By Cheryl Strege, The Partner Marketing Group
Gloom, despair and agony (a nod to a classic Hee Haw skit) is often the reaction when I ask our clients—primarily our ERP and CRM resellers, ISVs and accounting professionals—about their blogging strategy. Most struggle with producing enough content to meet the schedule on the editorial calendar (if they even have one), much less think about writing compound blog posts as opposed to decaying blog posts.
Hubspot has published an excellent article on the topic, Compounding Blog Posts: What They Are and Why They Matter. In essence, the point is to consciously create blog posts that will grow in visits over time vs. posts that decay in visits, sometimes within hours of publishing.
You might be asking a few questions such as…
- Does it matter if my blog posts compound? Yes. One compound post can produce as many visits as six decaying posts.
- How can I ensure my post will compound? You can’t, just as you can’t always predict which videos will go viral, but you can follow Hubspot’s tips.
- Should I include images or videos in a compound blog? Absolutely.
- How do I write a compound blog post? Read on!
Elements of a Compound Blog Post
- Give tactical advice for a broad topic. Do keyword research on a broad slice of your target market and develop a few topics pertinent to them. For example, that broad slice might be SMBs who have outgrown their accounting software.
- Answer common questions. Titles that contain information on how or why to do something can increase your chances of compounding. For example, you could compare the pros and cons of various ERP software packages for non-profits and give advice on how to make a selection.
- Spend time thinking about your blog title. Hubspot found that the top two words in compounding blog titles were “How” and “Your” followed by “What”, “Best”, “Why”, and “Tip.” They also found that posts with 11-13 words in the title generated the most traffic. (You’ll notice I used both “How” and “Why” in my title.)
- Make sure you cover the basics. Your post should include images, bold headlines, bulleted text, links to other info, and answer the most pressing questions your readers have.
- Use long tail keywords in your post. According to Hubspot, long tail keywords comprise 70% of search traffic and we all know those terms can be less competitive. For example, instead of using “ERP software” as your keyword (we all know how difficult it is to rank ahead of the publishers for that term), use long tail keywords such as “ERP software for electrical distributors Miami” or “ERP solutions for oilfield services Oklahoma City” which would be more targeted and less competitive.
Hubspot has a number of additional tips so I encourage you to read the entire article if you’re serious (and you should be) about realigning your blogging strategy toward generating compound posts. If blogging instills gloom, despair and agony in your organization, we can help. We ghostwrite blog posts for software and technology publishers, resellers, ISVs, accounting professionals and others engaged in the ERP and CRM industry. Send us a message or call 734-425-7414 for information about our blog packages.
