Managing your content effectively is important for running a successful blog. This is the second part of the 5 part series on how to run a blog successfully.  Writing new content is likely to take up a lot of your time spent to run a blog.  This article discusses 12 ways to get the most from your content.

How to Run A Blog Successfully series consists of the following 5 parts:

• How to Set up your Blog
• How to Manage Your Blog Content (Current Post)
• How to Manage Visitors to Your Blog
• How to Use Social Media for Your Blog
• Internet Marketing for Your Blog

The last part of the series focused on ‘How to set up your Blog’. This article focuses on how to manage your blog content successfully. Here are 12 effective ways to manage your content.

1. Use Compelling Titles

Use of compelling blog posts titles has a huge impact on the popularity of your posts. An ever increasing share of blog traffic today comes from social media where only your post title is displayed to users. Users decide to visit your site based solely on your post title. Write appealing yet descriptive titles for your posts to achieve success.

2. Take Advantage of List Posts and Instructional Articles

I witnessed a remarkable growth on this blog after I started focusing on writing List Posts and Instructional Articles. Such formats tend to work across all niches. You can also benefit by converting some of your older posts or essay type articles into list or instructional format.

Examples of list posts include “10 Ways to…”, “Top 10 Mistakes…” or “5 Tools for..”. On the other hand “How To…” is a perfect example of an Instructional article. See a typical example of my popular posts statistics below. How many are list posts?

3. Make Sure Your Articles Don’t Only Include Text

It is a good practice to include images or videos in all your articles to improve readability and appeal. You will also benefit by updating your old articles if they include only text. I saw an increase in page views and reduction in bounce rates (When a user leaves the page without accessing any further pages) after adding images to some of my older posts that previously included only text.

4. Post frequently

Posting daily offers many benefits. It can help you achieve your objectives faster. In addition to encouraging readers to visit again, it is also better for your search engine ranking.  However make sure you don’t digress away from your niche.

5. Post Quality Content

Frequency of publishing should never be at the cost of quality. In addition to research, you there are ways to make your content more legible for your readers. Quality content will drive quality traffic that is more likely to result in conversions and repeat visitors. Writing purely for search engines can kill your website.

6. Take Advantage of InfoGraphics

InfoGraphics are graphical representation of data or statistics. They are very effective for breathing life to your posts. You can even share it independently on social media, image sharing websites and infographic galleries. Infographics are very easy to create using any graphic tool such as Photoshop or Paint. Make sure to include your domain name on the info graphic as they tend to get shared and re-used by others more.

A simple info-graphic like the one below that I created for my post on Facebook will only take a couple of minutes to create.

7. Convert Your Posts Into Podcasts

By creating podcasts of your blog posts, you can improve the usability of your content and make it accessible to a wider audience. You can even promote your podcasts on various free podcast directories. There are free services you can use to convert your blog posts into podcasts. PodOmatic and Odiogo are some examples.

8. Create Videos to Support Content

Videos are great way to promote your brand and get more traffic. You can easily record an instructional video on a topic using a standard web cam. You can also use screen capture and editing tools to create a presentation style video from your existing articles and publish on Video sites such a You Tube. Videos are very popular on the web and have huge potential for driving traffic to your blog. You should not only limit yourself to You Tube but use other sites such as Vimeo.

9. Refine and Improve Your Content Constantly

In addition to focusing on new content, you can take steps to revitalise your old blog posts and generate fresh interest in your old content. Successful bloggers are continuously refining their blog, updating posts where necessary. This is a great way to improve your content and drive more traffic.

10. Create a Free E-Book

E-Books are very effective for promoting your blog and expanding your email list. Most successful blogs offer e-Books. If you have multiple posts on your blog related to given topic, you may be able to re-use your content in your e-book.  I did this for an e-book I create a long time back on my blog.

The simple 2 page e-book I created on ’5 Steps to Market Your Website on Search Engines’ generated 1,647 back-links to my blog as reported by Google Webmaster Tools’.  Look at image below for proof.

Make sure to include a link to your site or for even better results, include links to relevant posts on your blog if feasible. Create a banner to download your e-book on your blog. For extra exposure, you can also submit your e-book on external e-book sites such as GetFreeEbooks.com or document sharing sites like DocStoc or Sribd. Some blogs use e-books to increase their mailing list by offering it free only to those sign-up for the mailing list. This can prove very effective if done correctly

11. Create a Useful Resource

In addition to an e-Book you can create other valuable resources for your readers e.g. I-Phone App or free Website Template. Apps in particular are very popular among users and no matter what your niche, there are apps you can create to benefit your users. A popular resource can have one of the highest impacts on your business. Make sure to include a link to your website or blog. Even if you do not have technical skills, you can easily outsource the development of a resource at highly competitive prices.

12. Measure the Performance of Your Content

There are many ways to measure the performance of your blog and its content. Google Analytics offers an in-dept analysis of many aspects of your content and traffic. Popular content, bounce rate of individual posts, average time spent on each post, entry and exit pages are some metrics that you can use to gain an insight into the performance of your content.

Google Webmaster Tools on the other hand shows how your content is viewed by Google spiders. It informs you to of potential problems with your site content including crawl errors, broken links, load times, malware and other factors.

Summary:

Managing your blog content is important. Writing new content for your blog is likely to take up a lot of your time .There are many techniques that you can use to make your content more appealing for your readers. The techniques discussed above can help you leverage your content and improve your results. This is the 2^nd part of the 5 part series on ‘How to run a blog successfully’. The first part focused on ‘How to Se-up Your Blog‘. The next part will focus on managing your visitors.