Content creation is not an easy task. Crafting a well-honed, balanced and informed blog post or article takes time, care and frankly, a lot of editing. As explained in our post about creating compelling content, concise copy is more effective and respectful of your audience, but more difficult to write.
Credible and original content is important to build authority with search engines and gain attention of readers. And maintaining a regular cadence is key to success.
While not every post will win a popularity contest, a strong and well-executed content marketing strategy will maximize exposure for all of your content.
How does content marketing work?
Content marketing creates bridges from your web presence to the outside world, distributing your information via email newsletters, videos, eBooks, social media posts, participation on industry forums and myriad other means.
See the full post: What is Content Marketing, Anyway?
A thoughtful blog mix casts a wider net
Though we may wish for every piece of content that we create — from blog posts to infographics, email newsletters to downloadable guides, how-to posts to guest interviews — to resonate, of course some will be more popular than others.
And that’s okay, because each content element serves a role in your marketing funnel. While broad-based, introductory content appeals to a larger audience, advanced and specific content reaches a visitor who’s further along in the sales funnel and is more likely to convert.
When crafting blog posts, mix up the style, topics and format to keep growing your target audience and leads.
Leverage your content creation efforts
Style, format and topic notwithstanding, the actual content creation is the most difficult task. So we need to leverage the heck out of it. Never just click publish and move on. Maximize the visibility for each post with both on-site and off-site SEO strategies.
Within each post, strive to embed natural links to several other blog articles and related content within your site. Share each blog post in an email newsletter and republish on industry sites and LinkedIn. Repurpose the blog post as a video, infographic or downloadable asset. And utilize social media to share each post in various formats.
And then? Showcase your best work.
Highlight your popular posts
Here’s where the fun starts. Upload the WordPress Popular Posts plugin. This powerful plugin features your most popular posts in a list that you can embed on your site wherever you wish.
With over 57,000 WordPress plugins available as of this writing, it’s not surprising that there is more than one plugin to serve a particular purpose. That’s indeed the case when seeking to highlight your popular posts. Other plugins that provide similar functionality include the Popular Post (singular) plugin that — ahem — isn’t as popular, as well as the Top 10 plugin.
When selecting plugins, review their functionality, ratings and active installations, and be sure to select one that’s been tested with the most recent version of WordPress.
Customize your popular posts plugin
Plugin settings for Popular Posts include the ability to customize the tracking time period from as short as the past 24 hours to all-time views. Popular posts can be sequenced according to those with the highest number of views, the most comments or average views per day. And you can decide how many items to include in your Popular Posts list.
You may wish to restrict your Popular Posts list exclusively to blog posts, or elect to include other website content, such as pages and FAQs. Styling options allow you to display thumbnail images to accompany blog post teasers, if desired.
And you can even run multiple Popular Posts widgets on your site, with different parameters. For example, a personal trainer might display top healthy recipe posts on his website weight loss services page, and feature fitness product review posts in a section of the website dedicated to exercise programs.
Showcase your blog post winners with the Popular Posts plugin. Then review our posts for other recommended WordPress plugins to help you optimize your blog content.
Need help creating content or developing structure for your content marketing?
This post was published previously on OnlineAmplify.com and has been refreshed for relevance and timeliness.
