I was asked a great question yesterday:
“What blog posts can I write to grow my audience and business?”
To answer, I shared the following blog post templates which can be applied to any topic or niche.
1. “Read THIS Before You Do THAT”
Pick an action you want people to take.
Then write a blog post that breaks down what people need to consider before taking that action.
The goal isn’t self-promotion, it’s to help your audience avoid making a mistake.
For example, I wanted people to hire me as a social media consultant so I wrote this:
Read This Before You Hire A Social Media Consultant
It offers my take on what to consider when hiring one and — not surprisingly — perfectly aligns with my approach to consulting.
You can adapt a similar format for any action you want people to take.
Things To Note:
- An added benefit of this template is it forces you to clarify your thoughts about what you offer and how you’re positioned in the market.
- It attracts people who are looking to take the action you want them to take.
- It helps potential customers gauge if you’re a fit for their needs.
2. One-Sentence Tips
People love simplicity and quick reads.
This template promises both.
Condense your expertise into a collection of one-sentence tips on a specific topic for a specific audience.
I’ve done this for a variety of topics and it always works well. Here are a couple examples:
40 One-Sentence Marketing Tips
Things To Note:
- Forty is an arbitrary number, but I do recommend you come up with at least 10 so the post feels substantial.
- These one-sentence tips are easily repurposed as social media posts. So your time spent writing not only gets you a blog post, but gets you a bunch of social posts as well!
3. Recommended Resources
I only created this recently, but it probably should have been one of the first posts I wrote.
Create a blog post to feature resources you’ve created or found that your target audience will find valuable.
It can include free and paid resources — courses, books, apps, tools, videos, etc.
For example, here’s my post:
Resources For Creative Entrepreneurs
Things To Note:
- This post can be a revenue driver if you include affiliate links for paid products you recommend.
- Add additional resources to the post when you create or discover great ones.
- Each time you add new resources, re-promote the post and drive more people to check it out.
4. “How To Get [Thing Your Audience Wants]”
Pick a thing the majority of your audience wants and share your best advice about how to get it.
For example, a lot of my audience uses Twitter and everyone on Twitter wants more followers.
So I created this:
How To Get Followers On Twitter
Things To Note:
- A blog post like this can unlock a lot of traffic if it ranks well in search engines, so it’s worth doing some research to figure out what terms to optimize the post for. This free SEO course can help you figure out how to do that.
- Use this blog post template to create different posts for different goals your audience has.
5. Recommend Your “Competitors”
Audience and revenue growth are not a zero-sum game.
Once you realize people read, follow, and purchase from multiple sources, you discover the best way to grow is to work with others you may have previously considered competition.
To do this, write a blog post that recommends the creations of others who have a similar target audience to yours and include your own creation within it.
For example, I want to attract people interested in creativity to my newsletter, so I wrote this blog post to highlight other newsletters I find valuable:
39 Creativity Newsletters Worth Reading
Things To Note:
- Make sure the people you highlight are aware you did so — email them, tag them on social media, etc. Many will share your post and introduce you to their audience.
- Don’t shy away from acknowledging you’re doing a bit of self-promotion. You can see how I did it in the example post above by looking at my description of my For The Interested newsletter (number 10 in the list).
One Final Tip…
If you found this post helpful, I’ve got a lot more value for you.
Check out my Skill Sessions to learn how to speed up your audience and business growth.
You’ll love the session on How To Write Your Most Successful Blog Post Ever.