Headlines are a critical step to the overall success of the content you publish, especially blogs.
Here’s something else, though. The experience of the reader after the headline — what’s in the content itself — is also every bit as important.
Similar to a tasty cake with even better icing, or a great store with a clear, accurate sign.
If a store is awesome, and has tons of of fantastic products inside, but the sign is nonexistent, or, worse — confusing or off-putting, how is the owner going to attract anyone inside?
A headline is like that.
If you’re crafting a headline to get people to read your blog, article, or email, it needs to be clear, well-written, and engaging to earn your audience’s interest and attention.
I’ve got some nitty-gritty tips for you on how to write headlines for your content, hot and fresh for you in today’s video. Let’s get into it!
[bctt tweet=”Learn 3 practical tips for writing #headlines that work from @JuliaEMcCoy on @YouTube ?” username=”ExpWriters”]
How To Write Headlines that Earn More Clicks & Reads (Video)
Okay, so here are my top three tips for you on writing great headlines.
Ready? The first one is four tips in one, so buckle in!
Headline Writing Tip #1: Draft your headline in three stages.
Let’s look at one of the blogs I’ve written: How to Promote a New Blog Post: 15+ Trusty Techniques to Try
After 8 years of content creation, and writing thousands of blogs, I’ve learned that multiple process and draft stages are everything to staying ahead of content, producing great quality, and never risking burnout. (I’m 3 or 4 weeks ahead now on more than 20 individual long-form content pieces per month.)
[bctt tweet=”After 8 years of content creation, and writing thousands of blogs, I’ve learned that multiple process and draft stages are everything to staying ahead of content. @JuliaEMcCoy” username=”ExpWriters”]
When it comes to stages in content creation, this is the secret to success. And this includes stages for your headlines!
Here’s the three stages I use. Headline Writing Stage 1: Draft a headline that reflects the idea or keyword you’re writing about. My draft for the blog example would look like: How to promote a new blog post: # techniques (because that’s the keyword and the idea). It should not be perfect at this point. Don’t worry about that yet! Headline Writing Stage 2: After you write the blog, come back to the headline. How many steps or techniques do you have? You’ll know after writing the article. This is super important: Let the content guide your headline. This will mean accuracy to the topic for the reader, if you match the headline to what you’ve written, after you write it. You want to refine and craft a headline you like. Headline Writing Stage 3: Run the headline through a scoring tool. I like the Advanced Marketing Institute’s Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer. It’s a fantastic tool that gives you a rating for how much emotion your headline will impact, and what emotions you’ll bring up in your reader. Intellectual, Empathetic, Spiritual are the three emotions the AMI tool scores for. 40-80 is a high score. Another good tool is CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer, which rates your headline from 1-100, dependent on word choices used in the headline, length, etc.
Now that you know the stages of how to write a good headline, which I’d say is the most important part of this video, let’s talk about a few other headline rules of thumb.
Headline Writing Tip #2. Never, ever, ever, clickbait.
Don’t sacrifice accuracy for sensation.
The best wait to avoid this is with accuracy from headline to topic.
Never disguise your topic or be unclear about it. Be upfront and 100% accurate. Accuracy of your headline to the content also impacts Google rankings. Google looks for headlines that sum up the topic of the content. The topic of your content is what ranks well in Google, if the whole piece is topically accurate. This is because of how semantic search algorithm works. We can get all nerdy here — that’s just a summary. For more, I have a guide on semantic and topical search optimization.
Headline Writing Tip #3. Your starter words matter.
BuzzSumo did a study of over 50,000 articles in B2B content. They found that these starter words performed better than other headline starter phrases:
“The Future of”
“How to use”
“Need to” (without “Know”)
“How to Create”
“Here’s How”
“You Need to Know”
Brainstorm topic ideas with these phrases in mind. For example, “what does my audience need to know?” or “what is the future of my industry and how does it affect my audience?”
You can even go back and optimize content that’s not performing well on your blog and add in these header phrases. I go back and optimize my old icky headlines all the time and see more results from doing so!
Go Forth and Write Headlines that Work
Hope these tips helped you.
Here’s to writing catchy headlines that work and earn our readers’ attention — and don’t add to the noise and clickbait crap out there! I’d LOVE to have you subscribe and come back for more videos. Click the banner below and let’s stay in touch!
What’s one of the biggest mistakes marketers make when creating content?
It’s when they plunge ahead, and immediately spring into creation mode.
Wait… really?
Yes, you heard right.
While it’s great to have ideas and inspiration for the creation phase of content, one vital, monumental pieceis missing for success in the above scenario.
What is it?
What your audience wants.
Sure, you might think your content idea is great.
But if your audience doesn’t agree, content will go nowhere.
You’ll get zero traffic. Zero shares. Zero comments. Zero engagement. Zero conversions.
*shudder*
On the other hand, if you create craveable content your audience is dying to read, your content will go the distance.
Check this example of the lifecycle of one impactful piece of content. Done well, it can nurture your visitors into becoming loyal customers. (Read more about how our readers have become buyers.)
Impactful, audience-satiating content is a big deal.
So, the real question here is, how do you find out what your audience wants? How do you know which content topics are gold, and which are destined for the grave?
I’ve come up with a concept that will help. It’s called the Topic Circle. Let’s explore how to use it to create craveable content your audience wants and needs.
[bctt tweet=”Don’t go straight into creation without knowing what your audience wants. But how do you find out? @JuliaEMcCoy has a concept called the Topic Circle ⭕️ that can help you flesh out truly craveable content. ” username=”ExpWriters”]
How to Create Craveable Content Your Audience Hungers For Using the Topic Circle Concept
The Topic Circle is a good way to visualize the intersection of your expertise + what your audience wants.
If you only rely on your expertise to come up with content topics, you’re climbing a slippery slope. Sure, you can write about those topics with confidence and authority, but at the same time, who knows if your audience will care?
That’s why you need to visualize how your expertise meshes with what your audience wants to read. This is what it looks like:
And put into practice, this is what a Topic Circle mapped to topics your reader actually wants to read looks like. For example, if your expertise is selling running shoes, your audience doesn’t necessarily want to read about types and styles of shoes. Instead, they might want to see content dealing with health and running apps, training, hydration, etc.
To arrive at your own topic circle, let’s look at how to build it.
1. Know Your Expertise
First up, knowing your expertise is fundamental for building your own Topic Circle. That’s because your expertise serves as your topic core – the area of knowledge you’ll focus on in your content.
There are a few ways to define your expertise (one or all of these may apply to you):
Your passion
What you do for a living
What you’re an expert in
Here are a few topic circle examples.
If you’re a pastry chef, your expertise might be baking desserts. Here’s how to map that to topics your audience wants to read about.
If you’re a nature photographer, your expertise might be identifying and photographing nature scenes, birds or landscapes. There are so many ways to map this to topics your audience wants to hear about.
And the list goes on.
[bctt tweet=”How do you know what topics your readers will love? You need a Topic Circle. Define what your expertise is, to start. What’s your passion? Your work? Your best skill? For more tips, check out @JuliaEMcCoy’s guide craveable content ” username=”ExpWriters”]
2. Know Your Target Audience Inside-Out
So, you’ve defined your expertise and your core topic area. Now you need to know what someone buying or learning about products in your topic area wants to read about.
To help you discover those sub-topics, you need to do some digging.
2.1 Research Your Targets
Don’t guess what your target audience looks like. Research. That means:
All of these actions help paint a picture of who you should be targeting with content, and what they want to read about.
2.2 Know Where Your Audience Lives Online
One of your research goals should be to learn where your audience lives online, including:
Social media sites where they hang out
Hashtags they use
Forums they participate in
Influencers they follow and trust
Blogs they read and comment on
Once you discover these places and resources, you can internet-stalk them to find the questions and pain points people are talking about. Then, you can cover those in your content!
2.3 Create an Audience Persona
Once you have thoroughly researched your audience, it’s time to distill that information into a resource you can reference over and over: the audience persona.
This is an imaginary profile of your ideal audience member – the person who loves your brand, follows your content, and buys your products.
The profile should contain key information that helps you target them in your content, such as:
Personal habits, preferences, likes/dislikes, etc.
Here’s a sample audience persona built for Express Writers:
This is an ultra-valuable tool that will help you figure out what your audience wants from your content.
MAJOR tip: When thinking about a possible content topic, ask yourself if your persona would benefit from reading it. If the answer is iffy, find another topic.
[bctt tweet=”For successful content, you need to know your audience inside-out with deep research, discovering where they ‘live’ online, and by creating an audience persona. Read more on @JuliaEMcCoy’s guide to creating your Topic Circle.” username=”ExpWriters”]
3. Ask Your Audience Directly About Their Biggest Challenges
Another good way to flesh out your Topic Circle and understand what your audience wants:
Just ask.
Seriously. Send out an email to your list and ask them their #1 challenge in [insert industry here]. Tell them you want to know because you want to serve them better. Be sincere.
Once you get responses, listen. Use that information to create impactful, problem-solving, targeted content.
[bctt tweet=”‘Another good way to flesh out your Topic Circle and understand what your audience wants: Just ask. Send out an email to your list and ask them their #1 challenge.’ – @JuliaEMcCoy on how to build your Topic Circle ” username=”ExpWriters”]
How Do You Create Craveable Content? Find Where Your Expertise and Audience Needs Intersect
Creating content that gets result requires thinking deeper than only focusing on our expertise. ️♀️
The Topic Circle concept is useful for answering the question “how to create craveable content” because it illustrates where your expertise and your audience wants/needs intersect.
This is your sweet spot for content topics.
Stay in your sweet spot, and you’ll create craveable content your audience hungers for.
Need help creating content? We play best with marketers that bring great ideas and are missing the element of a team of hard-working, experienced copywriters. (That’s us!) See our services and pricing.
In the same Hubspot study, it was found that an accumulation of more content brings more leads: companies that have published 401+ blog posts get 2x as much traffic as those that have less than 400.
The current ROA (return of advertising) is .6x, down from 11.8x in 2016. You’re losing money, most of the time, on ads. The ROI (return of investment) of organic content is anywhere from 14-16% of traffic (conversion into sales). (Ad Strategist)
But here’s the thing.
The average time span to see content marketing results can be 12-18 months.
After building up a repertoire of content, we’re seeing results – like ranking in the top 3 of Google results for “digital content strategy” in as little as 30 days.
So, faster results can happen, only if you build up the right foundations.
And here’s the secret about content marketing.
It doesn’t work if you don’t set it up to work.
Watch today’s video for three ways to set up your content marketing foundations to start earning (and seeing) real results online. ⬇️
[bctt tweet=”Going crazy because your content marketing isn’t giving you the ROI you’re expecting? Watch as @JuliaEMcCoy shares her 3 simple yet effective ways to set up your content marketing foundations.” username=”ExpWriters”]
Why Your Content Marketing Isn’t Working (Video)
Video Summary: How to Build a Strong Content Strategy for Your Content Marketing
Hi, I’m Julia McCoy. You can call me the content hacker. That’s the name of my new personal brand launching in June. I’m a growth-focused content marketer, the CEO of Express Writers, blogger, and author.
Thanks so much for joining me on today’s video!
Content Works – But It Doesn’t Work If You Don’t Set It Up to Work
I’ve been sharing those statistics that I shared with you at the beginning of this video for years now.
I’m here today, creating a video just for those still in the rut of zero action in their content marketing.
I’m calling you out because I care about you. Your success can happen — you might just a few feet away from content marketing greatness.
But here’s the thing.
If you’re not getting the fundamentals of great copy right, and you’re not stepping into consistency and greatness in content production.
All the while, complaining about the things you don’t have.
Not enough leads.
Not enough sales.
Not enough people on my website.
I can tell you, if you just sat down and fixed the content marketing problems staring you in the face —
Those leads…
Those sales…
Those people…
Would come.
The problem with most content marketers is that marketers think of content as a quick fix, instead of thinking of it as a fundamental, like building a house.
And they complain about all the things they wish they could have, while they’re ignoring this big, glaring situation of ignoring the fundamentals.
Which they could have — if they fixed their content.
If they stopped being absent on the company blog. If they got the broken areas of their website rebuilt. If they took another look at and fixed all that icky content written more than two years ago.
It’s time for content marketers to stop complaining about the leads, traffic, and sales they don’t have. And it’s time to start doing something about it.
Content marketing action-takers are the content marketing winners.
[bctt tweet=”It’s time for content marketers to stop complaining about the leads, traffic, and sales they don’t have. Content marketing action-takers are the content marketing winners. @JuliaEMcCoy” username=”ExpWriters”]
My story is proof this can happen — and I’m a college dropout that learned all this by a ton of trial and error!
For 8 years, I haven’t missed a week in blogging. Guess what our results are? Over 90,000 monthly visitors and an income built 99% through our on-site traffic. Our traffic converts at 14-16%.
We’re not the only story of success after content done right — we’re just one of many brands, completely built through content marketing! (See a case study of four marketers and teams that have built huge presences with content marketing.)
3 Ways to Start Turning Things Around and Seeing Real Success From Your Content Marketing
If you’re not seeing success from your content, here are three ways to immediately step it up and start seeing results. All of these three things require some time and effort, but they’re going to be worth it.
1. If your site isn’t fast, user-friendly, stable, well-built, or built at all — this is your first step.
Site speed and quality is everything.
Google has said that conversions drop by 12% per second of load time. The more time it takes to load your site, the less your lead, your human, will even stick around. Website time is money! A study done in 2017 showed that one full second can decrease conversion rates by 70%.
Use a tool like Pingdom to test your website speed.
Hire a good WordPress designer from platforms like Upwork to fix, clean or build your site, make it lightning-fast, Google-friendly, reader-friendly and beautiful.
You don’t need to spend more than $30-50/hour to get a great WordPress developer, and you can by the hour and work done. If you need a brand new site, expect to spend a minimum of $500 or $1000 for a solid, well-built 3-page website. More if you want them to build more content.
Get a great website. (Build one if you don’t have one. Rebuild one if yours is crap. Seriously. You’ll thank me later.)
2. Research and put together a keyword report. I do this weekly.
Think of finding the right SEO keywords like paving a driveway to your house and adding your house number on your mailbox. Without a house number, mail couldn’t get to you! Your friends wouldn’t be able to find your house! Without a driveway, people would have trouble getting to your house.
The same is true of building a site without doing keyword research. After 8 years of doing consistent SEO keyword research, I still find untapped keyword opportunities that no competitor or major industry publication has found yet! There are so many opportunities for low-hanging fruit that you can create great content around that will help your ideal audience member or even buyer find you and your site.
Remember, once you have SEO keywords researched, it will do you no good without great content formed around them. Get a writer to help re-haul all your content if it’s icky, or hire a writer to create some content for you! You wouldn’t leave remodeling the kitchen up to yourself and a friend, would you?
Maybe if you’re a professional contractor, you would. Don’t leave writing up to you and add it to your long to-do list, if it’s hard to make a priority OR if you’re not a professional writer by trade. Trust me — Google puts heavy emphasis on your content quality to rank your content.
3. Plan and set a consistent amount of content to happen on your site regularly.
The best way and easiest way to do this is through a blog. I have a goal of a minimum of one blog per week at the Write Blog. I’ve been able to commit to that for 8 years and running. Other marketers besides me have committed even longer!
Think about great images you can add to your blogs. You can even go for custom illustrations and have a designer create header sets for each blog in a branded color that matches your brand and logo. This is what we do at the Write Blog.
You’ll need to get your social media going, too. Share the posts you publish on your site.
That’s it! Three ways to see success from content marketing. Like I said, it’s a lot like building a house, not a cheap or fast trick to get traffic and sales. It’s a long-term commitment to see long-term success. But isn’t everything good in life like that? A marriage — you have to put in daily effort to love that person! Parenting — you have to spend time with your kid every day! Writing a book, building a business, on and on. So why are we trying to do anything different with our content marketing?
By the way, if you need content help, this is what we do every day at Express Writers. We write blogs, research keywords for our clients, plan out consistent content, design beautiful, custom imagery.
That’s it for today’s video! Want more content marketing real talk? Hit that subscribe button and tap the bell so you get notified right away when my new videos are out. Let me know what you thought of today’s video in the comments – I’d love to hear from you! See you next time.
Hubspot studied over 13,500 bloggers and found that the more blog posts published, the more inbound traffic publishers got to their website, and companies that have published 401+ blog posts get 2x as much traffic as those that have than 400. Study: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/blogging-frequency-benchmarks
If you’ve spent any amount of time on the internet, you’ve probably heard terms like “hack” and “hacking.”
In the blog-o-sphere, these terms have been used to mean “clever solutions to tricky problems” or “tricks to make your life easier.” If you Google “hacks,” you can see this clearly – the results are all about clever, interesting, or creative solutions to life’s dilemmas.
Hacking is typically a good thing.
Now, what about hacking for marketing? Scary and bad – or good and effective?
The term ‘hacking’ was used in the marketing industry in 2010, when Sean Ellis, co-author of Hacking Growth and CEO of GrowthHackers, coined the term growth hacking in his blog, Find a Growth Hacker for Your Startup. Ellis says: “A growth hacker is a person whose true north is growth. Everything they do is scrutinized by its potential impact on scalable growth.”
With content hacking, the definition is just this – hands-on creativity and can-do, growth-focused attitude – but applied to content creation.
True content hacking is about getting tough, heavy content marketing tasks done in a smart way.
Making life easier.
Getting to the rewards faster, without sacrificing quality or principles along the way.
When applied to content, content hacking is about making your content marketing better, using BETTER, smarter methods.
Growth-focused methods.
Join me on an adventure where we dive into the traits, skillsets and brain of a modern-day content hacker. You might relate to a large percentage of these traits yourself. (Let me know in the comments if you do.) Ready?
The Content Hacker: Origins of Content Hacking
Full disclosure: I didn’t come up with the term “content hacker” itself.
He coined the phrase by smashing together the concepts of growth hacking and content marketing.
As we already mentioned above, growth hacking is a term Sean Ellis, the CEO of GrowthHackers, originated. It’s the process of driving breakout business growth using “a high-velocity testing/learning process.”
It’s about being quick, agile, and nimble on your feet. If a process doesn’t work, you need to be able to pivot, adapt, and try something else.
At the end of the day, sustainable growth is the bottom line, not quick fixes. You have to learn what works and what doesn’t — fast.
As for content marketing, we all know and love it.
Content marketing is the process of creating useful content that builds trust and turns traffic into leads and customers.
(No, that doesn’t mean cheap or overnight fast-track tricks.)
Content hackers climb over roadblocks to reach our goals on the content marketing horizon. They don’t add to the noise. They create beauty online. A real brand reputation that relies on content that works.
If you’re on-board for all of the above, then congratulations: You’re a content hacker, too.
[bctt tweet=”Growth hacking + content marketing = content hacker (noun): a growth-focused content marketer. Learn more about a #contenthacker” username=”ExpWriters”]
[bctt tweet=”The term content hacker takes inspiration from the original creator of ‘growth hacking’, @SeanEllis. #contenthacking ” username=”ExpWriters”]
[bctt tweet=”‘A growth hacker is a person whose true north is growth. Everything they do is scrutinized by its potential impact on scalable growth.’ – @SeanEllis #contenthacking ” username=”ExpWriters”]
[bctt tweet=”Content hackers climb over roadblocks to reach our goals on the content marketing horizon. This is white-hat hacking or growth hacking for content. @JuliaEMcCoy” username=”ExpWriters”]
[bctt tweet=”True ‘content hacking’ is about getting tough, heavy content marketing tasks done in a smart way. @JuliaEMcCoy #contenthacking ” username=”ExpWriters”]
What a Content Hacker is NOT
Let’s be clear: Content hacking is NOT about “overnight success” or “scary-quick results.”
It’s NOT about fast fixes or putting band-aids on content marketing problems.
Instead, a content hacker is laser-focused on growth – any kind of growth, whether that means converting three new leads to customers, getting 100 more people to visit your blog, or earning 1,000 new email subscribers.
No matter how small, growth is something you can build on. Growth is something you can leverage.
As long as it’s consistent and sustainable…
As long as the process to get there is repeatable…
As long as the content serves the user’s wants/needs/pain points, that’s the kind of growth a content hacker is all about.
[bctt tweet=”Content hacking is NOT about fast fixes or putting band-aids on content marketing problems. More about a growth-driven #contentmarketer ” username=”ExpWriters”]
Why Does Content Hacking Matter Now and in The Future of Content Marketing?
In 2019, content by itself won’t do much. I hate to break it to you.
There’s too much noise out there on the web. You won’t stand out unless you approach content in a radically different way.
Nearly 4 million blog posts are written every day. That means, in a single year, over 1.46 billion individual posts are published.
The internet is bursting at the seams with content. Even worse, much of it is useless.
Worse than that?
Most of the content that IS useful is same-old, same-old. (How many times have you seen this headline: ‘# Ways to Start a Blog’?)
So, we’re left looking at a big, stinking pile of crap content. Let’s call it “Crap Content Mountain.”
If this scenario makes you feel bleak, here’s a ray of light.
Crappy, same-old, ugly content is exactly what a content hacker rails against.
Content hackers don’t create useless content. They don’t create content because it’s the “thing to do.”
Instead, they are always locked-in on their audience and hell-bent on producing content that those people will gobble up.
They’re constantly researching their audience, researching topics and keywords, testing new ideas, updating their knowledge, and trying new content marketing tactics.
Content hackers are the future of content marketing because, in the end, they are the ones working to make the internet better. Content hackers STOP producing more crap to add to the content trash pile.
We’re on a mission to create content that matters to users, and builds trust and connections between audiences and brands.
[bctt tweet=” Content hackers are the ones AGAINST adding more crap to add to the content trash pile. They’re on a mission to create content that matters to users and builds trust and connection. @JuliaEMcCoy” username=”ExpWriters”]
In fact, this has been my goal with content from the very beginning, back in 2011 when I started Express Writers. Needless to say, it works. Our numbers prove that: 90,000 visitors/month in organic traffic, and 14-16% of those visitors convert through our content.
Analysis of a Modern-Day Content Hacker
To be called a true content hacker, you need a certain set of skills. You don’t necessarily have to be the James Bond of content marketing, but a little creativity, agility, and ingenuity in your wheelhouse won’t hurt.
If we must whittle down the ideal content hacker to a few traits, we think these are the most important ones. If you want to hack your way to mega-growth with content, take note – here we see the average specimen as they might look in the wild.
[bctt tweet=”See an analysis and the leading traits of of today’s smart, growth-focused content marketer in @JuliaEMcCoy’s #contenthacker guide ” username=”ExpWriters”]
Mind: Tactical, Growth-Minded Thinker
A content hacker intrinsically understands content marketing’s worth. By 2021, the industry is expected to reach $412.88 billion. The content hacker is at the forefront of this valuable industry, the one brainstorming ways to tap into that growth for their own niche, and searching for new tactics to make it happen.
Ears: Constantly Listening/Learning
A good content hacker always has their ears open. They’re constantly listening, measuring results, learning what works and what doesn’t, and pivoting as needed to stay on the path of content marketing growth.
Mouth: Clever Communicator
Communication is key for the content hacker. They use every form of it – words, videos, social media, email, and more – on the right platforms, from Instagram Stories to Facebook Live and beyond, to speak to the heart of the matter. They customize communication to the brand they’re creating content for, and exist where their audience lives.
Feet: Agile and Flexible
Watch out – a content hacker is fast. They learn quickly, rebound from mistakes, and are ready to try another strategy, tactic, or idea within the next minute. If one road or method isn’t working, they’ll cut through the brush to find another path that will help their brand grow.
Heart: Audience-Focused
Above all, the users matter most to a content hacker. Understanding the user’s needs, wants, desires, and problems (not the brand or client’s) is pivotal to producing useful content that converts.
Cardiovascular: Patience & Strong Work Ethic
Patience is a must for the content hacker. Most content marketing ROI doesn’t come in until 12-24 months after as a matter of fact. Without a strong work ethic and the patience to see their content tactics and growth hacks through to the finish line, a content hacker would never get anywhere.
Veins: Storytelling and Writing Chops
Most content hackers find their way to the field through their love of storytelling. The ideal content hacker understands the value of stories and knows how to write. They spend much of their time telling them through amazing content creation. Plenty of marketers are catching on, too. Content creation spend has seen the highest increase over the last 12 months over any other content marketing area, according to CMI’s Budgets, Benchmarks, and Trends report.
Blood: Caffeinated
Let’s face it: The content hacker needs a daily dose of joe (or tea) to fuel those early mornings and late nights of content hacking – or to power through the dreaded 3 p.m. slump.
Tools:Skilled Researcher
Researching is an essential skill for the content hacker. They’re always researching and looking for useful data, whether that means finding out everything they can about their audience or discovering profitable keywords that tie to user search intent. Tools today’s content hacker uses include Moz, Ahrefs, SEMrush, Mangools’ KWFinder, and BuzzSumo.
To sum up the skillsets and traits of a successful content hacker…
They’re agile, independent thinkers whose major focus is brand growth through the creation of user-satisfying content.
They’re ready to hack through the internet jungle at moment’s notice to reach the growth and results they crave.
If one way is blocked, they’re experts at finding a clear path to ROI.
These smart, strategic content marketers have a wide playing field open to them.
Question: Why put all the trouble into making sure you learn the skill sets involved in content hacking?
Well, according to a study by Fractl and Moz, content marketing job growth increased by nearly 350% between 2011 – 2015.
This is a trend that has continued into 2019. That’s pretty epic.
As you can tell, my heart is invested in this topic 1000%.
That’s why I’m moving forward and launching a brand this June that is wholly dedicated to growth-focused content marketers. You guessed it — it’s called Content Hacker.
This will be my personal brand, but it will also serve as a resource center, education platform, and publication for every single person who believes in the content hacker way of life.
Because anything short of growth and results (both for us AND our real, living, human audience) would be cruddy, am I right?
I’m super excited to share this new venture with you.
And, chances are, if you’ve read this far, you’re interested in joining me as this new launch happens. To stay up-to-date on all things content hacking, sign up for the list.
This May, we’re celebrating our 8th full year of business at Express Writers.
Looking back, it doesn’t even feel like eight years.
More like a century. (Just kidding!)
Seriously, though, I’m thankful that we’re here this May. Eight years is nothing to sneeze at. Just look at these statistics from Motley Fool:
80% of new businesses survive past their first year of operation.
50% of businesses make it to five years.
And only 33% of businesses make it to ten years.
Considering that I started this entire operation back in 2011 with an investment of the crumbs left in my broke-college-student savings account, $75, I’m thrilled that we’ve made it this far.
With a 100% chance of failure, I rolled up my sleeves and put in many 60 and even 90-hour work weeks in the beginning. We kept chugging along, growing at incredible speeds every year.
As I was digging into ideas to write a blog to celebrate our eighth year here on the Write Blog, it hit me that we didn’t have any fresh case studies on our blogging traffic and analytics, which have recently been the highest they’ve ever been. It also came to my mind the current state of affairs: how many content marketers and blog publishers are still struggling to even see success from their online efforts. So, this case study is needed.
If you read one blog from me this year, make it this one.
A Case Study in Blogging: 21,600 Keyword Rankings in Google and 90,000 Visitors Per Month
Let’s dive into my blogging case study! First, let’s talk about the beginning (strategy), and the end (results).
The Power of, and Strategy Involved In, Brand Blogging that Works
Fun fact: Blogging used to be just for the people that “journaled their thoughts” on the web.
The idea of blogging online itself originated in 1994, when a college student named Justin Hall began a stint of “personal blogging” that lasted eleven years. He was enrolled at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. Originally, the words “escribitionists” and “weblog” were used to describe what is now known as “blog.” Thank goodness that word evolved!
Blogging is now far more than just an online diary.
It’s a huge opportunity for businesses, brands and marketers to express themselves to their audience, grow and build a real community, and share the authentic real “human side” behind the brand.
Blogging is a #1 method for marketers and brands to add consistent new site traffic that may eventually convert and become a buyer.
At Express Writers, I’ve managed to write and publish over 1,100 blogs on our site over the past eight years, with the help of my team.
The amount of content we publish on our blog, the consistency of it, and the quality and relevancy of our blog posts are the biggest factors behind what is now 90,000+ visitors/month coming to our site:
We have 1,188 blogs published to date since 2012, the year I began consistently blogging.
That’s an average of 169 blogs published per year.
Our traffic went up steadily over the years, increasing when we put an emphasis on quality over quantity of content in late 2016 and ramped up in 2017.
Our quality > quantity emphasis that began in 2016 focused on a few things: implementing a real content strategy for the first time and going from publishing four blogs/week to 1-2 high-quality blogs/week.
The data speaks. Check out how our SEO tracking in SEMrush reflects a spike in growth right around the time we built a content strategy and emphasized quality over quantity:
The Google Analytics screenshot below was from March of this year, and this April, we had our first 90,000 traffic/month.
Smart marketers shouldn’t be too excited by these numbers until they see the conversion rate and the sales. (Mr. Wonderful on Shark Tank, anyone? “Talk numbers!”)
On average, we are achieving the benchmark conversion statistic for organic search traffic. 14-16% of our leads are converting.
As Mr. Wonderful would say, “To cash flow!”
Now, here’s what our traffic numbers look like as of writing this blog over late April 2019.
Our Google Analytics:
On the right, in the blue box, you can see how 10 out of these 14 visitors are on a blog post the moment this screenshot was taken. This is very common for our traffic.
Now, check out our SEO ranking statistics in SEMrush again.
We’re at 21,600 keyword rankings in Google. I have the graph set to “all-time”, so this is going back to May 2013, when I first started a SEMrush tracking project for our site. I’m in love with the traffic growth shown in this graph that spiked beginning in 2017, which is the year we got strategic. Learn more about how getting strategic paid off for us, here.
Because of the content geeks we are and how consistent our content is, Google loves our site. Plus, everything we do is always organic, audience-first, and ethical. I never pay a dime in PPC ads, and we don’t allow advertisers to ever have access to our site or blog (even though I’m pitched at least once per day).
You can see proof of our Domain Authority with expresswriters.com in Alexa, Amazon’s pioneer in the world of analytical website insight. Alexa clocks us at being the 97,000th-most popular website in the world, which is pretty crazy given there are over 1.6 billion websites in the world (InternetLiveStats).
As for our content creation itself: everything — everything — we publish and create on our site is focused around several key things:
Offering real value, factual and statistical (real) insights, truly useful
Is focused on topics our audience is interested in
Optimized at an advanced level for SEO; semantic-search-friendly
Great writing is #1
Consistency in fresh, great content every week
I believe one of the main factors behind our success is that we’ve blogged once a week, minimum, for 8 years. Consistency pays off. We took it to the next level in 2016 when we added a focus on the strategy behind and quality of content.
[bctt tweet=”I believe one of the main factors behind our success is that we’ve blogged once a week, minimum, for 8 years. Consistency pays off. We took it to the next level in 2016 when we added a focus on strategy and quality. @JuliaEMcCoy” username=”ExpWriters”]
We constantly gauge things by will our human audience like this? Will they feel at home with this? Does this make me/she/he uncomfortable or turned off? If the answer to that last question is no, we never publish. I have barred dozens of writers from writing my content for these reasons. If my content borders anywhere near fluff, my audience might be lost and never want to come back.
Maintaining these standards is key.
Plus, it’s important to note that no “paid tactics” will ever get in the way of our core, human-centric mission and organic marketing focus: delivering great content consistently to our human audience.
What’s Your Content Schedule?
Now please don’t go and copy my schedule. But, because I’m always asked, here’s what our content publishing amount and velocity looks.
Fact: Your content schedule should be up to you, your team, your audience, and your goals. But you need to get one put in place. (Keep reading for more advice about that.)
1 powerful Write Blog post every Tuesday morning: These blogs have to fit in the category of SEO goals, thought leadership, or brand awareness, and be a minimum of 1,000 words and a maximium of 5,000. Learn more about content goals here.One amazing blog per week is what we are able to commit to.
Bi-weekly and once-a-month: A new YouTube video with recap posted as a blog (see an example), and a recap by our social media manager Rachel of our monthly #ContentWritingChat (example).
Once/quarter: Product updates and stories about our clients or team (here’s an example). (These are usually once per quarter or less).
1-3 email campaigns/week: Sent in tandem with the new content we create to our list. We use ConvertKit.
I love Airtable for at-a-glance blog topic tracking and publishing. My social media manager, Rachel, and my team editor, Danielle, are both collaborators on the Write Blog calendar. My designer is also an Airtable collaborator and uploads header sets and CTA images once I have a topic and a date nailed down. We communicate through our teamroom, which Josh, our CTO, set up years ago for our internal workflow inside our website.
Here’s a sneak peek at the Write Blog calendar in Airtable. We’ve set up our calendar entirely custom to us and our workflow. This isn’t based on a template. For us, these custom and specific columns work best because we have collaborators that help me with the blog: editor, designer, social media manager. The designer has a column where she can upload header sets and CTAs after she knows what blog to produce them for. Up at the top, you can see all the tabs we have — a tab just for ideas, a tab for content that’s been scheduled, a tab for the content we’re updating or rewriting, a tab for our Twitter chat, and more.
My blogging process looks a little like this:
Stage 1: Ideation. I have an ‘ideation’ day, which is typically Monday and sometimes Friday, if Monday was dry. This is a day devoted just to producing ideas that will work for the Write Blog and my YouTube channel, as well as guest publications. I research each and every idea for SEO keywords or data-backed topic velocity using tools like SEMrush and BuzzSumo, or I map my content to a non-data-centric goal (i.e., recapping an event for my audience that I was at or spoke at, sharing product updates). Since I look at this as a ‘stage,’ I batch. I typically come up with 5-6 great ideas from a few hours just in brainstorming.
Stage 2: Creation – Outlining & Delegating. Once I have a data-backed idea that will work, I produce a topic and outline, and hand it off to one of my three dedicated writers in Express Writers. These specific three have been handling my content tasks for years now. Since I came up with 5-6 ideas, I’ll assign all of those at once with different due dates in the ‘delegation’ or ‘creation’ stage. Sometimes, I’ll write the whole thing myself. For example, this blog is 100%, fully written by yours truly.
Stage 3: Editing & Scheduling. This is a full stage in and of itself. After the content piece is fully written, I carefully review, add my own thoughts, rewrite where necessary, and add personal case studies. I request an image set from my designer, and plan out any content upgrades (lead magnets) we’re going to create CTAs for. Then I hand it to Danielle, my Write Blog editor, for proofreading and uploading/formatting inside WordPress and our Write Blog. Then, I review again (yes, I’m a blogging Nazi). Finally, we schedule and Danielle makes sure it’s live.
Stage 4: Promotion. At this stage, Rachel, our social media manager, pulls the data from Airtable and anything else I’ll Slack or email to her, and she writes and schedules shares for our blogs across all our social channels: Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, and LinkedIn. I personally write and schedule my own tweets and posts across my platforms and personal profiles, as well. I also share individual snippets to my Facebook group and Instagram stories.
It took years to get this process down, and I will say that a process and especially the delegation of creation is what makes me a ‘content boss’ – p.s. that’s what others have called me, not what I’ve called myself.
Which Blog Posts Can You Tie to Revenue — and Which Ones Fell Flat?
Ah, great question.
I definitely have examples of blogs that won and blogs that fell flat on their faces — and I’ll pull a few, but it’s important to make a disclosure first.
Today’s buyer journey is NOT predictable.
I repeat: today’s buyer journey is not predictable.
Essentially, the old funnel developed in the 1920s for ‘salesmen’ is dead. I wrote about a Marketing Lifecycle concept on the Write Blog a few months ago that shares some insights into this.
Our Buyer Journey: In Short, It’s Completely Unpredictable
I have seen our buyer journeys go into a multitude of areas. Here are a few pathways our leads have taken.
A marketer finds our blog posts in Google and reads one, gets familiar with us -> follows me on Twitter -> Scrolls through Twitter one night, reads one of my tweets on content marketing that is intriguing to them, hops over to @ExpWriters from my Twitter bio, follows a tweet of a blog post to our blog, schedules a call with our team leader -> Says they’ll invest in content when they’re ready -> That’s fine – we leave them alone -> They subscribe to the Write Blog newsletter -> They read every new blog I publish -> Four months later, they load a cart and buy their first content service from us late at night when we’re asleep.
No matter how many times I optimize our Write Bot (Drift chat), I still see this one: Person starts chatting with the Write Bot -> Was instantly annoyed it was a bot -> left and never came back.
And these are just the known pathways. What clients have told us (word-of-mouth data), and what I’ve seen from my own lead magnets and sequences that I’ve personally set up. There are many other pathways I can’t even put a finger on. For example, someone buys our services or my course, no discount code, $1,000+ — and they weren’t on my subscriber list. I’ve never interacted with them once. Where did they come from? God knows. And if I ask them, they might not even remember the first time they saw my content (I’ve gotten this before: “Oh, some guest blog somewhere!”). That’s the best, right? Of course, that doesn’t happen often enough. You can’t just build up random expectations on random purchases. 90% of our leads and purchases do come from strategic content that was created around a target keyword pulling in our ideal client. The other 10% is totally random and we have no idea who they are, or how they found us.
Today’s modern buyer wants to follow and make their own path, and it’s important we allow them the space and breathing room to do that. Any kind of pressure from us marketers will actually negate and spoil their journey. We might lose them before we even gain them, just from trying too hard.
What an age to live in!
Here are a few examples of real-life blog posts that have won real return and revenue for us, and a blog that has fallen completely flat.
This blog on How Long Should a Blog Post Be, Really?earned real responses from a couple of blog subscribers, who replied to my New Content Campaign I’d sent from my ConvertKit account. (I send all my emails using ConvertKit. Very user-friendly.) Plus, someone opened the chat and booked a call with us about ongoing content after reading it. It built trust and interest from existing subscribers and generated interest in our services.
This one ranks #1 in Google for “funny words” and a bunch of synonymous phrases, but earns not a single lead: 34 of the Craziest Words in the English Dictionary.In fact, we get a lot of young people trying to get us to help them with their essays from this blog. (Which we do NOT do.) I’m still debating what to do with it. I’ll probably rewrite it with an angle towards marketers that need to learn how to write content and use words that fit in their target market.
Content Works – But It Doesn’t Work if You Don’t Set It Up to Work
I think I’ve written down the reality of blogging and content marketing ROI so many times in so many blog posts, I’m blue in the fingers. (That’s my synonymous analogy to speaking till you’re blue in the face, but for writers.)
An accumulation of more content brings more leads: companies that have published 401+ blog posts get 2x as much traffic as those that have than 400. (Same study referenced above.)
The current ROA (return of advertising) is .6x,down from 11.8x in 2016. (Ad Strategist) You’re losing money, most of the time. The ROI (return of investment) of organic content is anywhere from 14-16% of traffic (conversion into sales).
But here’s the thing.
I can’t keep spewing these statistics over and over again, just to see you all out there, spinning your wheels.
I can’t.
That’s why I’m writing this blog today.
For those still in the rut of zero action in their content marketing.
Not getting the fundamentals of great copy on their site right, and not stepping into consistency and greatness in content production.
All the while, complaining about the things they don’t have.
Not enough leads.
Not enough sales.
Not enough people on the website.
If they just sat down and fixed these problems, which are so easy to fix — hired an educated writer to rewrite all that not-so-shiny content, bring on a website designer to finally fix their site, get a blogging plan set up and rocking…
Those leads…
Those sales…
Those people…
Wouldcome.
I’m tired of seeing you out there. Working your knuckles off to make those sales appointments happen.
I just need one more sale today. One more.
You think it’s a quick fix, and it’s none of these fundamentals.
And you complain about all the things you wish you could have.
Which you could have — if you fixed your content. Get your broken website rebuilt. Take another look at all that content written more than two years ago. Rethink your absence on the company blog.
I care about you, and that’s why I’m calling you out today.
Quit complaining about the leads, traffic, and sales you don’t have.
Start doing something about it.
Content marketing action-takers are the content marketing winners.
Let my case study be your inspiration.
You can do this.
And getting on a pathway to content success is as easy as 1,2,3…
I’ll even give you these three steps.
Hire a good WordPress designer from platforms like Upwork to fix, clean, or rebuild your messy site to make it lightning-fast, Google-friendly, reader-friendly and beautiful – $30-50/hour
Get a writer to help rehaul all your icky content, and an SEO’er to help research the right target keywords to use – psst, we do all of that!
Don’t forget a pro photographer to take your headshots if you don’t have any on your website. You’ll need to get your social media going, too. We write the copy and create images, but you should get a social media pro to help if you don’t have one.
Really, though, this is the action you need to take — and it’s not hard.
Get a great website. (Build one if you don’t have one. Rebuild one if yours is crap. Seriously. You’ll thank me later.)
Make sure all your content is original, conversion-crafted, and beautiful — and SEO-optimized so the right people can find it.
Plan your blogs and make ’em happen.
Let’s do this.
Build profitable content that delights our audience and exceeds every goal and expectation.
“Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’!” – Audrey Hepburn
As for our content creation itself: everything — everything — we publish and create on our site is focused around several key things:
