There has been a lot of excitement around the office since Ragan.com picked up Tami Wessley's recent blog on the 7 Most Effective Forms of Content. The post first debuted on the Ragan.com site Tuesday and the response has been tremendous, especially the leads it has generated - 27 of our 44 leads for September have come from Ragan.com.
Here is a quick sampling of whose converted in the past 48 hours:
Those are certainly some great conversions, and a testament to the demand for information and guidance on content creation. It also demonstrates the valuable links that good content can build for your website.
But what was it about this post and this topic that caught fire? Perhaps the person most surprised by the results was the author of the post. When Ragan.com approached her about posting her blog, Tami confessed she was surprised because the concept behind it was so simple.
Maybe that was the point.
After seeing how the blog took off, I began to wonder if I could find some common threads between this post and some of our other popular posts. Important plug for setting up and regularly viewing your analytics here, this is something you should be checking regularly.
My first look was at our posts for August. We had a good August in terms of page visitors and lead conversions. Was there a trend? Here are the top 10 blogs for the month:
Sure enough, as you look at the chart, 8 of those top 10 posts for the month are basically lists, which we often recommend as a great tool for blog development. It makes sense, our blog provides top-of-the-funnel, educational content for prospects. Lists are easy to digest and don't require the reader to invest a lot of time to get some good nuggets of usable information.
I also looked at our top 10 blogs of all time, since we established version 2.0 of the Whole Brain Marketing Blog back in spring of 2011. Since our blog has evolved tremendously this past year, I was curious if that same pattern would emerge.
The results were not quite as clear-cut, but lists are still a big part of the mix, comprising 4 of our top 10 blog posts of all time. The other blog type featured heavily in the results is the how-to post, which gives our followers specific instructions on how to accomplish a task, in most cases its something social media related.
What all this data really shows, though, is that our followers are looking for easily digestable information - lists if possible - that provide them guidance in resolving a challenge they face. This past year, the challenge for many was clearly how to take advantage of social media for their business. And by using our analytics, we can stay on top of any changes.
Interestingly enough, Tami's post fits right in, providing guidance for content a business could share and promote using social media.
The bottom line: now that we know what our prospects want, we need to do more blog posts that fit that profile. If something is working well, do more of it!
It won't be every post, because not all the information we have to share fits the model. But when we can present a list, or a how-to, we should. It's what our prospects want.
To learn more about the role that blogging and social media play within the discipline of Inbound Marketing, check out our Step-by-Step Guide to Inbound Marketing.
Topics: Inbound Marketing, Content Marketing
