See also: How to create a perfect blog post

Killer content

Huffpost blog has 110 million estimated unique visitors. Wonder how they manage it? Because they not only write articles, they also are a news aggregator. That means that they collect all the mainstream articles and republish them on their domain. As the result, people found here the greatest and the most popular content of all sites.

You can also try to collaborate with well-known bloggers and asked them to write in your blog. That you’d be beneficial to both parts, as you get more traffic to your site and the other blogger wider audience and maybe new fans.

Enhance curiosity

The second blog – TMZ – has 30 million unique monthly visitors. Yes, it’s a gossip site, and that explains a lot. But you should also now how to use celebrities to enhance such a popularity. We are curious about how the elite live with fame and fortune – sometimes a life to which we aspire. But what TMZ do to make it even more affective, is creating intrigue headlines. They always left something unknown.

For instance, Mariah Carey in a SKIN-TIGHT wet Suit – Wait ‘Til You See These Curves – The teasing headline compels people to click and see those curves. So what basically you could do, is not just used some famous people, but also write powerful and intriguing headlines as well as offer some secrets, tips, tricks or inside information.

Be aware of your audience

The third one is Business Insider. With the number of readers they have, you would never thought that it’s a blog. But it is. And now they are bigger than its rival CNBC and Forbes. What is they secret? They know their audience perfectly, like the time that their audience could spend on reading their articles, what is the most interesting for them. As they did careful research about this, they started to use engaging headlines for those who love business news, are curious, but as well like celebrities, clothing tops and cool start-ups.

So what you should do first, is to carefully describe your targeted audience and think how you should improve your blog: should you write more frequently, longer post, put more images, do more social promotion, create better headlines. It is a critical thing to do to the success of any marketing effort, especially content marketing.

See also: 7 things to do after writing a blog post

So if you want to improve your blog, maybe it’s not the design that is wrong in it. Try to adjust these simple principles and probably soon you will see the amazing results.

To help remove some of the animosity from the relationship, it helps to have everyone on the same page and understand the multiplication mindset when it comes to creating the right content marketing:

1. Set objectives: Traditionally, marketing has created content and handed it off to sales teams to use how and when they see fit; a “one-size-fits-all” approach that no longer works. Before marketing can better assist sales, both have to determine their main objective for content — brand awareness, lead generation, sales, customer retention, thought leadership, and so forth.
2. Know your buyers: Take time to identify the people with whom you want to connect and understand them intimately. By creating personas, both sales and marketing will identify and understand common characteristics of a group of people with whom you want to connect. It outlines their perspectives, fears, drivers, and content needs.
3. Understand your buyer/retention cycle: Many companies focus on generating leads and closing the sale, then forget about customers until it’s time for them to buy again. That’s a big mistake. Sales teams need to think about retention and renewals as much as the original sale. What matters most to your persona during each phase? How do their content needs change?
4. The multiplier effect: This is where sales gains empowerment and marketing can catch their breath. On average, teams can create 12 additional pieces of content from a single white paper. Here are just a few examples once you have the main piece created:

• Blogs: Generate multiple posts that cover why the problem is a problem, the solution (your unique point of view) and the impact the solution has on an organization.
• Videos: Consider both internal and external. What does your subject-matter expert have to teach about the subject? What’s something that proved most valuable to a customer.
• Infographic: We all like pictures, and they help make statistics and new processes easier to relate to.
• Publish an eBook: Look for common themes and questions and then create an eBook that addresses them.
• Develop an app: Can you help your customers by making life easier for them through an app?
• Create a community: If you hear the same questions from customers over and over, this may be the time to bring them together. Connect them both online and off and help facilitate connections that prove valuable for them.

Right time. Right place. Right content

What content you use when depends on the persona and where they are in the buyer/retention cycle. Now that you understand your personas, and the breadth and depth of content that you can create from a single source, it’s easier to map that to the buyer/retention cycle and deliver the right content that engages them with the right message when they’re most likely to pay attention.

Source: Carla Johson, Content Marketing Institute