Create Some Excitement For Your Blog

Looking to jazz up your Blog and create some excitement?  Here are some ideas to get you going.  Feel free to comment and share your ideas!

Interview an expert: Everyone loves to hear from industry leaders and experts.  Interview one and post it on your Blog (an audio or video plus a transcript is always a good idea).  Ideally the expert will want to promote the interview to their list as well, which will drive traffic to your Blog.

Host a contest: Everyone loves to win something and it’s a great well to help you get more exposure.  Host a contest that requires people to tweet and FB a post, so you gain exposure for your content and you get to reward a lucky winner (which will create a loyal and grateful person who will be likely to want to praise you publically).

Create a multi-part series: When you create a series of posts, you can build anticipation for part 2 and part 3 coming soon.  Offer teasers about what is to come and build the excitement.  You can even combine the series with a contest (at the end) for maximum exposure.  Use social media to promote the series

Special Days: All you have to do it google special days of the year and you’ll discover a host of fun/funny and downright odd days devoted to everything from planting a flower, to ice cream, to entrepreneurs and pancakes and more.  Pick a few that strike a chord with you and create a little post about that special day.  Include the history of the day, include pictures and share a story about why you chose to highlight that particular day.

Be controversial: Think of the hot topics people are talking about in your industry and create a compelling piece that presents another point of view for people to consider.

Create a graphic: Whether it’s an infographic or a cartoon meme, come up with something that is witty or shocking or makes a strong point and share it via your Blog (while also pushing it out via social media).

Create a Scavenger hunt: Hide a word or image in your Blog someone and send people hunting through your posts until they find it.  The first one to find it wins a prize.  You can do this monthly or weekly or whenever you want.  You can give clues or not give clues.  How you structure it is up to you – but give it a try.  People love it.

Dig Deep: Dig deep into your bag of tricks and write a killer post that addresses all the questions and concerns you’ve encountered over the years from your potential clients.  Don’t hold back, share everything they need to know, in one place. It’ll be a staple post for you that gets long term traffic and exposure.

Get Jiggy With It: Pick a theme song for the day, week or month and play a clip on your Blog.  Let people know why you chose that song and what it means to you.  Ask readers to help you create a play list for coming days, weeks or months.

15 Minutes Of Fame: Everyone in the SEO industry gets all abuzz when a show or cartoon or movie mentions SEO unexpectedly.  Keep track of your product/service/industry and create a list of its 15 minutes of fame – whenever there is a reference on TV, movies on the radio or wherever, share it with your readers.  No matter what you sell, you can get creative and find a way to make it interesting.

Travel feature: Once a week or once a month step away from your business and do a post on somewhere in the world you have been.  Share pics and stories and let people get to see the world through your eyes.

Write a Round-Up Post: Round-up posts are a great way to give people access to the best information out there.  Pick a topic and list all the great posts done in the past week (or month or whatever) related to that topic.  You;’’ make friends with other Bloggers as you share links to their posts and you are creating a great resource for your site visitors.  You can ask all the owners of the posts you feature to give your round-up a little social love and spread it around.   (Note: Heather Lloyd Martin offers a great round-up in which we are often featured – check out the latest one here: http://www.seocopywriting.com/content-marketing/seo-content-marketing-roundup-week-ending-march-27th/)

Current Events: Find a way to tie current events into your posting.  Is there a lesson learned by a celeb flub?  Is there a holiday coming that has a message that jives with your product?  Take something that is getting a lot of buzz and exposure and work it into your marketing copy.  When the sequester first hit, I saw so many marketing posts that tied in concepts related to the sequester.  Around Valentine’s Day, many posts and email marketing messages were love themed.

Add Video: Everyone loves video and it’s a great way to jazz up a post and engage fans.  Video not only gets more exposure and shares via social media but it’s also a great way to connect and build trust.  People will feel like they know you better and will be more likely to want to do business with you.

Go Da Vinci Code: Create a contest that involves decoding a special code to get to some free report or cool information.

Ask and You Shall Receive: Sometimes giving people what they want is as simple as asking their readers what they would enjoy seeing.  Most people are willing to provide feedback and you’ll likely find some gems in there to turn into great posts.

Get creative and come up with new things you can do to create exposure and buzz (which leads to traffic!)