Running a blog alongside your podcast brings a ton of advantages, from increasing your reach to enhancing your authority within your niche. Blogs are a really effective way to diversify your content, gain some much-needed SEO traction, besides the fact that it adds some amazing value to your listeners. Blog posts also make your valuable content that much more accessible to your audience as it can be consumed in a readable format when listening is not an option. Besides all of the above, a blog is also a great way to reach a whole new audience and which you can then convert to new listeners for your show.
But with so much content floating around cyberspace, how do you ensure that people sit up and take notice of your content? You keep on reading! Today, we’re sharing some of our best, tried and tested blogging strategies to help create more buzz around your valuable content, get more eyes on your blog, and as a result, more ears on your podcast.
So without any further ado, our top strategies for writing stand-out blog posts.
1. Know Your Audience
Just as you create content for your podcast that caters to your loyal listeners, whenever you write a blog post, you need to keep your target audience in mind. You should have a clear idea of who you want to reach with your posts. If your plan is to use your blog posts to channel readers to your podcast, your audience would likely be very similar to the audience which already exists around your show. You then need to use that knowledge to determine what will appeal to that audience in terms of a blog. Ask yourself what your target audience or aligned audiences are looking for in terms of your topic or niche, and then cater your content to meet that need. If you can provide what your audience is looking for within the written medium, they should then be an easy conversion to a consumer of audio versions of your content found on your podcast.
2. Write Attention-Grabbing Headlines
A stand-out blog is really only as good as the number of people reading it, and one of the best ways to increase the odds of people clicking through to your blog posts is to write attention-grabbing headlines. Your headline should convey your message or whet the reader’s appetite for what’s to come. Your headline also needs to let your potential readers know that your content is exactly what they are looking for. They should be interesting, intriguing, informative, and descriptive. Now, I realize that sounds like a tall order, but it is possible! And thankfully, there are some tools to help you achieve your headline goals! One really useful tool to help make sure your headlines are grabbing your reader’s attention is to make use of sites such as Google Trends. This website, and others like it, can help you find out exactly what people are looking for within your niche, which then helps you craft your title and angle your content in such a way as to cater to those searches. By doing this, your post will be more likely to pop up as a search result. Your cleverly-crafted headline will then grab their attention, and they will fall hook, line, and sinker for your fantastic content. All they will need is a little nudge towards your podcast and you’ll have the next member of your podcast community!
3. Craft Your Content
Now we get to the nitty-gritty of your blog posts – your content. The great news is that if your blog is a companion or extension of your podcast, you will already have a HUGE amount of amazing content to draw from! All that hard work you put into crafting your podcast episodes will really pay off when your content gets another lease on life through repurposing it into amazing blog posts! With a little editing and some crafty tweaking, your podcast transcriptions can easily transition into stand-out posts on your blog. (This is just one major benefit of transcribing your podcast, for more check out this post on The Top 5 Benefits Of Transcribing Your Podcast.) You can really get creative with how you package the final product, but the fact remains that by repurposing your podcast content, a huge portion of the work will already be done for you, making it that much easier to craft your posts into something that your readers will love, and which, consequently, will make subscribing to your podcast a no-brainer!
But as much as a great blog post is all about great content, how that content is displayed is also really important. We’ve got some key tips to help make sure that your audience stays engaged with your content and stays with it right to the end.
Use Headings and Subheadings
The first tip for ensuring that your content is engaging is to break up the text with headings and subheadings. Staring at a page full of text can be a little intimidating, but breaking the text up into smaller sections not only makes the content look more appealing, but it also divides it into nice, easily-digestible chunks. This, in turn, helps ensure that readers stay engaged the whole way through without getting bored, making sure that they don’t miss out on all the great stuff you’re putting down!
Use Eye-Catching Images
Eye-catching images placed throughout your blog post is another great way to ensure that your blog posts convert casual perusers to engaged users! Not only do images or other visual elements also help to break up the text in much the same way as headings and subheadings do, but the visual elements – whether photos, infographics, or other types of images – are key to grabbing and holding viewers’ attention. Visuals are also an effective way to enhance the message you’re sharing, making it stick in the minds of the reader that much longer. We are living in the age of visual stimulation overload, after all, so you really do need eye-catching images to compete with all that’s being shared across the different social media platforms.
4. Focus on SEO
Whenever you write a blog post, you’re actually writing it for two parties. First, you’re writing it for your readers, those who are looking for your content to meet their needs. But you’re also writing your posts for search engines. This is because, in order for your blog to direct traffic to your podcast, your blog obviously needs to be easily found by your potential listeners. To do this effectively, you need to ensure that your blog posts have all the markers to maximize your search engine optimization. In short, search engine optimization basically means that you do all you can to ensure that your blog has the highest potential of popping up in the results of a search engine. Search engine optimization is a study in itself, but some simple ways to boost your SEO value is by including high-potential SEO keywords in your title as well as by placing these words at key places throughout your post. Amping up your SEO value will help ensure that your content is found and seen by the right eyes, as well as making sure your podcast gets to the right ears.
Related read: How To Improve The Discoverability Of Your Podcast
Pro Tip #1: Blog tags help categorize the written content of blogs, making it easier for people to find what they are looking for online. Adding tags to your blog post is another effective way to boost your search engine optimization as they just make it that much easier to gain access to your valuable content. These tags will help potential readers find what they are looking for (i.e. your blog!) and so add some major value to your posts.
Pro Tip #2: Another pro tip for creating stand out blog posts is to remember to include links, both external and internal, within your blog. External links (linking to other sources outside of your own content) help build your authority by backing up your points, and by sharing more valuable content, they also help add value to your audience, and anything that gives more value to your followers can only be good for you. Internal links (linking to your own content) is one of the best ways to establish your credibility within your niche. Linking back to other blog posts and, in particular, to some of your podcast episodes shows readers that you have plenty of great content for them to peruse – both on your blog as well as on your podcast.
5. Keep the End Goal in Mind
One of the most important strategies for running a successful blog is to always remember the end goal – that which you hope to achieve via the channel of your blog. In the case of running a blog alongside your podcast, your end goal is most likely going to be to direct as many readers as possible to your amazing show and getting them to become a part of your podcast community. With this end goal in mind, it is important to incorporate a call to action somewhere within your blog – this is usually done at the end of a post – that clearing directs the reader as to what step they need to take next. Something along the lines of “If you loved learning about X, head over to my podcast where you’ll find even more on the topic!!” It is then REALLY important that you make it easy for the reader to follow your call to action! Add links to all the places your podcast can be found so that it is the natural next step for readers to head over and check out your show.
6. Practice Makes Perfect
As the old adage goes, “Practice makes perfect,” and while we can always strive for excellence, what we’re actually after is a healthy blogging habit. So in the case of creating stand-out blogs for your podcast, practice just makes everything a whole lot easier! Your priority should be consistency in the publishing of valuable, engaging, and exciting content. The more you try your hand at creating high-quality blog posts, the easier the practice will become. And the more you learn about the craft, the more traction and attention your blog posts will gain, which should then see many more people subscribing to your podcast. So as you’re putting the time and effort into regularly writing blog posts alongside your podcast, you could also invest some time into honing your writing skills. Look out for short courses, other blog posts, or even some podcasts that are focused on helping you create stand out blog content, as anything that helps boost your blog posts should also boost your podcast subscribers.
7. Be Motivated by Passion
Last but certainly not least, a key strategy for writing stand-out blog posts is to write with passion. Allow the same passion that drives you to put out outstanding podcast episodes time and time again fuel your creation of amazing blog posts. Allow that same enthusiasm for your podcast topic to infuse your blog posts and you’ll be sure to create written content that is engaging, enjoyable, and most importantly, super valuable to your audience. Passion is both infectious and inspiring, and so when people stumble across your blog posts, that passion and excitement they pick up from your written content will not only keep them coming back every time you publish a new installment, but it will also get them hooked on your content and your “voice” in general. They will then be eager to get their hands, or, more accurately, their ears on more of what you are sharing, and so should be an easy conversion from blog follower to podcast listener.
Closing Thoughts
Running a blog alongside or in conjunction with your podcast is really just an excellent way to give additional value to your already loyal followers, as well as opening up your content to a whole new audience who can then become part of your podcast community. And while constantly putting out written content in the form of blog posts may be intimidating at first (believe me, I know!) as it is with everything in life, it all gets easier with a little practice. Incorporate these strategies into your blogging practice, consistently put out stand-out posts, and you’ll not only have diversified your reach and strengthened your authority but you’ll also have grown the wonderful community around your podcast.
Related read: 7 Reasons Why Your Podcast Needs A Website
