Blogging is one of the most effective ways to build your brand image, generate word of mouth, attract more traffic and strengthen your website’s SEO. Websites with blogs have almost 400% more indexed pages, and 97% more inbound links. Companies with more than 51 posts on their blogs experience a 77% lift in median monthly leads (source).
But you can’t create a blogging strategy in isolation. To attract regular traffic and create a buzz about your brand, you need to create the right type of content that resonates with your target audience. Not only will this give you more social media exposure, but also help you connect much more effectively with your readers.
Creating multiple types of posts on your blog will also make it more interesting and fun to read. Here are 9 types of blog posts that your readers would love to read and share on social media.
1. How-To Posts and Tutorials
Tutorials and how-to posts are one of the most popular forms of blog content. The majority of people use the internet to learn new things, and develop new skills. Naturally, they look for specific how-to posts and tutorials that can help them.
The secret to creating a popular tutorial, is to go really deep in explaining one specific topic. The more comprehensive and detailed your post is, the better for your readers. Use lots of snapshots and images to explain different steps and make it easier for your readers to understand your point.
Here are a couple of great examples of well-written How-To posts
- How To Write a Blog Post With Perfection – A Step by Step Guide
- How To Write In-Depth Articles That Google Loves
How-to posts immediately establish you as an expert on that particular topic and strengthen your brand image. They are also really useful if you’re trying to attract new clients, since they showcase your expertise on a certain topic.
2. List Posts
Many professional writers hate list posts because they think lists have been over-done. But it doesn’t matter how much you hate them, list posts are here to stay because readers love them. They’re easy to remember, simple to read and get lots of social media shares.
But the secret to creating really impressive list posts, which get lots and lots of social media shares, is to go for longer, more in-depth lists. Instead of writing about 5 ways to do something, go for 15 or 17 ways to do the same thing. Longer lists tend to perform better on both search engines and social media.
Here are some good examples
- 31 Powerful Ways to Boost Your Blog’s Social Media Shares
- 50 Tools To Jumpstart Your Content Marketing Efforts
Although list posts perform well on social media, you still need to use them in combination with other types of posts on your blog so that your content doesn’t become monotonous.
3. Infographics
If you want lots of high quality backlinks in a very short time create a detailed infographic on a specific topic in your niche. Not only are infograhics really easy to read and understand, but they also attract lots of social media love.
You do, however, need to invest more time and effort in creating infographics as compared to a simple blog post. But the returns are also higher in terms of backlinks and social shares.
To create an infographic, choose a very specific topic in your niche, collect key statistics about it from reliable sources on the internet, and compile them in an infographic. If you don’t want to hire a designer, there are many free infpgraphic tools that you can use as well.
Here are some example of high quality infographics
- Why Every Business Should Blog
- How To Create Engaging PowerPoint Presentations
- Best Blogging Websites – A Detailed Comparison
4. The Ultimate Guides
Every now and then, you need to create blog posts that just blow away your readers with in-depth knowledge and outstanding content. This is where you can use the ultimate guides. The ultimate guides are like mini eBooks that cover one or more closely connected topics and guide the readers to a certain business objective.
After reading an ultimate guide, the readers should feel confident about their knowledge on that particular topic and should be able to take practical steps to implement it.
Neil Patel’s ultimate guides are excellent examples of this content type.
5. Case Studies
Readers are fascinated by detailed case studies and real life success stories. Apart from getting lots of social shares, case studies help you find more customers and backlinks, and strengthen your brand image.
Case studies outline how your product/service helped a client, with a specific problem, achieve their business goal. The perfect case study describes the problem first, and then explains the exact steps that were taken to resolve it.
Here are a few examples of case studies.
- Case Study: How One Veteran’s Podcast Built a Million Dollar Business
- Viral Marketing Case Study: 4 million+ Page Views, 1200 Links, 850% Organic Lift
- Link Building Case Study: How I Increased My Search Traffic by 110% in 14 Days
6. Round-up Posts
You can find easy traffic, social shares and lots of backlinks by creating different round up posts in your niche. Round ups usually contain a compilation of posts from other blogs or opinions of other people about a certain topic.
For example, you can create “best of the week”, “top internet marketing posts of the month” and other similar round ups. You can also create expert roundup posts that contain opinions of multiple experts on a certain topic of your niche.
Readers love round ups because they offer lots of information from different angles in one post. Here are a few great examples.
7. Checklists
If you want to give your readers lots of value in a short time, try creating a checklist post. Checklists are popular among readers and social media users because they’re easy to understand, give lots of value and don’t consume much time.
Checklists are also very popular because they give actionable insights to the readers and help them identify loop holes in their strategy.
For example, if you’re a web design consultant, you can create a checklist for optimized web design. Users can match their existing design with your checklist and identify any loopholes.
Here are a few great examples
- The Ultimate Checklist: 51 Questions To Optimize Every Element of Your Online Copy
- The Ultimate SEO Checklist: 25 Questions To Ask Before Your Next Blog Post
8. Data Driven Research Posts
Another content type that gives you guaranteed backlinks, and lots of social shares, is the data driven research post. To create these posts, you don’t need to conduct all the research yourself. You can use existing studies by research companies like Pew, Forrester, Nielson or any other niche specific research companies.
To create a successful research post, try limiting yourself to a very narrow topic, and go deep in it. For example this post by Neil Patel is focused on just one small aspect of social media, hashtags.
Here’s another example from his blog
9. Controversial Posts
If you want quick fame, lots of debate and hundreds of comments on your blog, write a post that goes against the conventional opinion. Controversial posts trigger arguments like no other content type.
But to make it work, you need to back your argument with some degree of facts. You should also have a pretty thick skin and be prepared to respond to lots of heated comments.
Conclusion
High quality blog content is an essential component of any online marketing strategy. By creating different types of blog posts and structuring high quality content in multiple ways, you can increase the effectiveness of your blogging efforts, attract more readers and generate more social shares.
What do you think about the content types I’ve discussed in this post? Have you tried any of them on your blog? Or do you have any other types to add to this list?
I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.