review, you can boost the effectiveness by engaging developers, service providers, producers, etc, when discussing a great product. Also note that if the product is a physical object, it’s a good idea to include original photos or a video.
Opinion Posts
One of the reasons that readers like to share reviews is because it’s an opportunity to voice their own opinion, agree or disagree, and discuss the topic with their own social circles. An opinion post lets you engage them in all those same ways.
The tone of an opinion post is more expressive and voices a stronger opinion than a normal informational blog post. Be clear that you’re voicing your personal take, take a stand, and don’t be afraid to use first-person more than you normally would.
However, stay humble and keep it civil. An opinion piece shouldn’t be an angry rant or personal attack. That’ll turn readers off more than anything.
Also don’t make these too frequent, as readers quickly get tired of you using your blog as a platform for your personal opinions. A good time for an opinion post is when there’s a piece of relevant news to discuss, such as a major change in your industry.
Resource and Link Pages
As we mentioned before, readers engage with content that’s relevant and useful. Sometimes, you can provide value without having to wrap it in too much writing. A page of links to useful resources is an easy and effective way to provide your readers with tangible benefits in an accessible format.
Keep it simple: list the title of the link, make it a hyperlink, and number it. Alternatively, you can introduce each link with a short blurb on its contents and/or usefulness. This lets you add a bit of value of your own and maintain your presence through the list, reinforcing your position as an expert.
Diversify Your Written Content by Scheduling Ahead
You might like how these ideas all sound, but the challenge is to actually implement them after you’ve left this page. All too often, it’s easier to just do another routine informative blog post. To combat that, it’s useful to your content ahead and make it a goal to include more types of written content.
That can take a lot of time and effort. Yet, you don’t have to do it all on your own. Frontier Marketing employs a complete team of marketing professionals to provide a balanced and effective mix of online marketing services. The team includes dedicated writers, graphic designers, and web designers who apply their talents to produce top-quality content for your business. Give us a call at (847) 254-0837 today, and explore how we can take your online marketing to the next level!