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You know content matters. But the content marketing space keeps getting noisier and noisier, which makes it harder and harder to be heard.
Here are some simple tips to help your blog posts stand out and get more traffic in an astoundingly crowded universe of content.
Simple Tips to Help Your Blog Posts Stand Out
Know Your Audience & Do Your Research
Don’t guess what your audience needs and/or wants. Make data-driven decisions on content by doing industry research and competitor analysis.
Write Compelling Headlines
Humans are pretty shallow: we judge a book by its cover. And a blog post by its title. The headline is your hook. It’s how you draw readers to click through and check out the whole article, so the catchier the better.
We’ve written a whole article about blog headlines to help you out. You can find it here.
Break Up A Page With Subheadings
White space is your friend. Use it, and it’s easier for readers to skim your content and decide to actually read it. If they read it, perhaps they’ll also take the action you want them to take.
Use Bullet Points to Highlight
Highlight your best information with bullet points people actually read:
- Treat bullets as small headlines
- Express clear benefits
- Keep them to a line or two
- Keep them symmetrical
- Avoid clutter and stick to the basics
- Again, bullets are not paragraphs, they are headlines.
Add Images
People react and process visual content much faster than text-based content. So adding images boosts engagement.
Advanced Ideas to Make Your Blog Posts Stand Out
Maybe you’ve gotten the basics down. You’re crafting quality headlines, utilizing good formatting, and researching who your audience is and what they are looking for. Great work! Now, use these more advanced ideas to take your blog posts to the next level.
Check Out the Competition
Make sure nobody else has, in fact, written the post you were planning. Type keywords, subject or headline into Google and see what you find. If you find somebody who has written a post just like what you were considering, make your post different enough to stand apart. Add value with stats, images, or resources, or offer a unique angle on the topic.
Remember That Details Matter
Do your readers’ homework for them and have extra details that add authority to your post and better prove your points. Doing your research and thoroughly educating your readers with sourced facts creates solid content that you’re unlikely to see duplicated elsewhere.
Answer Your Own Questions
As you look around for ideas and find questions being asked that you’ve never heard before, you just may have your next great topic. If you can answer questions that nobody else has answered—or that nobody has thought to ask—you can produce unique, valuable content.
Share Lessons Learned
Readers will appreciate the strategies and the insights they can gain from your transparency. If you share mistakes and lessons that you’ve been taught, it’ll help your audience learn what to do and not do.
Be Specific
Branch off from a general idea, getting more detailed and specific with each branch. Increased specificity makes your post stand out from the crowd. You and your posts become more valuable when you share strategies, tips, and examples.
Share Yourself
Your opinions, recommendations, and thoughts are yours alone. Share them and your content will be as one-of-a-kind as you are.
Tell Stories and Share Anecdotes
Using facts, data, and statistics creates content that appeals to the logical part of the brain. But don’t overlook content that connects emotionally with the reader. Use storytelling to establish this connection by being open, honest, and genuine. Story content can be something that happened to you, an event you witness regularly, or you can make-up something that would or could happen under some set of facts. Try humor when writing your post or use silly examples to illustrate your point.
Use your experiences, opinions, and knowledge to create content that is unlike anything others can share. By bringing something different to the table you can break free from the blog-writing hordes and reap the benefits of originality.
More Advanced Ideas to Make Your Blog Posts Stand Out
When developing content, you can seek out subject matter that relates directly or peripherally to your market niche, or you can share your personal take on a product, service, or benefit of a particular widget. Be sure to be transparent, keep your voice consistent, and your audience will await every new post. Here are some more advanced ideas to help your content stand out.
Criticize or debunk an opinion: Remember to attribute facts and figures used to support your stance.
Go against the flow: Observe everything around you and flip it on its head. Be fair and professional.
Write reviews: Be honest and civil, but don’t be afraid to point out faults or even hand out a poor score. People appreciate your transparency.
Leverage a famous quote: Again, be sure to attribute the quote to its original author.
Tell a story: It bears repeating. Audiences are drawn in by stories.
Be accountable: Discuss your achievements and failures.
Leverage current news: Retain your blog’s voice and style and discuss something from the current news cycle (try Google News). Including reliable and interesting facts will make you more authoritative.
Leverage history: Find historical events related to your niche.
Ongoing topic themes: Dedicate a day a week to something your audience likely shares in their own lives and talk about it, talk about them, respond to comments, and create a stronger community.
Rant: Go on a rant about something; speak your mind; share your frustrations. Since everything stays on the internet and can ignite, do enough research and have someone you respect read the post before it’s published.
Pop culture commentary: Share your thoughts on pop culture trending topics, news stories of pop culture interest, and/or events. Respond to comments.
Beginner’s guides: Newbies are always interested in learning more. Mentor from a distance. As always, respond to questions and comments personally.
Myths or facts: Those newbies again, they do tend to fall for the same false information on a regular basis. Create your post from the most common myths in your niche and correct them with the facts.
Three Powerful Ways To Do Something Great on Your Blog Right Now
Here are three simple and powerful ways to make your blog stand out in a super crowded blogosphere. Try some of the ideas presented above, but deliver them with these overall directives in mind.
#1 Be Disruptive
When you interrupt people with something of value they will not see it as an intrusion. They will welcome the jolt to their mental energy.
#2 Be Dynamic
Explore the edges of your blog’s world, and seek new territory. Do something not previously tested and proven. One way or another you’ll be surprised by the results, and you’ll stand out while doing it.
#3 Be Dramatic
Do something that catches people off-guard and makes a strong point. Dramatize your ideas. Your story can go a lot further than a simple statement can.
Go. Dominate your space. The information presented here is intended to underline some basic truisms about the current state of blogging and suggest some ways of finding topics, or tweaking common topics, so your posts stand out from the noisy content that is everywhere. Happy content creating!
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