Four blog post formats that drive website traffic

Did you know that short articles - think under 3000 words - “ranked third in the B2B content assets that generated the best results in the last 12 months?”. Blogging really has the power to enable you to step up your brand and get more people looking at what you do.

However, it can be quite overwhelming to look at an empty document with no idea where to start, especially when you have a seemingly never-ending to-do list. It’s also difficult to continuously come up with good content that’ll have your readers coming back for more. To help you out, we’ve attempted to make blog writing a little less daunting by rounding up four blog post formats that will drive your website traffic and lead to more conversions for your business. 

1. Embed Reactor -  This is a quick and easy post to make by simply doing what the name says - embedding and reacting to a video resource from YouTube, LinkedIn, or another social networking site. This could be a review video, or simply a reaction to the launch of a new product like the latest iPhone… the possibilities are endless.

2. Interview - This makes for an exciting blog post opportunity as you have the option to record the interview, allowing you to post highlights and snippets on social media to mix up your feed. You could either send the interviewee the questions and have them respond, plan a call on Skype/Zoom, or even have an interview in person. With the latter two, you can transcribe the answers into a blog post. 

The format here would be a simple Q&A - simply reach out to experts in your chosen field and ask if they’d be willing to do an interview with your company. Give a brief introduction to the topic in your blog post and link to the interviewee’s website/social media profiles. 

3. Quote - For a quote post, you want to pick a topic relevant to your business, collate relevant quotes from experts in the field - maybe even one from your chairperson or CEO - and arrange them into a succinct blog post. 

You could also (if you’re feeling up to it) offer an insight into the quote and write your thoughts on it to ensure that the post has various points of view. Remember to link through to their website, or social media if relevant. 

4. Statistic round up  -  Although this can be written as a traditional blog post, there is also the opportunity to produce an infographic that sums up the statistics that can be shared on socials. Have a brief introduction to the topic that the statistics are relevant to and remember to always link to your sources for credibility! 

So now you’ve decided what format your blog post will take… but what makes a good blog post?

• You need a great title - this is the first thing the reader will read and should be eye-catching enough to make them want to read more.

• Use headers - Using a range of H2 and H3 headers will be good for your SEO and help guide traffic to your blog post.

• Talk in an active voice - It can be easy to slip into writing in the passive voice, but readers tend to respond better to blogs in the active voice.

• Don’t have bulky paragraphs or long sentences - This will make the blog post harder to read while shorter paragraphs and less complex sentences will ensure readers keep on… well, reading.

• Include links - whether internal links to pre-existing blogs that you’ve written, or external links to the website you got a specific quote or statistic from, both are good for SEO and will help to boost your blog up in search rankings.
• Add a photo or video - Did you know that articles featuring images get 94% more views than those without, and people are 75% more likely to watch a video than read a document? These statistics alone should be enough to have you adding visuals to all of your blog posts!

If you create blog posts for each of these formats and utilise the bullet points above, you’ll have four new blog posts to go live and will have happy readers who’ll enjoy the mix-up of content - win-win!