Here is the thing we need to remember about content marketing …
It is MARKETING.
The goal of content marketing is to get someone to take action.
We want them to …
- Join our list.
- Buy our product.
- Recommend our site.
- Share on social.
- Tell their friends.
- Leave a comment or review.
- Join our cause.
- Donate to our charity.
The list could go on and on.
While the list of what content marketing can do is long, the list of how it works is mercifully short.
In fact, these five blog posts are all you will ever need!
Watch the video to see what they are and how to use them. And be sure to share, leave a comment, or both!
Thanks,
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Prefer to read? Here is the enhanced transcript for your convenience.
Today I want to share with you five types of blog posts that sell like crazy.
Now, let’s be clear about content marketing. A lot of people are confused about content marketing. They say, “Do I just put up a blog, and then people buy things?”
It doesn’t work that way, but it does work wonderfully well when you understand the purpose of the marketing.
It is marketing with content.
That’s all it is.
It’s not just giving away content as much as you can. It needs to have a purpose.
So, before you create your content, always, always have a purpose.
Content is simply a …
- Video
- Article
- Webinar
- Podcast
- Lead magnet
- Anything you’re going to give away to the public, you want to have a purpose before you create that.
As Stephen Covey said in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, “Begin with the end in mind.” Always begin with the end in mind.
Before you envision that blog post or think about that video, think about, what do you want people to do with the end of that?
In most cases, your goal is to get someone on your list, or to buy a product from you or a product you recommend, to engage with some way, or to share socially.
Now, you don’t have to be selling things. You may be promoting a particular cause, like digging water wells, or you may be asking for donations, or you may be simply trying to build up a large Facebook following. It doesn’t matter.
You have to have a purpose.
How do you do that with content?
Well, you use one of these five blog post formats. Ready? Here we go.
Number one: the review post.
This is simply where you review a product, or a service, or something like that in order to sell it. I mean, you’re obviously content marketing. You’re marketing something, and you’re using content to do it. A review is a beautiful way to do that.
The key here is transparency. What you don’t want to do is do that thing with, “This is a total rip-off, unless you buy it from me.”
People just resent when that happens.
Yeah, it might trick the search engines for three seconds, but that is just not a great way to go in my opinion.
I believe open, honest, transparent reviews work very, very well. You want to be open. You want to be honest. Be yourself. Just speak in your own voice or write your blog post in your own voice.
Be very specific. That’s one thing a lot of people miss. Really dig down.
- How did the product help you?
- Was how to use the product made clear to you, once you brought the product?
- How does it compare to the promises that were made before you made your purchase?
These are great things to put in your review, and a lot of people overlook them.
Number two is a how-to post.
Now, this isn’t how to post, it’s how to do anything. It’s called a ‘how-to’ post.
Everything that can be done can be broken down into a process, really a recipe, just like cooking a great meal can be done through a recipe, and Ray Kroc so many years ago made McDonald’s world-famous by breaking every procedure down into a recipe of sorts.
If you’ve read the book the E-Myth by Michael Gerber … If you haven’t, you really should, because it’s a great book … this is what he talks about, how Ray Kroc broke everything down into a step-by-step procedure so that they could get a kid off the street who had never made french fries before, and he could make french fries as great as Ray Kroc could.
Everything can be made into a process. Just take a task that people need to do and break it down into logical steps. I usually do this on a legal pad.
Write those steps out, with some wording about why they work, and you have your post. That’s how you create a how-to-do-it post.
Let me give you a few ideas for this.
How-to posts could include:
- How to Know if Your Pet is in Pain … That’s a great post …
- How to Add a Message to an Auto-responder
- How to Refinance Your Mortgage
- How to Know When a Girl Wants to be Kissed. The Eben Pagan example from years ago, That was his lead magnet, and it was very, very famous. What a great title.
Number three is the big-picture post.
Now, what this does is it helps a person who is new to something see the big picture of how it works.
Facebook ads are a good example of this.
Facebook ads can be very confusing the first time out. If you’ve never placed a Facebook ad, it can be challenging the first time; but, like most things in life, the first time we do it it can be a challenge, and it gets easier as you go.
So, there are questions the first time, you answer those questions, and you’re in great shape.
That’s what this post does.
It pre-answers the questions that a first-time person is going to have when they place a solo ad, when they buy a Facebook ad, when they create a post, when they do a hosting account, when they install WordPress.
On and on and on it goes. It could be tying shoes.
Helping people see the big picture is really kind to them, because they’re feeling all confused. They’re feeling frustrated.
They, like you, like me, have information overload, and they’re distracted by all these shiny objects, and a really clear how-to-do-a-thing post is really a blessing to people.
Number four is a pillar post.
Now, a pillar post is an authority post. It really explains a topic or a method of doing something from soup to nuts, in great, great detail. These posts are often 3,000 words long. Neil Patel is famous for doing this, and he does it very well.
Google loves them. I mean, they love, love them.
They reward them, because they are helpful to searchers — That’s Google’s number one thing, is to be helpful to people who search — they’re authoritative, and they have lots of lovely links, and Google really likes links in posts.
Now, here’s an important note: You don’t have to be an authority to do this. In other words, if your local news channel needs to know something about your niche, you don’t have to be the person they call.
You don’t have to be the professor, the expert, the person who won the Nobel prize. All you have to do is gather the information. This can be curated as easily as coming from your own experience.
In fact, it’s often easier to curate it, because few people have such deep experience to write 3,000 or 4,000 words about one topic. Like many things in life, the secret is in the mix of these five, so mix them up for best results.
We teach this at our sites, Common Sense Blog Profits and Common Sense Blog Blueprint.
Now, here is the fifth type, a round-up post.
Some people call this a ‘best of’ post. This is where you round up the best thinking on a particular subject and you share it in one new blog post or video of your own.
It’s a form of curation, because what you’re doing is you’re pulling out the meat from four or five posts and sharing that, with attribution, and saying,
“Here’s the best thinking today about how to use an auto-responder. Here’s the best thinking today about how to cure cancer. Here’s the best thinking today about how to live to a hundred.”
They work incredibly well.
You find five authoritative articles … I suggest five … and you start there.
What you do is you read those, and you pull out the meat, the real heart of that article, and then you comment on it. That’s what curation is.
You do want to link to those articles. Make the link open in a new tab. It won’t take people off your site.
This is fun, because you’re simply learning more about your niche or your area of interest.
This is a lot of fun to do with golf or any kind of particular skill and any business area. I love doing these types of posts.
So, there you have it, five posts that make sales like crazy. They really do.
Why do they sell so well?
Because they give before expecting to receive.
That’s very important. That’s the nature, the heartbeat, of content marketing. They help readers understand how to do something, get clear thinking — This is a wonderful thing — and they’re authoritative.
You can put offers inside the posts as well. This is important.
This is how they sell. You want to put an offer inside the post, the heart of it: an offer to join your list, an offer to download a lead magnet or even to buy a product.
This works wonderfully well.
The reason it works well is it’s not one-and-done marketing. This is durable marketing. It’s evergreen. You can post that to your blog today and re-post it for years to come.
I literally have blog posts from four and five years ago that make sales for me automatically, because they’re good, strong blog posts along one of these five lives, and they have in the middle of them a soft offer for one of my products.
What is my goal for this piece of content, if you’re always supposed to create content with a goal?
Am I walking the walk or just talking the talk?
Here’s my goal for this piece of content … You ready? … Share it.
Please share this video right now while you’re thinking about it.
This is an experiment. I want to see how many people share this video. This is my goal.
I’m not asking you to buy anything. I’m not asking you to visit my site.
I’m just saying, wherever you are right now, find a sharing button. Whichever sharing methodology floats your boat: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, email, share it.
Do it right now, just quick, two seconds — quick like a rabbit.
Thanks for being here. Have a great day.
Charlie