We’re always looking for new post formats that help get more traffic and customers.
We do this for our own business at Ghost Blog Writers and we also do it for our clients and their blogs.
The GBW Blog gives us a place to experiment with post formats, but it’s also a blog we cherish because it’s really the only way we attract traffic and customers to the business.
Recently, I’ve been experimenting with a slightly different type of blog post aimed at getting more traffic from Twitter. The results have been good and now I’d like to share with you how to accomplish the same results (or maybe even better).
Creating Lists And Mentioning Brands, Individuals
The concept is a combination of a couple different blog posts.
First, we have the list post concept. It’s one of the most popular on the web. You have probably read a list post or two in your time reading content online. Lists are easy to scan, easy to read and usually easy to understand. There is also something fun about reading a list especially if it’s a ranking. That brings in more emotions that can make a post do very well with an audience.
Example: 15 Good Company Blogs
Second, we have the feature post, which is the type of post that discusses a certain topic, person or brand. Some people do well with this type of post by talking negative about something. Others will simply tell a story. The other way is to look at something that is successful and try to figure out why it’s successful so others can use the elements to better themselves. We use this third strategy when we write posts about successful business blogs.
And the final important part of this strategy is that you are mentioning someone or something and you can tap into their audience, which is a win-win situation. They get free publicity and they send you some traffic.
Example: Analyzing The KISSmetrics Blog
So for the last couple weeks we’ve been combining these things to boost the traffic on the GBW Blog. We’ve been creating lists with mini features about the brands and people included in the lists.
Then we share the posts on Twitter just as we normally would only when we share we mention the brands included in the posts.
For example, one of the posts was 10 Software Products That Will Improve Your Business.
These are really 10 great products including a few that we love ourselves at GBW and others that people we know love and use all the time. The post is genuine and I think that comes across with you, our reader, and with the brands included in the post.
So for this post we’ll create a tweet like this:
10 Software Products That Will Improve Your #Business
1. @Buffer
2. @Evernote
Rest: [Shortlink]
You mention the brands. They see those mentions usually since most companies and individuals pay attention to their Twitter mentions and sometimes those companies will retweet the update and send their followers to the post.
That’s the key to this strategy.
You’re tapping into the audiences of the brands and individuals you mention in your posts and in your Twitter updates.
Don’t Push This Too Far
There is obviously room to abuse this type of posting and tweeting. If you take it too far you’ll be just another spammer. Not ever post we create does this and not ever tweet we publish mentions other brands and individuals.
There is nothing wrong with mentioning people and then letting them know that you did so, but if you do it all the time and take it too far you’ll build a bad reputation and that’s difficult to overcome.
Lots Of Variety
However, there is a lot of variety that you can do with this strategy.
Feature brands with lists like the one we shared above on software. You can do rankings and list different brands and individuals. We’ve also done a few posts where we’ve taken quotes from individuals on things like the future of SEO and Social Media and have turned it into a post. Then we’ve shared the post and mentioned the experts.
And for another post we simply wrote about a blog and mentioned them in the update.
Conclusion
With SEO becoming less reliable as a source of traffic, it’s important to find new sources of traffic.
This is one way you can build you traffic with a blog through a variety of sources. This post focused on Twitter, but you can do this with Facebook, Google+ and other social networks. You could even take it a step further and email the individuals you include in the post. Maybe they’ll include you in their next newsletter.
We’ve had success with this strategy. Our traffic has increased noticeably and we’re going to keep doing this all while experimenting with more new types of posts.