The phrase content is king is a recurring theme when talking about digital marketing for businesses – and usually refers to blogs and written content that can be used to increase everything from keyword saturation to internal linking for your website. However, keeping your blog content fresh and interesting for users can be difficult in the long term – not to mention a little monotonous and dull for you to produce! Creating compelling and engaging content is key to any good strategy – so how can you give your blog content a new lease of life?
Listicles
A listicle is a list based article, a series of items presented as a list, with detail about each item. Adding detail to each of them to create a more educational and valuable piece of content. Listicles can be used to answer customer questions in greater depth than FAQs, and can also generate Google knowledge graph items – allowing your business greater visibility.
Title: A listicle title should contain the number of items within the topic you’re about to explore. So, ‘5 fresh ideas…, ‘Top 10 best…’, ‘7 reasons you should…’ and so forth – but don’t let your list get bogged down by including too many items; lower numbers are generally better, allowing you to keep users engaged whilst still imparting valuable information.
Introduction: Like with any good, easy-to-digest content, get to the point – tell your readers why this content is of value to them within a short paragraph or two at most.
Body: Ideally, to keep readers engaged, you can separate each list item with a supporting image, video or chart, and include links to other valuable and relevant content for further reading if suitable. Be sure to add extra information within each point to explain why each item is important and to help readers understand the topic.
Conclusion: Help the reader to understand and digest what they’ve just read by reinforcing the original point of the article – what are the key takeaways from this content? Add a call to action – what is this content’s purpose from your business’ point of view? What is the next action you want the user to take?
How-to
How-tos or How-to Guides are usually a very specific article explaining in clear and concise terms how to do, become or achieve something. Businesses can also use these articles as product guides, or to inform users on wider issues that might affect them.
Title: A how-to title should start with the phrase ‘How-to…’ and clearly outline the problem the article solves, using simple, clear language and phrasing as well as active verbs.
Introduction: The introduction gives you an opportunity to actually summarise the problem you’re trying to solve in the article, including a summary of the solution. Keeping it concise, you may want to name-drop a case study, or use a synopsis of one to demonstrate that your proposed solution works in the real world.
Body: If the guide is a step-by-step, you could use similar tactics to a listicle. Using action words can help explain what each step is about. You should also support each step with some detail – what are you specifically trying to accomplish with this step and how does it contribute to the wider goal? Give detailed instructions and share links to read more or to other reference material if applicable. You may also need to share other important details such as tools the reader will require to achieve their goal, or other important information or pre-requisite skills required.
Conclusion: As always, direct the user on their continued journey – usually with How-to guides, this will be to learn more or to practically try and implement what they’ve learned. Summarise what the user has learned and what they should now be able to achieve using this content guide, and suggest these next steps with clear CTAs.
Comparison
A comparison article gives you an opportunity to compare two or more topics, subjects, products and so on, explaining the benefits, pros & cons of each, usually based on a specific objective. The best comparison articles come down on one side or the other, avoiding answers dependent on other criteria or weaker conclusions that do not give a firm opinion.
Title: Use titles which clearly outline what is being compared to what – often employing a simple ‘this vs that’ format is the simplest way to achieve this. Be sure to use keywords that tell the reader exactly and specifically what is being compared.
Introduction: It is not only important to outline what is being compared in this article, but why it is being compared, along with any other information or context that may impact the analysis which follows. The intro is an opportunity to share the information the reader ‘needs’ to know – keep it succinct and to the point, and don’t feel the need to go over information the reader is already likely to know.
Body: It is important in a comparison blog to use structure to help make the comparison easily understandable. There are two main ways you can structure the body of a comparison article to achieve this. You can:
- Write a full breakdown of one subject of the comparison and then move on to the next.
- Examine the same or equivalent features for both subjects.
Or:
- Break your comparison down by feature and compare both (or all) subjects within each feature.
Conclusion: Comparison articles need to give a clear steer on which option is the ‘winner’ based on the context outlined in the introduction and title, so be sure to provide a full breakdown of one subject before moving on to the next and summarise the major advantages and disadvantages of both options to facilitate decision making.
Expert round-up
An expert round-up blog article often takes the form of an interview or panel summary, asking a series of specific questions around a topic and relaying individual expert answers to help readers come to conclusions based on expert knowledge.
Title: This is all about building trust and authenticity to the article as well as summarising the content – list how many experts are being referenced in the piece, as well as their expertise and the main topic being discussed.
Introduction: Explain what the post is about and, more importantly, why it has been written. Introduce the panel of experts – an expert isn’t an expert just because you say they are, so be sure to build bios that emphasise the experts credibility, focussing on their background and experience. Also be sure to outline the key takeaways the reader can expect having finished the article.
Body: Structure the piece like an interview, and consider using visual assets like images and video clips to emphasise particularly insightful answers (and to make the article more visually interesting). Clearly indicate which expert is answering the question at hand – some good examples of this use headshots or avatars to highlight who ‘said’ the answer.
Conclusion: Keep this simple – recap the most important points, or use a succinct expert quote to roundup the article. Be sure to also use the right CTA for the next part of the user journey – after reading this article, is the user better armed to make a decision about your products or services, for example? If so, lead them on that path.
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