Guest post by Ann Smarty.
Everyone wants their content to bring them hundreds of visitors quickly. Unfortunately, few types of content do. However…
Image credit: Fikret tozak on Unsplash
After writing hundreds of posts, I’ve identified three types of content that consistently bring in hundreds of visitors within a week of it getting published (no waiting until Google ranks it #1—you’ll know right away). I’ve included the following with each type of post:
- What it is
- Example
- Why it works
- How to write one
So you can not only understand why it works but also do it yourself.
By no means is this an exclusive or exhaustive list – but it is a dependable one.
1. Expert Round-Ups
What Is an Expert Round-up
An expert round-up is an article that is largely built by asking experts to answer a single question, such as “What is their favorite tool or tip for doing X”.
Most expert round-ups contain a few dozen experts (though five to 10 is the ideal number of experts for an expert roundup post), and can easily be thousands of words long due to the length of each individual response.
The trick about these posts is getting influencers to supply you with answers. But it’s not as hard as you might think – I can usually get a response 33%-50% of the time. Most people like to be featured.
Example:
Here’s the most recent one I participated in: How to Make Your Video Go Viral on TikTok – An Experts’ Guide
Why It Works:
The reason why expert round-ups work so well is because you are infusing influencers into the post. Naturally, they are going to share it across their social media channels like Twitter (I refuse to call it X) and LinkedIn. This is done as soon as you promote it to them, so it achieves fast results.
By targeting well-known individuals who have a solid following, you will see a ton of inbound traffic from social media.
How to Write One:
- Identify experts on the topic of your expert round-up (make sure they are actively engaging on social media, not just broadcasters!)
- Don’t just focus on influencers! Peers are likely to be more active in promoting your content
- Reach out to them asking to provide a quote. Make sure to follow up, just don’t follow up more than once.
- You can use Google Forms but I often simply ask to email an answer as it is easier for the participants
- Collect responses, categorize them by category or topic, and write an article around that input.
- Make sure to make the article easy to follow and useful. Simply listing the provided quotes won’t make an easy reading.
- Publish it, share it on social media, and tag it on social media, email all the participating experts thanking them and asking to share it around.
2. Curated Resource Posts (Listicles)
What It Is
Most of us have heard of listicles – these are usually posts such as “10 ways to do X”.
The curated resource post is a listicle that often has over 100 elements and focuses on articles, websites, or tools as opposed to reasons. These articles all relate to a similar topic.
The trick about these posts is finding 100+ resources that are all related to the same topic in a reasonable amount of time. The tutorial discusses how to do this.
Example
Here’s mine: 25 Actionable Ideas to Smartly Re-Use Your Old Content (+ ChatGPT Prompts for Each Idea!)
Why It Works
Just like featuring influencers in an expert round-up, featuring their articles or tools is another way to get them to share a post with their audience – it’s linkbait. They also call it an ego-bait.
Simply reach out to them after the post has been published to let them know they’ve been featured, and they’ll likely share your post on social media channels like Twitter and LinkedIn, leading to a ton of inbound traffic.
How to Write One
- Choose a topic that can support a solid/entertaining/useful list. Look for topics like “case studies,” “ultimate guides,” “tools/apps” or “resources” in a particular niche.
- Research existing viral lists on your topic and aim to find a unique angle no one focused on.
- When you know your angle, pick items (tools, sites, etc.) to include.
- Organize your list items into categories or chapters to improve the structure. Write short introductions for each section.
- Make it visually appealing with images and tables of contents.
- Publish the listicle on your blog. Email and tweet the people/brands featured to encourage shares.
- Promote the post through your social channels and email lists. Tag everyone included in the list
3. Original Research
What It Is
You conduct a survey or a poll to collect data on a topic in your niche, and then you put together statistics, highlights, and takeaways and publish them on your site. For more efficiency, visualize your research and add downloadables.
Example:
Here is one of the most recent of mine: Link Building Stats: 2023 Survey
Why It Works
Everyone likes sharing statistics, especially if you manage to manage to highlight some interesting findings. When you include the outreach component (i.e. reach out to all the participating in the survey, when possible), it is even more important.
How to Write One
There can be different approaches to these types of content. You can set up a poll and share it on social media or with your newsletter subscribers inviting input. You can invest in paid contributors (from platforms like Survey Monkey).
Or you can manually reach out to your peers and ask for input. I chose the latter approach because this allows me to then reach out again and share results (which brings shares and links). Plus, I was in more control over who completed the survey. So here you go:
- Set up a survey (again, free Google Forms will likely be enough but there are also lots of plugins to help)
- Reach out to your peers on Twitter and Linkedin asking to complete the survey
- Analyze the results and put together an article sharing them
- Optionally, but highly recommended, create graphs visualizing the results
- Share it on social media and elsewhere you can. We usually do Reddit promotion and journalistic outreach which brings great links.
Slice and dice your survey results into lots of visual quotes sharing one stats at a time, schedule lots of tweets, creating Instagram posts, etc. There’s so much you can do here. Use tools like Beacons ai to include your findings on your social media landing page and generate additional leads through your social media channels.
Conclusion
I have never been disappointed writing any of these posts – they always bring me hundreds of visitors.
Yes, they are not necessarily the quickest posts to write and often can take a few days.
But usually, they bring in more than 4-6x the results of a usual several-hour post, and therefore I’d much rather write one of these once a month than four regular posts that bring me few visitors.
Do you know another type of content that can bring in hundreds of visitors in one week?