Whether the purpose of your blog is to increase brand recognition or to make your voice heard, your writing investment won’t return or gain much traction without an audience. You must address the question of how to get your blog noticed, by search engines and human readers alike.
As powerful as the written word is, when it comes to attracting attention to your blog in a saturated content landscape, blogging a series of posts can give your blog a huge boost in more ways than one.
Establishing a blogging series (like BlogMutt’s How to Measure Blog Success Series) allows you to tackle a topic too large for a single blog post and has the added benefit of providing multiple SEO opportunities.
Inspired by ProBlogger’s Darren Rowse, here’s how to harness the power of a blog post series:
1. Find your muse.
The topic should be large enough to warrant multiple posts without feeling overdone. You also should possess a strong opinion on the topic and have plenty to say. What would bring people back again and again to see the latest in the series?
2. Brainstorm.
Make a list of the most important points and jot down notes about each. Now is the time to do additional research and bolster your opinion with sources and data. Bring value to your reader.
3. Set a timeframe.
Noodle over a marketing strategy for these posts. Will you introduce a new installment each week? Every day? Involve your marketing team with the effort to leverage social media/email marketing opportunities in consort with the blog post releases to make every individual post work as hard as it can for you.
4. Write rough.
Using your most important points as titles you can change later, set up the series as drafts. Don’t obsess over the writing process. Set some scheduled time every day/week in your peak writing state (for most people, it’s in the morning) to knock it out.
If it’s a priority, prioritize getting it completed.
5. Name it and claim it.
Choosing a title for your series warrants careful consideration. It must be both memorable and SEO friendly. Completing thoughtful SEO and long-tailed keyword research prior to fleshing out all posts will prove one of the most important exercises to get your blog noticed.
Was there a certain phrase used while researching that returned outstanding results? Incorporate that phrase. Need more help figuring it out? Check out this post on how to do keyword research with Google Adwords Keyword Planner.
6. Show and tell.
When you write your introductory post, announce the topic, the timeframe, and the anticipated number of posts. Use this as an opportunity to build anticipation and clearly communicate expectations.
7. Write right.
Whether you write the entire series at once and schedule release dates or write a post per day is entirely up to you. If you do schedule, be prepared for some rewriting as readers raise points you had not considered.
8. Link up.
Link up is the process of linking your blog to a well-known blogger or expert via social media to benefit from his/her larger audience. Find those you favorably quoted on Twitter and then keep it simple. “@bigexpertgal check this out (insert blog title)”.
Russ Henneberry, an expert in content analytics, reports this type of promotion results in post promotion by the expert 90% of the time.
9. Link in.
Not only does this step involve notifying your email subscribers of new content, it also refers to taking full advantage of LinkedIn (or other social media channels).
If you’re on LinkedIn, your posts should be too. Join topic relevant groups and add your RSS feed (how to do that here). Each time you add a blog post, an automatic notification will be posted to the group.
10. End well & stay connected.
This step isn’t limited to writing a sound conclusion.
To reap maximum benefit, make sure your posts are linked for easy navigation should someone stumble into the middle of the series in the future. Provide a clear framework for those out of the loop to be brought up to speed.
11. What’s next after the series.
When your series ends, great work! But it shouldn’t end there.
It’s time to level up with a white paper or e-book.
- A white paper uses an authoritative tone, delves into complex and detailed subjects, promotes the author as expert. It’s most popular in business and B2B markets and typically 20-30 pages long.
- An e-book uses a conversational tone, shares knowledge in a visually appealing way. It’s most popular in B2C (business to consumer) markets and 6-12 pages long.
Whichever one you choose that best fits with your company’s audience and goals, you’ll use the same promotion techniques described in steps 8 and 9 above, in addition to promoting it on your blog. Both options require additional research and more meat than you included in the blog posts but the pay off is well worth the effort.
Consider, too, repurposing that content as downloads on landing pages and calls-to-action at the base of blog posts as promotional techniques. If you’ve spent that much time fleshing them out, why not gate them for site visitors to glean some information?
Once you’ve published your white paper or e-book, you’ll begin to see the coveted circle effect: your blog will promote your white paper/e-book and its readers will promote your blog. Others who post on the same topic will be able to quote from your white paper or e-book, generating even more traffic.
Establishing a blog post series not only attracts more blog traffic, it builds your credibility and network, offers ongoing SEO and content repurposing opportunities, and ultimately, could be how to get your blog noticed amongst the content hubbub.
