I’m going to give you 34 blog post ideas that are guaranteed to drive traffic to your blog. Today you’re going to discover some blog post formats that you have never seen before.
Starting a blog is never easy, but before you write a single blog post you need to know who your audience is.
Table of Contents:
- Know Your Audience
- The Two Types Of Blog Content
- Created Content
- #1 Listicles
- #2 Expert Interviews
- #3 Spotlight Posts
- #4 Expert Roundups
- #5 Who To Follow Posts
- #6 Reviews
- #7 Cheat Sheets
- #8 Checklists
- #9 Infographics
- #10 Personal Stories
- #11 Reaction Posts
- #12 Monthly Updates
- #13 Open Letters
- #14 Heart To Heart Posts
- #15 Rants
- #16 Prediction Posts
- #17 Slideshows
- #18 Summaries
- #19 Charity Posts
- #20 Tutorials
- #21 Case Studies
- #22 Comparison Posts
- #23 Resource Posts
- #24 Guest Posts
- #25 Sponsored Posts
- News Posts
- Curated Content
- What’s Next?
Know Your Audience
I’ve made this really simple for you.
It basically boils down to a couple of fill-in-the-blanks.
“I help ______ who want to ______”
First, write the type of people you want to help. For example, it could be men over 40, or women who are single moms.
Then write down what they want to achieve. For example, it could be to lose weight or to make money.
When complete, the statement explains who will consume your blog content.
For example, you want to help “men over 40 who want to lose weight”, or you might want to help “single moms make money on the Internet”, whatever it might be, just fill in those two blanks and you’ll know exactly who your audience is.
Once you know who your audience is, we can then start thinking about the types of content that we’re going to make.
The Two Types Of Blog Content
There are two types of blog content.
The first type is ‘created content’, and it’s original content that comes from you (or someone in your team).
The second type is content is ‘curated content‘, and it’s content that other people make.
That’s content that already exists on the Internet and we take small portions of it and repurpose it for use on our blogs.
I’ll show you how to do that later on.
So let’s start with a list of ‘created content’ blog post ideas first.
Created Content
#1 Listicles
You’ve probably already heard of listicles before because they are really simple to do. It’s the first type of blog post format that bloggers tend to learn. You basically compile a list.
And in fact, this exact piece of content I’m making for you right now is a form of listicle too. As the name suggest, they are just numbered lists.
For example “the top 10 ways to achieve____” or “the top seven ways to ____”.
You’d be hard-pressed to find an easier blog post idea anywhere.
#2 Expert Interviews
We also have expert interviews.
Again these are easy blog posts to make. You approach someone who is recognized in your niche, and ask them how they achieved a specific result.
It could be as simple as asking Bob the personal trainer how he helps his clients to achieve dramatic weight loss in three months.
Or you can speak to people who have achieved the same things that your audience wants to achieve.
And that’s why it’s essential to know who you talking to.
#3 Spotlight Posts
Spotlight blog posts are similar to interviews, but different in one key area.
With an interview blog post we have to reach out to someone and invite them to take part.
But with a spotlight we don’t need to do that.
What we do; take maybe an author or someone who has achieved something. And then we write a blog post about why our audience needs to read or be aware of this person.
So we’re essentially reporting about what achieved or what they’ve done.
#4 Expert Roundups
Expert roundups is when you approach handful of experts in your niche and ask them all the same question, or a series of common questions that are frequently asked by your target audience.
Then compile their answers into a single blog post, which is now authoritative.
What really happens here behind the scenes; a percentage of those experts will then promote your roundup article on social media.
They might even link to you from their website and that is going to send traffic and give you link juice. That means it’s going to help your SEO, helping your blog to get more traffic from search engines.
So an example of that could be “we asked 10 _______ experts how to get more _______”, or “we asked 10 personal trainers how to lose weight fast”.
#5 Who To Follow Posts
Next we have Who to Follow blog posts.
This itself can be a little listicle, too.
We can choose the best people in your niche and then give your audience a reason why they should follow them.
Now, I did this maybe a year or two ago on my Profit Copilot Youtube channel, but I didn’t ask for anything in return.
That’s really important, if you expect something in return then it’s not an authentic list.
I looked at the people who I really do trust in digital marketing and then I made a list of why, and why my audience would value their advice too.
And what happened? Some of them promoted me to their audiences.
#6 Reviews
Review blog posts are popular with affiliate marketers.
For example, you can write a review asking if a product is worth the money, and adding affiliate links to the article.
However, people are getting wise to this.
Adding affiliate links not really as effective as it used to be. So the best course of action is to build an email list instead. But with that said, when it comes to reviews you do attract visitors with buyer intent.
#7 Cheat Sheets
Next up, we have cheat sheets.
They are quick and easy to make.
Cheat sheets help your audience to achieve quick results. They are used to make a task easier to understand.
#8 Checklists
Checklists are similar to cheat sheets, but they help your audience to plan something in advance.
Typically you would list the top 10 things that your audience might need to remember before they achieve a specific result. For example, “10 things you need to remember for a camping trip”.
Both cheat sheets and checklists are good lead magnets too, so you can repurpose both pieces of content and use them to build your email list.
#9 Infographics
We’ve also got infographics.
Infographics are popular and incredibly shareable.
And when it comes to outreach and link building these are very effective too because it’s easy for other bloggers and other webmasters to put it on their website, or share it on social media and then link to your website as the source.
The important thing about infographics; you need to provide original data.
For example you could say something like “we analyzed the top tweets to find out X result” or find out who’s really doing what so
If you’re not very creative or good with Photoshop, then just find someone on Fiverr to make an infographic for you.
#10 Personal Stories
Never underestimate the impact of storytelling.
We are hard wired to respond to stories.
As children we learn through storytelling – and that goes right back to caveman times when we draw pictures on the cave to point out where there’s a predator or whether it’s a food source.
Storytelling is a powerful way to connect with an audience and to drive traffic.
For example, you could say something like “how I overcame weight struggle”.
Your stories could start from a place of struggle, ideally that’s going to be the same struggle that your audience faces.
And once you’ve talked about the journey, and how you overcame it, you reveal how you achieved results – the same results that your audience want.
Stories like these are inspirational and they can motivate people to take action. And what happens when someone reads a story? They see themselves in it.
So your stories are not really about you, but always about your audience.
#11 Reaction Posts
We’ve also got reaction posts.
They work like this; we take someone else’s content and we analyze it. We break it down and we react to it.
For example we could say something like “10 things we loved about X” – which could be someone’s book, article, or Youtube video.
#12 Monthly Updates
Monthly updates are a fast way to build an audience.
You share your current journey, and you report on your most recent achievements – or your most recent failures.
For example, you could do an income report and reveal how much money you made this month. People really respond to these because again, they can see themselves in the stories that you’re sharing.
If you show you share your results, it will motivate them. It will inspire them to take similar steps, so people will follow you.
#13 Open Letters
Open letters are very powerful because they tend to get shared very widely.
For example, you could say something like “an open letter to personal trainers”, or “an open letter to marketing gurus”.
They’re easy to write because you just have say what you think.
But it’s important that you don’t attack any individual because that is a fast way to burn bridges.
Instead, attack ideas and values.
The second you get personal with someone, you’ve gone down a negative path and I want to make sure that you contribute something of immense value and positivity to your niche.
We always do our best to leave niches in a better place than we found them. If you approach marketing from that angle, you’re going to do really well because you’re delivering value.
#14 Heart To Heart Posts
A heart to heart is where we really open up and get real about our feelings.
It could be about how you feel about marketing and why it matters, or how you feel about the weight loss industry and why that matters.
And here again, you’re talking about ideas and values and we speak on a human personal level. These types of blog posts can often have an element of vulnerability in them because we’re all human, right?
We all have doubts and fears.
And if we can convey that through the content we create, then we’re going to connect with people because they have the same doubts and fears. Sharing this side of your personality helps people to align themselves to you, and feel like they’re creating a bond with you.
It’s going to connect with people as long as it’s authentic and it comes from a real place.
What is authenticity? It’s genuine communication that speaks from the heart.
#15 Rants
On the flip side of heart to heart blog posts, we’ve got rants.
You might be familiar with some of the rants I’ve done on the Profit Copilot Youtube channel. E.g. I really do tend to lay in to the get rich quick mentality.
But for you, it’s probably something else.
Maybe you want to rant about why the weight loss industry is lying to you. Or why personal trainers actually want to keep you fat?
Something about your niche that annoys you. As long as we don’t get personal or we’re not calling out any individual, it’s going to be cool.
You can attack strategies, techniques, philosophies and values.
#16 Prediction Posts
We can also make predictions.
Prediction blog posts are easy because all you have to do is look at current trends and figure out where you think things are going.
For example you could create a piece of content that says “10 predictions for digital marketing over the next 12 months”.
And when you make predictions you immediately set yourself up as a leader, and as someone who is knowledgeable or at least has the authority to create or make predictions like this.
#17 Slideshows
Slideshows will also help to position you as an authority figure because if you’re attending events or virtual events, or you’re out there networking with people, then you’re clearly active in your niche.
So you can make a piece of content that shows the ‘must see’ moments from an event that your audience might not have been privy to.
#18 Summaries
Next up we have summaries.
These blog posts are easy because you can read a book, attend an event, or go through a course to summarize the “top 10 key insights” from someone else’s piece of content.
You can even watch a Youtube video and summarize the best parts of it. Basically we’re condensing things down and making it simpler and easy for someone else to digest.
#19 Charity Posts
Charity posts are a great way to support a cause.
Secondly, it’s going to position you as a charitable person who thinks about more than just themselves.
We all give to charity when we can and if you can highlight a cause on your blog and encourage your commute to your audience support it, that’s a win-win for everybody.
What happens when we donate to charity? We feel good about ourselves. It makes us feel improves our self image. So giving to charity is a win-win-win.
#20 Tutorials
Tutorials help to position you as an authority figure because they are highly educational.
They are big pieces of content that will bring lots of evergreen traffic to your blog.
Here’s how to make a tutorial; list the three big milestones your audience needs to take to solve a very specific problem. Now walk them through each of the steps to complete each milestone.
#21 Case Studies
Next we’ve got case studies.
These are educational but still different to tutorial blog posts. Instead of teaching someone how to do something, we look at what someone else has achieved, and we invite them to share it with our audience.
So we break it down into steps as we use their experience as a case study.
For example, we might want to share how somebody escaped a negative situation and the positive results they’re experiencing as a result.
#22 Comparison Posts
As human beings we’re really bad at assessing the value of something, but we’re really good at making comparisons.
So we can create a piece of content that compares produces to one another.
For example, maybe something like “the top 5 cameras under $1,000”.
#23 Resource Posts
Resource blog posts can work in two ways.
Firstly, you can list out all the tools that you use to achieve something.
And then in addition to listing those tools you can also have affiliate links in there as well.
And I think you may as well add some affiliate links to these types of blog posts, you’re promoting something you recommending something anyway. So you may as well earn a commission.
But I think it’s better if you only recommend tools that you actually use.
You see, what’s likely to happen; once your blog gets some traction people are going to email you with questions and you have to be able to answer those questions.
#24 Guest Posts
Ok, I’ve written about the power of guest blogging plenty of times and if you want guest blogging tips I’ve got you covered.
If you’re not familiar with the strategy, we create content for other people’s websites and in doing so, we do two things; add value to the niche, and get backlinks to our website. That link juice will improve the blog’s SEO.
But what if you don’t want to do that? No problem, you can always used sponsored posts instead.
#25 Sponsored Posts
Sponsored posts are simple, you just pay someone to host your content on their website and then link to you.
But here’s a heads-up, if you’re going down that avenue beware that it needs to be disclosed that it’s a sponsored post, according to the Google Webmaster Guidelines.
Generally speaking, the links will be nofollow.
But listen, that’s cool too because for a healthy, organic backlink profile, you need to have a mix of both nofollow and nofollow. Otherwise it looks very unnatural and spammy.
So really you have to mix it up a little bit.
News Posts
News posts cover what’s happening in your niche right now, but I need to give you a word of caution here.
With these type of posts, you’re going to see a large spike in traffic initially, but they are not evergreen.
That means is in a months time those posts will probably get very little traffic, if any at all.
So while news posts are good for that initial spike, as a long-term strategy it’s not so good if you want to capture evergreen traffic.
#26 Industry News Posts
We can create news reports about larger industry news or current events.
We’ll speak a little bit about current events later on, but it’s generally whatever is happening beyond your immediate world.
#27 Corporate News Posts
On the flip side to industry news, we have corporate news.
This is all the stuff that is happening in your immediate world. For example, you have a sale or an event coming up soon, that you can write a news report about.
#28 New Data
We can also uncover new data and statistics.
If you want an in-depth tutorial on how to do that, read this powerful content marketing strategy.
Or listen, if you’re feeling lazy you can even go to Reddit or Facebook, create a survey or a poll, gathered that data and turn it into a news report.
#29 Newsjacking
Newsjacking is another very powerful strategy.
It’s all about taking current events and then making them relevant to your brand or your niche.
But I’ve seen some examples of newsjacking when it’s felt very forced. And because it’s felt forced that hasn’t had the desired impact.
So to get it right, it has to feel natural and it has to feel organic.
Think about what was going on in the world right now and how that might impact or be relevant to your niche.
You then take that story to relevant bloggers, podcasts and Youtubers who report on it.
Curated Content
Let’s move on to curated content.
So this is content that already exists elsewhere on the Internet and then we repurpose it, or we ask other people to get involved to generate the content for us.
#30 Polls
I briefly touched upon making polls earlier, but this time we can run a poll or a survey on our blogs, marketing channels or our email lists that we have control over, instead of in someone else’s group.
Then we can take that data and turn it into a piece of content, similar to a news post.
And you can use this data in multiple other ways, for example you can also turn it into an infographic.
#31 Crowdsourced
We’ve also got crowdsourced posts, which can be similar to polls because we are relying on our audience to generate the content for us.
So for example we can ask them a question and then we create a piece of content based around their answers.
To create a crowdsourced blog post, you could just send an email out to your list, asking a single question and compile all the answers into a single blog post.
And you can also turn that into a news report if you want to.
#32 Patchwork Posts
Patchwork blog posts are mysterious. Maybe you haven’t heard of this one before.
Little has been shared about this strategy. However, it is a technique that I have had massive massive amounts of success with.
Literally millions of visitors have come to one of my blogs, which was predominantly made of made up of curated content – using this patchwork technique.
What we do; take small portions of content from multiple sources and weave them together.
It’s really easy to do.
So we might take a paragraph of content from the BBC, and then we credit them as the original source , of course. Then we write a couple of lines about why it’s important, and what it really means for our audience.
And then we go to another source and we take another piece of content. So a paragraph from maybe CNN or Fox or wherever, and repeats.
You essentially take a portion of other people’s content, just a paragraph or two, link to them as the source, and add a short commentary.
And then you have a fresh piece of content.
Now, to make sure that Google doesn’t see it as duplicate content, you want to wrap the paragraphs you’re taking inside block quote tags.
So that tells Google that it was taken from somewhere else. Then you’re going to be perfectly fine.
That means you can have an article made up of multiple sources to create something that the Internet has never seen before. And that’s going to be of immense value to your industry.
#33 Media Embeds
Media embeds are one of the quickest types of blog posts to make.
So for example, we just go to Youtube, find the best videos, embed them in a blog post, and write a few lines about why we think people need to watch them.
The ‘why’ is important.
We need to add a commentary for each video, for best results. And now we have of curated content that is a value to our audience.
#34 Social Media Embeds
Similar to media embeds, we can do the same thing with social media platforms.
So you can go to Twitter, take tweets and embed them in blog posts.
Facebook, Instagram all allow the embedding of content. And as long as we’re linking back to the original source, and we’re wrapping things in block quotes when necessary, it’s fine.
With social media embeds, we’re still delivering enormous value to our audiences.
What’s Next?
I will give you the secret traffic methods that I never share anywhere else, for free when you go to profitcopilot.com/traffic. It’s perfect if you want more blog post ideas or just want more traffic, fast.