Business blogging is one of the best ways to gain traction with audiences. But you have to reach them first before you can deliver your message. Knowing what type of blog articles appeal to people – and how to create them – is vitally important to any business content strategy.
The following blog article types have been widely proven to be the best for SEO and content marketing online. When Google AND your audience both love the content that you’re producing, you can’t go wrong.
Check out these 5 most popular blog article types and try building a content strategy around them to test out what fits your business goals and audience type.
List Articles
Create articles from compiled lists of useful things – like this article! – to inform your target audience and give them options to choose from depending on their more specific needs. People like to know what’s out there, and giving them a neat list saves them a lot of time – which they will thank you for.
Examples:
1.25 Proven Strategies to Increase Your Blog’s Traffic by 1064%
2.14 Reasons We Love List Articles
3.15 Tasks a Graphic Design Virtual Assistant Can Take Off Your Plate
Round Up Articles
Put together a nice piece with the combined opinions of different experts in your niche to share credible evidence towards a specific conclusion. This helps people see the different salient points on a topic so they can weigh the pros and cons without having to do too much research and get lost in the piles of content online.
Examples:
1.21 Marketing Experts Share The 6 SEO Services You Should Never Outsource
2.CEOs Rank 2017 Best & Worst States for Business
3.Top 25 Talent Acquisition Strategies from the Pros
How To Articles
Write up clear processes with step by step instructions that can be immediately and directly applied by your audience to provide awesome value. Many people want to do something but just don’t know how to get started or what they will be facing once they do. Make it easier for them.
Examples:
1.How to get real followers for Instagram in 2019
Recommended for You
Webcast, January 16th: The Latest in Growth Hacking: Link Retargeting
2.How to Grow Your Ecommerce Business with Freelance Talent
3.The Right Time and Way to Outsource Your eCommerce Store
Guide Articles
Build out great guides for readers that they can come back to time and time again for poignant advice on getting things done well. Make these guides comprehensive with lots of details and examples so that they can be a prime source of complete information on a subject.
Examples:
1.The Advanced Content Marketing Guide
2.The Ultimate Guide to Dropshipping
3.A Beginner’s Guide to Outsource Adwords to a Freelancer
Comparison Articles
Clarify distinctions that people often find vague to help make ideas easier for your audience to grasp. Bring together opposing viewpoints to show contrasts to help them make better decisions. It can show them what your business can really do for them and why they need you.
Examples:
1.Advertising vs. Marketing: What’s the Difference and Which Do I Use?
2.Acquisition vs Retention: The Importance of Customer Lifetime Value
3.Enterprises vs. Startups: Is Outsourcing Right for You?
Final Thoughts
Entrepreneurs and marketers should always do a bit of experimenting when it comes to content. Even if these are proven strategies, there’s never a one-size-fits-all solution because each business is unique in some way.
Make sure you keep track of the performance of each of your blog articles with Google Analytics. You will want to see which specific blog article types are performing the best for your targets, and tweak your content strategy to match. This way, you can keep creating the content that your targets want, and thus keep attracting them to your business.