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5 Blogging Strategies I’m Betting on This Year

Posted By Jerry Low 21st of March 2016 Blog Promotion, Writing Content 0 Comments

5 Blogging Strategies I'm Betting on This Year | ProBlogger.net

This is a guest contribution from Jerry Low.

If you aren’t already blogging, this is the year to start.

Blogging means improved visibility, more traffic, and more natural links. Keep in mind that 57% of companies that maintain an active presence on their blog have acquired a customer through blogging, and businesses that blog generate 127% more leads than businesses that don’t blog – those benefits are pretty impressive.

However, while blogging is still incredibly valuable, keep in mind that the blogging landscaping is constantly evolving, and in order to please your readers, you need to keep pace with the changes.

5 Blogging Strategies I’m Betting on This Year

To help you keep up with things, take a look at these five blogging strategies that I’m betting on this year.

1. Master the Art of Guest Posting

There is no doubt about it: Guest-posting works.

It worked in 2013, 2014, and 2015. It will work this year.

An effective, well-thought-out guest posting strategy helped me drive thousands of new users to my site Web Hosting Secret Revealed (WHSR), and I saw a substantial increase in traffic thanks to the strategy.

However, the key to a successful guest posting strategy is to make your guests posts as helpful as possible if you want to lure in readers and entice them to click on the link in your author bio.

To maximize the impact of your posts, be sure to keep the following in mind:

Leverage the power of the curiosity gap

In order to get users to make the leap from your guest blog post to your website, you need to pique your curiosity. You need to make it clear that you have something of value to offer, and then make your reader wonder what types of valuable content could be available on your site. In other words, you need to make them curious enough to want to find out more.

When I am guest posting on a blog, I always like to use my own personal experience as an example for this very reason. Once people are familiar with a personal experience of mine, they are more likely to be curious about what other strategies and tips I can offer them, and therefore much more likely to investigate my website.

All in all, as part of an effective guest posting strategy, you should always make an effort to harness your readers’ curiosity and turn it into a propelling force behind driving more traffic to your website.

Maximize the value of the space in your bio by including a follow-up link.

A great way to maximize the full potential of guest posting and get more traffic to your site is by posting some kind of follow-up link in your bio.

For example, let’s say that you share tips on how to make money blogging in a guest post, based on your own personal experience with professional blogging. You might add in the guest post that there is a post on your own blog that explains strategies to minimize your tax bill on that blogging income, and put the link in your author bio. You’ll pique your readers’ curiosity, and will be able to direct them to your own site, where they can find information that is directly relevant to their interests and needs.

The bottom line is that guest blogging is a tremendously effective strategy. There is a demand out there for blog content, as Internet users spend three times as much time reading blogs and social media posts as they do reading email. Guest blogging is a great way to meet users’ desire for blog content and direct them to your own site.

2. Marrying Blog Niche with Other Topics

In order to expand your blog’s readership, it is beneficial to tie a topic in your niche into another topic. By merging two topics together, you’ll have more material for new content, which translates into a bigger reach on social media, an expanded readership, more links, and a more loyal following.

Expand your reach on social media

Chances are, if you are recycling the same points over and over again into different blog pieces, you aren’t maximizing your reach on social media, as you aren’t tapping into new audiences.

By marrying your niche with other topics, you will be able to expand your reach on social media, becoming visible to people who might not have a direct interest in your niche, but do have a direct interest in the topic you are marrying into your niche.

That means new talking points that will attract new readers.

Expand your readership.

By marrying your niche with other topics, you will be able to attract new readers. For example, let’s say you have a blog with tips, strategies, and information for aspiring professional bloggers. If you write a post explaining how to start a gardening blog, you will not only attract readers who are interested in blogging, but also readers who have an interest in gardening, but maybe not a direct interest in blogging. That is a whole new audience for your content.

Here are a few success examples that we tried at WHSR in 2015. We are certainly upping on this strategy this year.

What can you learn from the vampire diaries about keeping readers engaged – Copy writing tips + Vampire Diaries (drama) 

Why a golfing blog may be more profitable than you think (and how to start one) – blog monetization tips + golf

5 reasons why a Sim City player could be your next social media manager – social media marketing tips + Sim City (PC game)

More links

Keep in mind that bloggers in certain industries are more likely to link out to others. Marrying your niche with other topics actually helps to grow links naturally.

A more loyal following

Readers appreciate variety. They don’t want to be reading about the same things over and over again. They want your blog to be a source where they kind find information that is new, but still relevant and valuable to them. When you marry your niche with other topics, it opens your blog up to a whole host of new content ideas. That’s good news for your readers, who will undoubtedly appreciate your creativity and your ability to stand out from the rest. And a happy following translates into a more loyal following, which is good news for your blog.

So how you can incorporate this strategy into your own blogging efforts?

The key is to try to find unique and innovative links between topics that might not seem like they organically connect.

For example, what is your favorite game? Can you merge your current niche with the game? What about your favorite TV shows? Can you write about the lessons you’ve learned from the shows? With a little bit of creative thinking, you will be able to come with topics to marry into your niche in no time at all!

3. No More Comments

I am closing down the comment feature on posts at WHSR this year because I believe that it is simply counterproductive.

It takes a significant amount of time and energy to reply to all the comments received in a relevant and valuable way, and I don’t really believe it helps our readers much. The vast majority of the times, readers don’t come back just to read the reply to their own comment, and new readers are not digging into others’ old comments.

Furthermore, in most cases, little help can be offered in just one comment. After all, there is only so much space that a public comment provides.

To ensure meaningful communication with my readers, I much prefer email. It’s more personal and I can provide more information. Ultimately, the comments section simply isn’t adding value to user experience in a constructive and meaningful way—so now is the time to give it the ax.

4. Write Extremely Long Posts

Many bloggers think that short posts are better when it comes to capturing users’ attention. But shorts posts aren’t necessarily the best posts. Forget about 500-word blog posts. Extremely long posts are the way to go.

Instead of writing three 1,500-word blog posts, I am now encouraging WHSR bloggers to write a 4,500-word post instead.

Why?

The secret is that extremely long posts help readers for real, providing them with much more information. Furthermore, publishing extremely long posts gives us more talking points and more ground to promote on social media.

The down side of writing extremely long posts is that you lose some hurried (or lazy) readers. But in contrast, long posts always perform the best in engaging readers and converting visitors into fans.

5. The Power of Facebook

There is no denying it: Facebook is huge. It’s a social media giant, and it is bigger and more popular than any other social media site out there. Facebook has over 1 billion daily active users, including 167 million daily active users in the US and Canada, and close to three-quarters of online adults around the world visit the site at least once a month.

Put simply, you are losing out on a lot if you are not leveraging the power of Facebook Ads platform.

Of course, as many people have already pointed out, Facebook organic reach is decreasing. While this is unfortunate, it is absolutely no reason to give up on the platform. An excellent way to improve the visibility of your blog and drive more traffic to it is to harness the power of Facebook Ads.

It is incredibly easy to get started with Facebook ads.

Entry cost is very low, and it is incredibly effective as a marketing strategy, overall. As of April of 2015, the average click-through rate of a Facebook ad was 1.5 percent and the average cost per click of the average Facebook ad was $0.27, which is pretty good. And with an effective Facebook ads strategy, you will see results.

Numbers don’t lie, and WHSR has seen some pretty impressive numbers thanks to Facebook.

In 2015, traffic to WHSR from Facebook had higher-than-average conversion rates, better bounce rates, and the most pages per visits. That means that when using Facebook to direct traffic to the site, I’m not only getting more traffic, I’m also getting better traffic. The users are more engaged and more likely to convert. Of course, to maximize the impact of your Facebook ads, there are a few things that you should know.

fbstats-1 fbstats-2

To run better Facebook ads, keep these three easy tips in mind:

Keep it short and simple.

Research clearly shows that Facebook wall posts with less than 80 characters routinely see 60-percent higher rates of engagement than longer posts. So the best way to attract the attention of Facebook users is to keep things short, sweet, and to the point. For example, one easy way to write your ad copy on FB is by using this formula: Stop being stuck in [blank]! Get [solution].

Test different images.

Quiz time. Here’s an Ad set I ran to promote our blogging guide (this page).

fbimage

Which of the above gets the most clicks in my recent Facebook Ad? 

Was it –

A. An Asian girl looking slightly above towards audience, or

B. A picture of SOHO work space that (might) intrigue viewers’ emotion, or

C. A picture of an exotic animal that look into viewers’ direction?

The answer is A. An Asian girl looking slightly above towards audience.

Not a big surprise though – as studies have shown again and again that photos of people (females, especially) draw most attention on Facebook (and most other social media platforms).

What amazed me is the huge difference in results between picture A with the other two – In the ad sets I ran on Facebook, picture A were far better in term of engagement/impression (by 135%+ vs the loser),  CTR (by 120%), and costs (by ~200%). 

Moral of the story – Images will have a significant impact on the performance of your ad, so choose wisely.

In fact, images have had the biggest impact on the performance of all of my Facebook ads. You need to find the image that maximizes both click-through rate and conversions, and the best way to do that is through testing. Don’t just assume an image works. Always prove it by testing it. That way, you’ll optimize the success of your campaign. 

Retarget your blog visitors using Custom Audience.

Remember, Facebook uses the relevance score to determine how relevant your ads are to their target audience. This score is a combination of a number of different metrics, including engagement, conversions, and click-through rate.

Facebook ad cost-per-click drops significantly with better focusing on the audience, as the higher the relevance score, the less it will cost to display your ad (the idea behind this is that Facebook wants to incentivize advertisers to only show content that is relevant to an audience in order to maintain a positive user experience).

A great way to maximize this relevance score is by retargeting your blog visitors using Custom Audience, enabling you to show ads to people who have visited your blog but may have left without engaging with your content or converting. Keep in mind that in order to do this, you will need to add a site-tracking tag to your website so that users can be identified via browser cookies.

All in all, just investing a little time and money in Facebook ads can lead to significant gains in visibility, so it is well worth your time.

Jerry Low is a geek dad who enjoys building web assets and growing business online. You can find out more about his work at WebRevenue.io/blog

About Jerry Low
Jerry Low – geek dad, SEO junkie, founder of Web Hosting Secret Revealed. Connect with him on Twitter or find out more about him at his personal blog The Real Jerry Low.
Comments
  1. I think closing down comments might be a bad idea why? because comments to me are like a way for you to get a survey traffic going on for your blog. Visitor came by, read your topic and tell you the pro’s and con’s of your articles.

  2. I’d be lying if I said I haven’t occasionally fantasized about closing comments but every time I get close a comment will come in from a first time visitor or someone a fellow blogger has referred to my site. It’s highly unlikely these people will email me, but they can easily leave a comment. The other thing is I have comment forwarding set up so every first-time visitor is sent to a page with a personal message from me and an invitation to stick around. I get a lot of conversions from that page, and I don’t really want to give it up. And then there are the regulars who stop by and contribute to the 40 or so comments I get with each post. I almost never get spammed, so if I’m honest it really doesn’t take much time to manage my comments. I may take the plunge some day, but for now, the ROI is definitely there for me.

  3. Hi Jerry,

    I completely agree with you…like you, I have long come to the same conclusions (only you beat me in creating a post about it :) )

    However, I’ll comment on the following 2 only: comment closure and monster posts.

    Comments (in 2016) are proving not to serve any much purpose again…infact, they are on the decline! Blogs that used to have up to 200 comments per entry are barely managing 50 now. As you also mentioned, engagement using the comment form is also zero these day (I bet you, you yourself will not even bother reading this comment of mine nor even replying it…so, why bother?)

    Accordingly, on the 1st if this year, I closed comments on my site – completely!

    Secondly, the age of 500 word posts is gone! Today, anything less than 3000 words isn’t likely to be appreciated either by search engines or your readers…sadly, many Webmasters still have not got the gist!

    Personally though, all my entries are at least 3000 words…I passionately hate short entries (even if it will take a week to publish a monster entry).

    Short may work for Seth Godin…but for the rest of is, it must be long form!

    Do make the day great!

    Always,
    Akaahan Terungwa

  4. I am also focus on Facebook and Its really works great for me. I usually get more quality and targeted visitors to my blog. I am also focus on creating high quality content which will increase my blog readership. Very well written article Jerry.

  5. I am also leaning in to longer posts, i might still post shorter blogpost, but if i have a related topic post instead of creating a new post i wil just combine it woth my older and that will make it longer and more beneficial to the reader snce i sm providing more information

  6. I love commenting on blogs and receiving them on mine. I think they also drive traffic or they have for me any least. I agree FB is a valuable platform esp when you pay for boosts. I have shared posts that organically reached 60k audiences within hours so it’s still possible to share without a boost and see great responses. Thanks for this post :)

  7. Hi Jerry,

    Digging this post.

    For the 1 time this year I will play contrarian ;) Blog comments still rock. Always have. Always will.

    1 name: Adrienne Smith. Her comments go higher and higher. Because no one connecting medium can overcome the power of love, care and support, and a big heart. The woman shows how blog commenting is getting better and better for folks who believe in it. In truth, I did little commenting over the past year as I was writing my eBooks and spending time in areas with poor connectivity. But recently I doubled down, and of course, I’ve tripled my comments in weeks.

    Each comment builds bonds. Each comment strengthens friendships. Friendships make or break your blog. Especially when blog comments help you build strong relationships with some of the top bloggers online ;)

    Super points overall Jerry. Thanks for sharing!

    Ryan

  8. Blog post link depends very much on your niche. Longer posts may get more shares, but I’m writing my posts for work at home moms. My readers don’t have the time to sit and read 2000, 3000, 4000-word articles. They want quick tips and information they can take action on while the baby is napping, because that might be the only 30 minutes of freedom they get that day.

    I also love my blog commenters. I love that people ask me questions and have things to say about my post. I’m of the opinion that my blog is a conversation with my readers. Why would I want to block their voice?

  9. Hi Jerry
    Other than blog commenting I believe you would win the bet but for commenting people do have different opinion.
    With email usually one-way communication is made while with a comment reply tool we can send the reply directly to commenter and this builds blog community.
    Anyways this is so great to learn so many amazing things from this post especially regarding power of Facebook.
    Many thanks for sharing

  10. Sophia says: 03/30/2016 at 10:35 am

    Thank you for all of the fantastic information you provide. I’m just getting ready to launch my blog next month (April 2016), and I’ll admit I’m a little intimidated by your 2016 predictions. A 1,000 word post was my target post, and I don’t know that I could actually pull off a 3-4,000 word post without combining topics I have planned for a separate post. I’ll need to think about it and see how it goes with my 750-1,000 word goals for now. I’m also sad to read that you feel comments don’t add value. Reading posts and leaving comments is one of the “things to do when starting a blog” that have been suggested by successful bloggers, such as yourself. I love and appreciate all the information you provide. I wish I had found your resources last year when I first started blogging and quit out of frustration.
    Have a fantastic day!

  11. Great points, Jerry.

    While comments may be considered as a small ranking signal by search engines, I agree with you that enabling comments isn’t always the best approach – It really depends on your topics and how your audience opts to engage.

    As bloggers, we like the idea of comments because that they’ve always been a part of the blogging medium’s DNA and we tend to get pretty meta. But that doesn’t mean audiences in other niches enjoy the comments the same way we do … most of the niches I’ve experienced couldn’t care less and rarely engage below the post.

    So, if you blog about a topic outside of the usual meta-topics (blogging, content, etc.), you may find that disabling the comments helps boost engagement on Twitter, Facebook, or wherever else your audience prefers engaging with you.

    Be mindful of the meta and engage your audience where they hang out.

  12. Mark Wilson says: 10/30/2017 at 10:39 pm

    Thank you for all of the fantastic information you provide.

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