How To Create Shareworthy Blog Content That Gets Noticed

1. Introduction : Hello, Jenness. Gag Leone here and welcome to my class on how to create share worthy block content that gets you noticed. Now, if you're watching my video today, it's very possible that you're one of a few people. Maybe you're someone who is feeling a bit overwhelmed because you want to create a business blogger. You're just getting started, but you really don't know how to do it. You know, you need to create something great content to get your business on the map and to grow your blob. But you just don't know where to start. You could be somebody that has been blogging for your business for a while now, maybe even for years, and you do it consistently. But no one knows you exist still, and Mac and just feels so frustrating. Or maybe if someone is feeling a bit intimidated with your business blood. We all get intimidated just because you're watching all of the high sharing blog's and the popular blog's of your industry. And there's so many people visiting those sites, but no one is visiting yours. How can you compete with these big guys? Well, here's a thing you actually can compete you see, this isn't rocket science. It's not even that difficult. There are key things that many of these high performing and high quality blog's they all have in common, and in this course I'm going to teach you exactly what those are. So whether you're a big company, a small company, no matter where you are or what type of business you run, you can improve with the principles that I'm going to share with you in this class. And what you will get is a lot more traffic to your website, readers that will adore your website content and ultimately more leads more sales, more revenue and a business that grows. So I'm really excited to take this journey with you. I've got so much great stuff to share with you from really cool tips to worksheets and templates and so many resource is if you're ready to supercharge your block content, come and join me and I'll see you in the next video 2. Welcome: so welcome to my course on how to create share were the block content. I'm so glad you could join me, So I want to give you a little background on who I am and where I come from. So I've been in the content and blogging business now for more than a decade, almost 12 plus years now. And I worked with so many different types of businesses, from small mom and pop shops to aspiring entrepreneurs, even solo bloggers all the way to large businesses that have hundreds of thousands of monthly blog's visitors and serve millions of customers. So with my company lady content, we do everything from manage block content to really most importantly, help businesses create that really high quality content. They need to become a formidable competitors in their industry and grow their business. So the cool thing is that I'm going to teach you the exact principles that I use in my business day to day, to help my clients create amazing content. Thes principles haven't tried and tested over the years, and they work really well that you don't need to be a professional writer to apply these principles to your blawg anyone can use these principles to improve their blood content. Doesn't matter what business you are in what type of blawg you have. Let's talk about what type of concepts we will discuss in this class. We'll talk about how to research your audiences goals and challenges and why this is so critical to creating great block content. Had a brainstorm to come up with a compelling topic that will hook your readers in so they don't want to stop reading a quick fix headline formula for creating tantalizing headlines that begs the reader to click to read your blood, Post my three step plan for creating attention grabbing bloc introductions. How does structural block to make it readable and slippery so readers slide down your block instead of leave it? How to humanize your content so readers will adore the content you put out. I've also included a bonus video on how to get some exposure for your blog's and some quick traffic. So I've also include a lot of resource is templates and spreadsheets that correspond with the training, and you can find those at the bottom of the project description in the project tab here in this class training. Now I talk about all of these. Resource is in the actual class videos. In the next video, I want to give you my road map for how to best approach the class. You can get the most benefit out of it. I'll see you over there. 3. How to Approach This Class: in this video. I want to talk about how I recommend you approach the class. You get the most benefit from it. Also, police come and say, hiding me in the community. Give me a little bit of an introduction about who you are and what you want to get out of the class. I would love to meet you. Also, if you have any questions or comments that you have during the class that come up, please come and post them in the community as well. I'll be in there from time to time, replying to your comments and answering all of your questions. Okay, let's get started and talk about how I recommend you approached the class. So here's how I recommend you approach this class, and if you follow along with this, I guarantee you're going to get a lot of benefit from this class, So watch the entire class all the way through. Once First, don't worry about taking notes the first time around. Just watch it all the way through to get introduced to the concepts. You also don't have to do it all in one go 10 to 15 minutes a day is even good enough. As long as you follow along consistently, you can get through the class in just a few days. Now, the second time around, watching the class, you could take notes and follow along. At this stage, you could also work on the class project. The class project is to create or improve a block post using the principles that I teach in this class. The project will be split into several stages and I will walk you through each stage as you go through the class. So who is this class project for? Well, anyone who wants to improve their block content and really understand what it takes to make readers absolutely adore and want to share your content, whether you're a business owner, noodle blogger, someone who's been blogging for years or maybe your solo blogger and entrepreneur. By completing the project, you will improve your blogging skills and your content, and it will be much more share worry so you can get more exposure for your business and your blood. So I recommend that you focus the project on something with lady to your business. So you get the most benefit out of this project. So If you work with, for example, a digital marketing agency and you write block post for your company. Blawg, your project will be a marketing focused block post that you composed on your actual blawg . You could find details about the project here in my class training page, along with all of the instructions on how to submit your project to the Project Gallery for feedback from the community. I do recommend that you work on the class project along with us, because it will help you improve your block content at a faster rate. Also, don't forget to follow my profile of your in the class page so you could be updated whenever I post a new class or I have some new free cool resource is to share with you. So let's get started with the class and I'll see you in the next video 4. Knowing Your Readers: in this video I'm going to teach you. It's probably one of the most important components of share worthy blood content, and that is to know your readers intimately. If you could kneel this, you could stop brainstorming random topics that you don't even know if your audience will want to read about. And instead, you can solve their actual problems and help them achieve their actual goals. Now this is where the magic really happens, and this is where you can really connect with your blog's readers. So let's get started. I'm gonna show you how to know your readers first. You want to figure out who your blood audiences, who are the people will be connecting with your content? No. One way to figure this out is to find out what we would call their physical demographics, things like age, gender, location, company relationship status and whatever characteristics you think will help you know your audience more. For example, if you sell baby products, you may want to know how many Children they have and what ages they are. Or if you so wedding favors, you might want to know the relationship status of your audience. Then you can go deeper with this and find out what we call psychographic information. This will tell you why your audience will want to read your content because focuses on their hobbies and behavior. So maybe they favor quality over price when purchasing your products. Maybe they prefer to use Instagram over other social sites. Maybe they like to walk to work instead of dry. I like to listen to a specific podcast or even read a specific influences block. But what we really want to get down then on is their desires for goals and challenges, because ultimately, this is what you're going to be addressing. With your block content, you're going to be helping your readers achieve their goals and tackle the problems and challenges. Now there are many ways you can find out this information, and one of the ways that I like to do that is through surveys and surveys is one of the easiest waste. Get this data from your customers. If you don't have any customers, don't worry about it in the resource. I'm going to give you some really good tips on how to research your audience without sending a survey. I've done these tips myself, and they really work well. Now, before we go into how to create your survey, you may have heard people tell you to incentivize your survey, but I don't always recommend this, and the reason is that people will take your survey just to get the incentive like they want to win a price. And this might not result in the most honest feedback. But if you do feel like you need to offer incentive, maybe you don't have a lot of customers yet, and you really want up the participation. I recommend offering an incentive that is low cost to make, and that is really high quality. So consider incentives like maybe offering free product, free training, free coaching or maybe even discounts on your products. So here's a handout that I created as a resource for this training, and it includes some sample questions that you can use for your survey. You can see I have separated them into the physical demographics, psychographic and the goals and challenges, and we talked about thes earlier in the video. I've also included the question type and some just comments or answers you can use for your survey questions So you just need to customize these questions for your business. You don't have to use all of them. Just choose the ones that will work best for you. Now, for the purposes of this class, the goals and challenge is going to be the most important data that we're gonna take a look at now. When this tab here, I've also included some tools that you can use to create your actual survey, the referee and paid options. No step Two of this process is to gather the data from your survey. The most popular survey answers and compile them into what we call a persona a persona is it's just a fictional representation of a segment of your target audience. Now your business can have a few personas, but for the sake of this video will go over just one. So to give an example of what it would look like after we compiled all of my survey answers , this is one of my persona small business, Larry, that a use for my business. Now I don't block a lot for my company because I'm too busy blogging for my clients. I still use by personas when sharing content speaking, pitching to clients directly, you'll find that you use your personas in every aspect of your business, not just for consecration, so they're really important. So all of my answers from my surveys and from the research that I've done on my target audience on my persona small business, Larry are all here in this document. This really helps you visualize what this person is like and it really makes it real to you . You can see that I've also added an image here of what I think he looks like. And, of course, I named him Smallest business, Larry. So he becomes even more real to me when that persona becomes real to you, it helps you connect with the content even more when you're writing it. And this will help your readers connect with your content as well. You could say I've also categorized all of the information from the data and from my research into the physical demographics, psychographic and goals and challenges just to keep everything organized. Now I'm include a copy of this persona with the resource is for this video so you can review it again. If you make a copy of the spreadsheet, you can edit it and customize it for your own persona. Now here's another persona resource that I like that help spot created and it's called Make My Persona. So if you click on, make my persona tool click build my persona, you can see that hub spot will walk you through a bunch of questions, and they will ask you for answers, and your answers will help you compile a persona. Now you don't have to fill everything out here on this tool, but it really is an easy way to map things out. If you don't currently have a persona, so feel free, use this tool as well. Your action item for this video is to come up with at least one Golder challenge of your audience because we're gonna use these goals and challenges in the next video to brainstorm a topic for your blog's Now. If you weren't able to send a survey to your customers, that's okay. Remember, In the resource is, I have some tips on how to do this research on your audience and do some of this market research without actually sending out a survey. Now, if you're falling along with the class. Make sure to submit this part of your project this stage to the community, for feedback. I'll see you in the next video. 5. Brainstorm a Winning Topic: in this video. I want to talk to you about creating in brainstorming a topic for your block content. Now you should have goals and challenges from your last video that we came up with, and you maybe even have a filled up persona. We're going to use these now to brainstorm a topic for your blog's Now, when the first things you want to think about what coming up with a topic for your block and brainstorming is. How can I actually help my audience solve their challenges? How could I help them achieve their goals? Well, let's take a look at one of my personas again. Small business. Larry. We're gonna look at one of the problems that he has. I'm going to show you how to use this to brainstorm and come up with a topic for your blog's Let's get to it. So one of the challenges of my persona that I discovered from my research is that he is needing to ramp up his marketing block content, but he's afraid because he doesn't even know where to start. He's not a writer and he doesn't have the time or resource is to get the ball rolling. So the next step here is to use your research to come up with 3 to 5 things that would help your persona with a challenge that you came up with. So as an example, here's what I might do to help my persona. I might give him some productivity tips to help make its processes more efficient. Maybe some outsourcing and hiring advice. He may want to hire a professional marketing blogger, but he has no idea how to do it, which causes a lot of stress. He's not a writer, so he doesn't really know if he's even hiring a good writer, maybe some content organization management, scheduling advice. Because this is also something that would help small business. Larry is getting organized systems in place when set of correctly, will slash his work time dramatically. So what I would do when thinking about block topics for this persona is to drill down into the topic and create many different sub topics. So let's dig into this a little bit deeper. Let's take the outsourcing and hiring topic and dig down more so I might break this topic down into sub topics like where to find marketing bloggers how to screen and interview writers, how to spot a great hire and weed out the low performers during the hiring process. I don't even know if a writer is good enough. If you aren't a writer yourself and even any other ankles that would fall under that topic , you can even drill down into these sub topics and create even more focused topics. There's just so many options here for you. Just remember that the goal here is to create content that will help your target audience achieve their desired goals and solve their problems. That's the most important thing here now. One other thing that I like to do when brainstorming blawg topics is just take to the Web. You can use the Web to kind of see what's popular in your industry and then marry that with the content that you're personas would like to read about. So one of the sites I use is Google trends. I don't You just won a lot, but every once in a while I come on this site, and what Google trends does is they list the top trending topics basically the most popular topics, and Google at that time. So what you could do is just scroll through this and take a look at what's trending right now. Ah, one thing I like to do is go down to recently trending and then goto more trending searches and then appear goto real time search trends. And then this is where you can look at trends by category, and that's gonna be the easiest way to find what you're looking for. So let's say you were doing a topic that is related to health. You can click here on health and then find some topics here that you could use within your article to connect to some really popular trends. So another two I like to use this called keywords everywhere. And that's an application that you can find in your chrome browser. So you'll see what works here. If I type into Google something that's related to my topic that I'm looking to write for my persona and that is, hire a blogger. So I type that in and you'll see here on the right hand side related keywords. So I scrolled down here. I'll see some different keywords and maybe some topics that I can use to just think about some other angles for my blood post like here. Hire a blogger to promote your business. That's something I might not have thought about Long writing service pricing. Maybe I can write a block post on different pricing and how to charge your freelancers. Where to find blawg Writers. Maybe there are. Maybe I could do a block post on where to find blawg writers and create a giant list for my target persona. So if you want to find this tool, you could just simply make sure you're in the chrome browser. Just type in keywords everywhere, and then just click on this and follow the instructions to apply it to your chrome browser . The last tool that I like to use is Buzz Sumo. Now I have a pro account here, but you can still use a free account and get some good data. So I like to go to the content research tab up here, and then let's type in higher blogger again and just look and see what we can find. Now what bus sumo does is they do categorize content by old, different criteria. But what I usually look for is the content that's getting the most shares, and you can sort by different criteria here. I usually do total engagements, but feel free to use any of the other ones. So basically, I'm just using this to kind of give me inspiration for maybe some other angles that I can use for my block Post scroll down here, I find one here that says Benefits of hiring a micro blogger. It's not something I ever thought of. Social media influencer. I could maybe look at this block post and see if I get more inspiration. Five Reasons to hire a blogger hiring a professional blogger What you need to know first. What I would do is click further into these articles, read the articles and see if anything jumps out at me that will inspire me. That's what these tools are really doing. Is just giving you some ideas for what's being shared on the Web and what could inspire you to think about your topic in a way that you may have not have done before. And then what you want to do is kind of marry these topics and what you find on the Web with your content persona desires, goals and challenges to come up with the perfect topic for your blood post. Your action item for this video is to come up with 123 block topics that you think would work for your audience. And don't forget to submit your topics for feedback in the community along with your project. I'll see you in the next video. 6. Master Your Blog Hook: Did you ever have a song in your head that you just couldn't get rid of, no matter how hard you tried? Well, chances are the part of that song that you just couldn't seem to shake. That was what we call the hook of the song now hoax. Grab a hold of you and they never let go. Imagine if your blog's had a hook, and when your readers came to digest your content, they want to stay and read it and never leave. Well, you could actually do this with your blawg. Your hook is the main selling feature of your blog's. It's the why it tells readers why they want to stick around and not leave to create a compelling hook. You want to figure out why readers want to know about your topic? What is it that's in it for them? What is really going to get out of your content? So let's dig a little deeper and figure out how to create a whole career blog's so you know how to really attract readers and keep them on your page to teach you how to create a hook . Let's go back to my persona that we have been using as an example in this class. Small business. Larry, if you watch my earlier videos, I mentioned that one of my personas problems were challenges was how to hire marketing bloggers. So this is what I was going to create a topic around. Let's just call my topic. Hire a marketing blogger. Okay, so we know that's the challenge. How to hire a marketing blogger. But let's dig a little deeper. Remember that we want to connect with our readers so they will love our content and want to read it and share it. You have to create an emotional heart connection to do this. Now, one of the ways I like to brainstorm some hooks and really figure out what connects to the heart of my reader. Let's do something that I call the Why exercise. Now? This is really easy to do, and it's actually a little bit fun, so we know that my persona wants to hire a good marketing blogger. But is that really all he wants? Let's ask some why questions to dig a little deeper into this. Well, why can't hire a marketing blogger? What does he need? Help? Well, he knows he needs to build its blawg, but he doesn't have the time nor the expertise to find a great writer as he isn't writer himself. It will just be too difficult. He also doesn't have time to sift through hundreds of job at applications. And we talked a little bit about these in the last 50 when we were brainstorming topics. All of your research will be valuable for all facets of this process. Now let's take these points and try to dig even deeper, asking why questions again? Why doesn't he want to spend the time? Why is he concerned about not being a writer? Well, spending time finding a writer will cripple his productivity and business growth. Now. This might hit a deeper emotional place because the opposite of business growth is failure , and this is something he wants to avoid. It all costs. He's never hired a blogger before, so he was worried about messing up and wasting more time or hiring One prior has been a disaster. Now you can see we're getting a little deeper with this 1 to 1. Uncovering some fears and issues are persona may not even be vocalizing to his peers, but they're still a real issue now. You can keep going with your white questions until you get is deep as you can go. The purpose of this exercise is just to find out some pain points and problems that may have been hidden had we not dug a little bit deeper like this and took some time to think about it. Now, before you do this exercise, it's important to know about your target audience. You don't want to feel this out and go through this exercise without really knowing what the data says. You don't want to just do this randomly now. We talked a lot about your target audience earlier in this class, so consult those videos if you need a refresher. All of these points we just flushed out after using the Y exercise or really just pain points of my persona. All we did was dig deeper so we can really get an emotional heart connection with our readers. So I listed the pain points here again. No time, lack of experience, fear of another writer, disaster too difficult, afraid of stunting business growth and afraid of making stakes. Now I can use one or two of these as a hook, which I will use in my headlines, my sub headlines, my intro and in the main body of my block content one quick thing to note here before we go on. If you are helping readers achieve a goal with your block posts, which most times you will be, your hook can also be a deep benefit that your reader could expect. And we talk more about this and the creating headlines video in this class and you'll see how I craft a headline for my blawg using a benefit that I got from my personas pain point . Now here's one more exercise you can use to find your hook or deep benefit. Put your topic through the following questions. What can the reader do better or become as result of reading the block? How will their lives changed for the better? What will they miss out on if they don't read the block? Answering these questions with my hook, I would say that reading my blawg will help the reader feel more confident in the process to find a professional marketing blogger. It will change his life because he can stop worrying about failing, which leads to lost money. In time, this information will help him grow his business faster and more efficiently. What will the readers miss out on if they don't read my blawg? Well, they will not get my complete time saving formula on hiring a professional blogger, one which I perfected over the years. Instead, they will have to rummage through articles on the Web, which may or may not have been written by people who don't have the same level of experience that I have. So your action item is to take one of your block topics and create one or two hooks from it . Then upload these as part of your project of the community for feedback. If you're following along with the class project, I'll see you in the next video. 7. Create Compelling Headlines: did you know that 80% of the people that come to your blawg may never actually make it past the headline? That means that eight out of 10 people will read your headline copy for only two out of the town will actually read your blawg post. Those stats turned not that great. And that's the reason why it's really important to understand how to create attention grabbing headlines. Why waste hours of time creating amazing block content when no one's ever going to read it now? The topic of headlines. It's pretty extensive. I could spend hours talking about it, and there's a lot to learn. But to save time and to really help you understand how to create these types of headlines quickly, I want to introduce you to a formula in this video that will help you create really compelling headlines really quickly. So let's dive in and get started. So here is the formula number or trigger word plus adjective plus keyword plus promise. Now I can't take credit for this headline formula. I got it from one of my favorite bloggers, Jeff Coins. And then when the resource is for this class video, I included a link to the block post where Jeff introduces it, so you can take a look at that block post after you're done watching this class. So now each element of the headline doesn't have to be in this exact order. The key is just to try to use all of the elements in the headlines somewhere. Let's take my blawg topic we have been working with throughout the streaming. Now remember that I want to teach businesses how to hire good marketing bloggers so I could have just used a headline like this How to hire a good marketing blogger. Simple, right? Well, let's apply this formula and see how we can make this headline pop more. We know for my hoc analysis in the last video that some of the pain points my persona had. Were these right here no time, lack of experience, fear of another writer, disaster too difficult, afraid of stunting business growth and afraid of making mistakes. So this is where we can also further define which hook we want to use for a blawg and apply it to the headline. So I decided to focus on one or two hooks no time and fear of making mistakes. You don't want to cover too many pain points at once is important to stay super focused. So here's some headlines that I came up with using this Formula. Six Foolproof tips on how to hire a season marketing water in three days. The step by step formula to hiring a traffic driving blogger in three days. How I hired an extraordinary marketing blogger in three days without posting a job bad. Now let's take a look at how each of these headlines satisfied the headline formula. Now, I know this looks a little confusing, but I wanted to color code each variable of the formula so you could see where it is mentioned in the headline. If you need to pause the video or re watch this section after we're done here, feel free to do that. So let's start with the key word, which is shown in purple. That's just the topic of what you are writing about. So my topic is hiring a marketing blogger, right? So that's reflected in each of the headlines in purple Now, the number or trigger word indicated in red means either use a number like I did with the number six here in my first headline or a trigger word Like what? When or how. Now I use the word formula in one of these headlines and the 2nd 1 here. I used that as a trigger because it signifies something that has been tested and that could be followed. This points to the fact that learning what I have to write about may be easier than the reader may think, which will urge the reader to click on the headline even more so. The adjectives are shown in green. Here, you want to use emotional adjectives like incredible or extraordinary. Now I used extraordinary here in the third headline, and I also threw in some adjectives that also speak to my personas. Pain points. These are traffic driving, and that relates to business building. Remember that my persona? One of his pain point was that he wants to grow his business. They also used foolproof because my persona is concerned about making mistakes. Right and seasoned is another adjective I used. I even use step by step as an adjective to show that this process that I'm outlining in my blood post can be easily followed and executed. This also prevents making mistakes. Can you see how we can use my hope or pain points in different parts of the headline? That's really key year. Adjectives like these can make a huge impact now. The promise, which is indicated in Blue. This is also related to your hook. Remember that one hook or pain point I chose for my persona was focusing on how time consuming it is for him to hire a great blogger. So I created a promise that I would help my persona hire a blogger in three days, and it was important to get really descriptive with the promise to make it even more compelling. I could have just said how to hire Blogger quickly, but instead I said three days to make it really interesting. One thing here with this. Just make sure that you also deliver on your promise in the piece. I actually do have a three day hiree plan, and again if you want to see the original block post from Jeff Goins, where I got this headline formula from, I will provide the link in. The resource is he provides more headlines. Formula examples in that post. Now one of the ways to write great headlines is to simply just get inspired by what's already out there. So one of my favorite sites is smart. Blogger dot com On smart bloggers Blawg You can find some absolutely amazing headlines to use for inspiration. You just scroll through a site. You're going to find that you want to click on more than one post just because the headlines air so compelling. You could also use this site as inspiration for great intros, formatting, readability. And also maybe, if you want some writing and blogging tips. There's a lot of amazing info on this website. No, my client founder, one of my clients, is another great source of headline inspiration. We actually spend a lot of time creating headlines that we know readers will want to click on and that are super compelling. So just use these sites as inspiration for you. I'm also going to include in the Resource is with this training some other websites that teach you how to write compelling headlines and some other of my favorite bloggers that I visit when I want inspiration for headlines. Just remember that headlines their work in progress. Sometimes I change up my headlines 10 plus times before I finalize a blawg. In other times, I might not even finalized my headline until I'm completely done with a block post, and that's OK. Now you're action Item for this video is to create 2 to 3 headline variations for your blog's post. And if you're following along with the class project, be sure to upload your headlines to the project for community feedback. I'll see you in the next video. 8. Attention-Grabbing Blog Intros: in this video, we're going to talk about your BLAWG Post introduction. It's a release, um, all part of your blog's, but it's one of the most important parts. Now. I like to compare your block Most introduction to the Curb appeal of, ah, home. If you're selling a home, the curb appeal is your home's first impression. Now your blog's introduction is your blog's curb appeal. If it doesn't connect with readers, you won't get them to open the door and continue reading your blog's. Now. If you want to know how to create some amazing curb appeal for your blog's and how to write a compelling intro, I've got a three part plan to show you how to do that. Let's go. Here's my three step plan to writing attention grabbing blogging Joe's that big readers continue reading your post. So Step one. What is the benefit? How will it change their lives? Does any of this sound familiar? Well, this is the same as your hook. What we've been talking about in earlier videos, you want to make sure to include your hook or benefit in your introduction step to add proof that what you're writing about actually works proof that what you were about to tell them has been done before, and it's definitely worked. Step three is to include a short summary of what the reader could expect it that continue reading. You want to tell readers what they can expect to get out of the peace when they're done, so you want to make your intros concise if you can. You don't want it to take too long for readers to get into the real meat off the content. Now I like to keep my intros to around 100 to 150 words. Now this isn't a hard and fast rule. There are exceptions, but for the sake of this video, I would say keeping your interests around 100 to 150 words is a really good practice. Here's a great example of an awesome intro that one of my writers created because it includes the three steps that we just talked about, and it's also pretty shortly concise. So if you scroll down here, you see the introduction here. It's pretty short, but it includes those three different elements the first room, and I said that we want to include the hope for the benefit of the peace, and you can see that the hook is that we want to skyrocket the readers traffic. So that's the main benefit. And you could see that she talks about traffic here and also up here in the second paragraph. So that's the main benefit now. The next one that I talked about was adding social proof and social proof is, it tells the reader that what you're about to write on has been done before, and it's also worked this that's trusting credibility, so it's really important. So she added, social proof up here, where she talks about how they engaged, enjoyed a 40% increase in revenue just by using infographics, the topic of this blood post. So that social proof, the next one that you want to add, is a short summary of what the reader has coming ahead. If they continue to read now, this restates the promise of the article and what readers can expect to get out of the peace. If you scroll down here to the bottom of the intro, you'll see that she talks again about why the topic is so important. It gives the reader a really quick summary of what they can expect it to continue reading if you want some even more information on how to write compelling introductions. I do like this resource as well. From Smart Blogger. If you go through this post, it's really informative and in depth, and it gives you a bunch of different intro ideas and some ways of how to write some awesome, compelling introductions. Maybe in some ways you haven't thought of before. Now will include a link to this article and the art. But we just talked about in this video, and the resource is for this training. So your action item for this video is to create an introduction for your block post or improving existing one. Then go ahead and submit for feedback along with your project in the community. I'll see you in the next video 9. Formatting for Readability: Now, let's be honest when you're reading Blog's on the whip, Do you read every single word all the time? I know I don't. I am a skimmer all the way. And you may be a swell Internet users are notorious for having short attention spans. If the words don't jump out of them on the page, it's likely they won't read them. Take a look at these two pieces of content side by side. Which one has details that catch your eye more in the right sample? I typed out the content without formatting. The sample on the left has been formatted to make it easier to read and catch the readers. I in parts toe hopefully stop them from skimming. Can you see the difference? If you can't pause the video and see if you can tell in this video, I'm going to show you how to format. Your blog's like this so they're much easier to read and they don't bore your readers. Now. One thing to note in this class and this video, especially this isn't really about the technical aspects of writing. Now you don't need to be a professional writer to great share worthy block content. But if you're kind of new to writing and you want some information how to become a better writer, I'm going to include resource that go along with this video to help you. Let's first go over some quick points about formatting and readability, and then I'll walk you through exactly what this looks like on a real blood post so you could improve formatting and readability by adding images and videos for images. Make sure you screenshots or professional images that include captions you don't want to shove in stock photos just for the sake of breaking up the text that never looks good. Every image should really be purposely added. Now I'll give you my favorite image sites and tools At the end of this video, you can also use bold, underlined italicized and capitalize words and phrases used these occasionally and on words and phrases you want to emphasize to really capture the attention of your readers. Use bulleted lists at a table of contents I usually at a table of contents when posts are about 3 to 4000 words or more. Another thing to watch is to avoid long paragraphs 3 to 4 sentences of paragraphs at a max . Even one sentence paragraphs are acceptable with blood posts. You also want U sub headlines and sub sub headlines to break up the text in tow. Organized sections now make your headlines really descriptive, and it doesn't even matter if they're too long. Make them like many blawg headlines. Remember that one of our goals here is to stop people from skimming. So really descriptive headline that read like many headlines can really do the trick here. These are what make the readers stop scrolling, and that's what we want to dio. So let's go over to a block post and I'm going to show you what a well formatted block post actually looks like. I, like used this post as an example because it contains a lot of formatting and readability elements like the ones we just talked about. So the 1st 1 we can talk about is the table of contents. Now, this is a super long article, and this is a table of contents here, and what it does is it kind of allows the reader to get an insight into what you're going to talk about, and it also allows them to. If they click on one of these, it will take them down to the actual section in the article. Now, the next thing we talked about was avoiding long paragraphs. You could even use one sentence paragraphs in your block post. You can see that right here. Here's a one sentence paragraph. Now, you see, there's a lot of white space in between these paragraphs, and most of them are 1 to 2 sentence paragraphs. You can see if I got rid of all the white space between these paragraphs and this was all one paragraph, it would be harder to read, and it would be a little bit or exhausting for the reader to get through. And then we talked about sub headlines and sub sub headlines and how it's okay to make them longer. And we also want to make them like many headlines and even include a benefit or hook or something, and something that makes them want you stop skimming and start reading so you can see in this first sub headline, I added the question, Are you talking to the wrong people? And this is gonna just invoke a little curiosity and it will make them want to actually stop mutiny reading If you scroll down in your seat. Another sub headline I used really in question marks to add a little more curiosity there. If you keep scrolling, you'll see another headline. Now you might think this is too long, but this actually does capture attention, and one of the ways it does that is we've included ah, benefit here at the end 10-K Instagram followers in four weeks. It's kind of a promise of what they can actually expect in this section if they continue reading. So that's another way to draw readers in to continue reading this section because they want to get the promise that's in your sub headline. It's kind of like we talked about in my creating headlines video. And then we also talked about images. Remember that I said that it's best to use Screenshots if you can, which I've done here in this article. All the screenshots I used are examples I found on the Web, and they help the reader to understand what it is I'm talking about because the real world examples and also kind of stops them from scrolling, and it breaks up the text a little bit. The other thing that I mentioned to use was bulleted lists, bold underlying italicized and even capitalized words and phrases. Gonna use these occasionally and on words and phrases that you want to emphasize again to capture attention. So if you just scroll through my post again, you'll find some phrases that are bold ID. Just like here. I want to draw emphasis to 10,000 followers here, and if we scroll actually could scroll down a little farther in the post, you'll see some bulleted lists. Is one here again? This is M bold to capture attention. Here's another numbered list and just scroll through here. You'll see a lot more bold and bulleted lists. You'll see Bolden headlines just things that as you're scrolling, if you scroll through this blogger, you'll see there's a bunch of elements that just stand out, and that's really what readability and formatting a blood post for share ability and for optimal reading is all about. It's just about breaking up all the text and really providing elements that jump out at the reader and stop them from skimming if you want. Some resource is for finding good stock images, I recommend unspool ash. I know there are a lot of other free sites out there for images, but I do like unspool because they are the most professional in my opinion. So this is really the only one I use. If I do use stock images, I'm not a big fan of using images like this. I do prefer screenshots. Just be careful with the stock images. Use them wisely. Make sure the purposeful and use captions with them so they make sense and you're not just shoving them in the article to break up the text. Now, if you're looking for a tool on how to take screenshots, I do that way. The tool called Jane This is a free tool, and I also take screenshots with a tool called Snag. It now snag. It is a little bit different than Jing and that it allows you to customize the images a little more. But this is a paid tool, so you will have to pay for this one. Now. You also want a professional featured image for your block, and that's the mean image that connects to the Blawg and also shows up when you share your blogger on some of your social profiles. Now I like to create featured images on a site called Can Va, and that's what you're looking at right here. Now I like this side because there's no real experience required. Um, and it's pretty easy to use. As you can see. If you want to create design, you just simply click. Create a design, and you even create social images here. Facebook covers Instagram Post. It's a really great program. If you want to create a featured image, you can go down to custom dimensions and create one from any of the templates I have here. You can see they have a bunch of different templates. If you do want a demo on how I use can. But to create featured images, just let me know in the comments in the community here, and I can create a quick video for you. There is a free option with this site to use it so you don't have to pay for it unless you want some more advanced features. So if you're following along with the class training at this point, you may be ready to create the content of your post, the main part of the body or you ready to improve an existing block post. Now, what I would recommend you do is to kind of wait on that until you watch the next three videos in this training. And the reason is is that those videos also talk about the body of the posts, and that's gonna be really important. If you have already made some content more readable and you want to submit it along with your project for feedback, feel for you do so now when the resource is with this training, I've included some links to block posts that I think are highly readable, and they contain a lot of good formatting for you to review. I'll see you in the next video. 10. Creating Actionable Content: in this video, I'm going to teach you about creating actionable content, and this is a key to creating high quality, long form content. Actionable content is critical because it helps you build trust and credibility in your industry, and it positions you as the expert. Now, this is key if you want to grow your business with your blog's. So how do you make your blood content actionable? We're going to go right over to some real world examples of actual content a second. But first I want to just bullet point out for you some tips on how to make your content more actionable, so actionable content gets your audience involved. Put yourself in their shoes and see if you are interested in engage while reading your piece. You want to provide takeaways and give visual examples. Don't just tell readers what to do. Show them how to do it after you show them how include examples of what this looks like so they can visualize it in their minds. Use either real or hypothetical examples or both. Visual examples with screenshots are really great toe ad. They give readers tangible ways that they can apply what you are saying to their own unique situation. Never leave readers with unanswered questions again. Put yourself in your audiences shoes, and as you're reading your content, notice where your router may have questions that you didn't answer. Are you addressing these questions? If you can't address the questions in the post at a minimum linked to a resource where they can get their questions answered, remember that actionable content provides takeaways and visual examples, whether real or hypothetical, to really drive the point home. It doesn't just tell readers what to do. It shows them how to do it. So I want to show you what this looks like an actual block post. Now I'm here on Brian Deane site Back lingo because he always creates 100% actual content. That is super in depth. You know, if we just click on one of these blood posts, I'll show you exactly what I mean by showing examples for everything that you present on the block. So if you scroll down to any one of his strategies, you'll see like this 1st 1 He talks about getting links from alumni lists and directories instead of just reporting on what the actual strategy or tactic is he goes into an actual example here and shows an image so people can really understand what this is. If you go down to the next one here, be specific with your outreach. So he talked about what the strategy or tactic is. But then he gives an actual real life example of one of his outreach emails. So you could, even as a reader, steal some of this stuff and just customize it for your own site. So this stuff provides actual takeaways that readers can take with them and apply directly and immediately to their business and their blawg. Now, when the resource is, I will link to use, um, or actionable block post like this so you can get a better idea of exactly what actual content really looks like. Now. Your action I am for this video is to make your block content mawr actionable. So if you're working on the class project along with me, maybe you could do that to a post that you're working on. Or if you're proving a post, make sure to add lots of examples and visual cues. Also review it back and make sure to never leave the reader with unanswered questions. I'll see you in the next video 11. How to Make Your Content Slippery: in this video, I'm going to talk about how to make your block content slippery. Now I may be aging myself here, but remember when that game chutes and ladders first came out? Are you supplying all the time? As a kid? I imagine that your blog's is like one big shoot or slide that starts at the top and finishes at the bottom. You want your block audience to start at the top and slide all the way down your block without any friction along the way. Now, slippery content is conversational. It engages the reader. It removes a bore factor, and it brings your content to life. Let's talk a little bit more about how to make your block content slippery. Here's an example of slippery versus non slippery content. I put them both side by side that pause the video and re through each and tell me which one you enjoyed reading more. This will tell you which one is actually more slippery and engaging. If you answer that step, it a was more slippery. Well, you're right, so I'm going to now highlight the words and phrases I added to make sipping a more conversational and slippery, and you could see them here in yellow. Positive you again now and notice how the words I added made stepping a bit more engaging in fund ary. So transitional phrases like this can connect ideas so the blood flows seamlessly and readers feel compelled to continue reading. It makes the piece just a little bit easier to read so readers can slide all the way down the page, which is exactly what we want now. Personality driven words and phrases kind of like the ones I used here. Zilch, nada, absolutely super de duper words like these. They just a little personality and intrigue to make your content more interesting. Now the blog's sounds more like a conversation rather than somebody reading a college term paper. We'll talk more about personality to content in the next video. Now, if you want another resource on how to make your block content slippery, I want to show you a great blawg post here that's going to give you some of these transitional phrases to use in your content. Now I'll include this link to this blogging. The resource is that accompany this training, so if you scroll down here, you're going to see that this block includes 13 types of transitions that you can use in your block. Conduct. Despicable, conversational, Enjoyable for your readers. This is an absolutely great resource to keep bookmark and to go back to you again and again when you need it. Now try to remember that your blog's is nothing like a college term paper. Yes, grammar and writing technique, those air really important. But you want to imagine that you're speaking directly to someone in a conversation informal conversation when you're writing your block. Your action item for this video is to add a little conversational language and some of those transitions that we talked about in this video to either a full block post whether you're improving one. Or you could even try on a little snippet of content to practice. I'll see you in the next video 12. Humanize Your Content: So in this video, I want to teach you how to humanize your block content so you could make it different than the millions of other block content out there. Now, to do that, I need to tell you a little story, and it's going to be a little embarrassing. So just bear with me here. So early on in my writing career, I was petrified. I mean, I had no confidence at all, but I was desperate for money, so I needed to make money quick. So I applied Teoh any job I could, even if I had no experience doing it. Well, it kind of backfired on me because I got on the phone with someone who was interviewing me , and it went really poorly. And by the end of the conversation, he proceed to yell at me, and he said, You have no intelligence. Well, at that point I froze. I hung up the phone and I proceeded to curl up in a fetal position on my husband's lap in sob for hours. It was devastating to me. Now I want to tell you that story because I wanted to see how you felt. Did you feel more connected to me. Did you feel like maybe I'm a little more than just an instructor behind that computer screen? No. Maybe felt sorry for me. Maybe you felt like, Well, this girl's a little pathetic. Or maybe you felt validated because you realize we're all broken and we're all the same. So this is what is really important to do with your block content. Now you don't have to go around telling gushy stories and all of your blog's. That's not what this is about. You can do that, but that's not really what I mean. Here. What I'm trying to tell you is that being human and relatable and transparent and authentic , these are the things that will get people to really be able to reach beyond the computer screen and feel the heart of what you're saying in your blawg. You know, as a business that's really important to try to break down those invisible barriers to just strip off the corporate facade and let people see what's behind the walls of your company. This way they can feel something when they read your content, and that's gonna help them to really connect with it and that's what's gonna help them to share it, and that's what's gonna help you to grow your business. Now let's talk a little bit more about how to do this with your content. There's some key things that you can do with your blood content that will help your readers connect better and really see the human side of your business. Now we'll go over some real block post in a minute, but I just want a bullet point out a few important points that you should remember the first if they just be conversational. And we talked a little about this in my class. Video on making your block content slippery. Avoid making your blog's sound like a college essay. You can make your post for conversational just by speaking in the first person and using you and I. So the reader feels more like you're talking directly to them. Make it unique. There are millions of blog's on the Web. The only way to compete with these blog's, especially the heavy hitters, is to be unique. There is only one. You and your business has a distinct personality and brand persona. Now you may think that it will be super difficult to stand out from the mass competition by following these principles, but it really isn't well. The truth is that most of the content out there, it's just it's not that good. And the reason is that a lot of people focus on quantity over quality. They just rehash what's already on the Web, and that is not unique at all. So you have a real advantage here with a little work, you can make your block content better than most of what is already out there on the Web. So how do you make your content unique like this? Well, first, tell stories on your blog's kind of like the one I just did in the beginning of its video. It doesn't need to be super personal. The point is to remember to just to be human. It can be a business story, a quote from an employee, a picture of your dog, whatever will help people see beyond the corporate facade. You're not a robot, and it's hard for people who are not looking you right in the face to connect with you because they're just looking at words on a page telling stories will allow your readers to feel more connected to you and your piece. Here's an article from one of my favorite bloggers, Jeff Coins, and he tells stories all the time. So if you're looking for ways to introduce stories into your blood content, you want to visit his blawg. In fact, with this recent block post, he gets super transparent about a life realization he had with a psychotherapist. And this blogger is really it's a great one to read. It's very heartfelt and very honest as well. Another one of my favorite posts, by Jeff Coins, is how to write a best seller. And if you scroll down here, you'll see there's a section that's called How I Failed to Write a best selling book, and in it he talks about a big failure. He I went through in his life when he was trying to write his third book and thought it was gonna be a success like his first and second book, and it ended up being a dismal failure. Now, like I said before in this video, you don't have to write personal stories and everyone in your block post you don't talk about what happens in your therapist sessions if you don't want to. But the point is that you really want to get a little more personal with your content to really connect with readers and humanize your content as much as possible. You also want to show your brand personality is your brand a little comical? Quirky, edgy. Show it in your content. Have you succeeded? Recently? Failed. Got amazing results. Doing something for your business. Share it. Share your wings, your losses, your failures. Let people see you are riel. Show your expertise. Be authentic. Transparent content comes from personal experience. You're the only one was bent through the experiences you have in your business and in your life. This provides readers with immense value and helps them feel more connected to you. Now you may be wondering if you can still be considered an expert if you let your humanity shine through and be more transparent. Well, the answer is yes, absolutely. The fact is that being more transparent builds trust, and your customers need to feel they can trust you first or they will never do business with you. So with my company lady content, I make sure Onley hire specialists. When I work with clients, that's because specialists will know how will have practical experience in that industry. They'll know how to walk the walk and talk the talk. I don't hire writers or just rehash what's out there, and you shouldn't either. Some of the best pieces on the web of those that allow you to showcase your expertise and show what you accomplished and how you did it. Those are the ones that really get shared. So I want to take a quick minute here and show you exactly what I mean by this. So here's one of my clients pieces that is very transparent because it reveals the exact tactics they used to explode their INSTAGRAM account. In the beginning, they got 10-K Instagram followers in two weeks. Now this account has over 1.6 million followers as of the time of this video. But the point is, is that they're providing tons of value here. This is content you will not find on the Web a lot because it hails from personal experience. If he's broken his block post, you see that it goes behind the scenes with every tactic they used. It exactly how they did it, so you can follow along and do the same thing as well. Just be riel, Corporate sounding, stuffy content that lacks personality and character. The Web is full of that. If you want to get noticed, you've got to be different. Be authentic, be transparent. Share wins and losses. Share your expertise, humanize your content in your readers, will come back for more, and they will share it with others. At this point, we've gone through all of the class content on how to make your blog's more share worthy. So if you're following along with me with the class project than at some transparency elements to your block, you can either create a new block post or improving existing one. Just make sure to upload your changes here. Project up to the community for feedback in the next video. I've included some really cool bonus tips on how to get more exposure for your blawg. I'll see you there 13. Bonus Tips for Traffic and Growth: welcome to my bonus video on how to get more exposure for your blood. So in this video, I'm going to share with you some really cool tactics that have worked for myself and my clients and that have brought in a lot more traffic and a lot more engagement for our content in a very short period of time. So let's get right to it. For the sake of time, I will just briefly mention my trafficking growth tips here. But in the resource is for this class, I created a handout that dives into these tactics in much more detail. So first you may want to focus just mostly on reading long form block posts, thes air posts that are longer than about 1000 1500 words. And they typically performed better than shorter ones with Google and with people no in my hand out. I'll tell you a little more about why this is the case, and I'll also tell you when it's best to write shorter posts. I'm going to also reveal some cool tactics I've been using with long four pieces that have proven really successful. So one tactic I tested out recently resulted in our readers spending a lot more time on our blood post. We've got hundreds of block comments. Also now, spending time on site is a Google ranking signal. So the more your readers spent time on your site, the more Google loves your content and will rake it accordingly, that you aren't just creating content for your audience, but also for the popular influencers who reside in your space, the people who will want to share your content to their audience. I will also teach you some ways to get the attention of these industry influences with your content. Now, how many times have you shared a really in depth piece of content because you wanted to show your followers you're smart or even super cool? Come on, let's be honest. I've done it plenty of times. It's an ego thing, and we all do it. Or maybe you're just too lazy to create a long form piece like this. So you share someone else's instead. Well, there are tons of these people around, and they are the people you want to attract with your awesome share worthy content. Because they like yourself. We'll share it. Review your analytics and visitor behavior. What poster performing well, how do you know which ones are resonating with your audience and which ones are flops? Where our readers leaving your blood, where they clicking when the resource is. I will give you a crash course on what to look for in your Google analytics and also some other tools to use to help you figure out how your readers air interacting with your block content, content upgrades and lead offers. Use them to give readers a free piece of content that complements your blawg post, which can also become a traffic and Lee generation tool. You can also do some competitive research with this Google hack I use regularly to outrank top performing post in Google. This can help you create better content than what's out there, gain more links and increase school rankings over time, you can find all of these tactics in my resource is at the bottom of the project description for this class. Enjoy 14. Final Thoughts: Well, I hope you enjoy this class and you got a lot from it. I want to quickly recap what we covered in this course and also give you a little more information on how to continue to improve your blood content and also stay connected with me. We talked about how to discover what content your audience really wants to read, how to brainstorm a hook in topic that satisfies your readers how to create attention grabbing headlines and intros that keep readers glued to your blood. How to format your blood post for easy reading, how to make your content slippery, transparent and ultimately engaging and fun to read. All of this will go a long way to helping your block content get noticed and shared. Now, here are some steps you can take to continue your learning. Get feedback on your work and stay updated on any new classes that I teach in the future. So I recommend at this point that you either start the class project working on it in stages as instructed or finish it up. If you already started, then please feel free to share your work to the community in the projects gallery to get some valuable feedback on your work. Let's see how you dio there's no right or wrong here. Just have fun with it. You can find instructions on how to upload your project. Really anything to do with your project inside the project description right here on this class page. Remember that I have also included a lot of resource is with this training, you can find those at the very bottom of the project description. Police also leave comments in the community tab. Or if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. Please, let's have a conversation and let me help you. Do you love the class? Please let me know by leaving a review right here on my page. There was a review to have right underneath the class. Please also share this class with your friends and colleagues and personal network. You could do that easily with the share button right under the class videos. Well, it's been an absolute pleasure taking this time with you. I hope you got a lot from this class. Please let me know how you get along with the project. If you have any questions or concerns. Please let us know in the community. We're here to help you. Now, If you want to stay in touch with me and get updates, you can follow me here in the skill share community. You can also visit my website at lady content dot com. Please connect with me on Twitter at at Jena ls or connect with me unlinked in as well. You can find all of my online social profiles in my buyer here on this page. I'll see you around.