Get ready for your daily dose of marketing strategies and tactics from entrepreneurs with the guile and experience to help you find success in any marketing capacity. You're listening to Marketing School with your instructors Neil Patel and Eric Sue. All right, guys, before we start, we got a special message from our sponsor. If you want to rank higher on Google, you got to look at your page speed time. The faster website loads, the better off you are with Google's Core Vital update. That makes it super super important to optimize your site for low time. And one easy way to do it is use the host that Eric and I use, dream Hosts. So just go to dream host or Google it, find it, check it out, and it's a great way to improve your low time. All right, it's time for another episode of Marketing School. I'm your host, Eric Sue and I'm Neil Patel, and today we're going to talk about how to write a amazing blog posts. So, Neil, what's the story behind us? Why would we even want to write amazing blog posts in the first place? In general, with marketing, if you can educate and provide a lot of free information out there, it doesn't matter if you're in the B to B category or the B two C category. People will see your website and find you or the company as an expert in the field. When people see someone as an expert, they read the information, they love it. What do they do? They usually tell their friends about it. They can need to tell them over the phone, in person, email, They could even share it on the social web Facebook, Twitter, et cetera. Or they'll be like, Wow, this company offers such amazing information. I wonder what their paid product or service is like, which causes them to end up signing up your product or service. We did set kiss metrics Number one way we generate signups blogging for a consulting company. Number one way we generate signups blogging or technically clients at that point. Number one we generate sign ups for crazy egg blogging. And it's not just us. Other people are experience the same thing. Look at HubSpot, look at Moss all examples of companies who are leveraging awesome content in order to generate more sales. There's a really good post on this by tomash Tunguz, who is a venture capitalist at Red Point Ventures, and he does a lot of blogging. And he is also very good with statistics, so he knows how to program in R which is a statistical programming language. And he showed the compounding effects of content marketing over times. So this is basically the effect of blog posts. And you can see if any of you are familiar with the concept of compounding interests. Basically you see over time that as you continue to blog, it continues to stack up overtime. So search for Red Point Ventures compounding content marketing through Google and you should be able to find it. And then basically his blog posts, the reason why they're quote unquote amazing is because he has these statistical graphs in them. They're short and to the point, and he gets a lot of visits to it. I looked at the domain authority of his just his blog. It's a personal blog, and I believe it's either sixty or seventy, which is extremely high. And you just have to have one thing that stands out when you're writing, you know, great blog posts, because there's a lot especially let's just say you're in the internet marketing space, there's a lot of people out there that are copying. They're doing the same thing over and over and it's basically an echo chamber. The reason why, let's just say you look at Neil's blog posts why they stand out, or you look at kiss metrics why they stand out, is because more often than not, their their long form blog posts, and there's they're backed by data. Every single claim is linking to something, and sometimes they're backed up by infographics, and basically they can serve as a canonical resource out there. Back in the old day, you know, companies like eHow out there they're just generating a lot of content for content's sake. They're paying pennies on a dollar for content just to write three to five hundred word articles and those would rank really well. In today's day and age, that just doesn't work anymore. So, you know, when you need to write, when you're trying to write an amazing blog posts, you need to do something that stands out, whether it's something that's long form, or you have something you're showing something unique, perhaps a video or you know, statistical graphs like what Tilmatra Goose is is showing e how was also really prime example of what you shouldn't do. So Google ended up releasing an algorithm update called Panda and what Panda does. Is it stops blog posts that just suck or content that sucks from ranking. I remember one day I was installing a bidet in my house in Las Vegas, and I was trying to figure out, all right, how to install a bidet because I didn't want to pay someone toinsa. I was like, how hard could it be? I googled it. I found an e how article and guess what that article had The title related to how to install a bidet, but it only discussed what a bidet was. And I'm like, this article is shit? Why does even rank for this keyword? And I was upset And after that point in my life, I've never been to E how again. Even from Google. I won't click on an E how article. Yeah, and I think what you need to do? I mean you think about from your perspective, what are the blogs that you really enjoy visiting? And I'll give you another example if you visit Wait, but why dot com? These are super long, in depth articles and this guy draws stick figures and it's it's pretty funny, so there's there's humor involved their long form articles and the stick figure actually look pretty well done. Wait, but why he actually wrote an article with him interviewing Elon Musk, and I think it was you know, a couple maybe, I think all in maybe it was like a fifteen thousand word or twenty thousand word project, but it was broken down into sections. So that's something that's amazing. That's something that stands out. And if you think about it, you know, companies like Wikipedia out there, they rank really well because they're constantly writing long form posts and people are upgrading them over time, and that's what you want to do. So, I mean, you know, long form is something that that can do well. I think, you know, when whenever you're trying to rank for something, you can also look for, you know, the keyword that you're trying to rank for perhaps, or the type of title that you're searching for. Search Google, look at what's out there, look at the top three results, look at what elements you can copy from each one and then make it into your own. You can definitely mix it up. I don't think you're you know, don't copy things word for word, but if you can just pull elements that you like, eventually you're going to be able to make a recipe for success for whatever you're trying to do when it comes to writing really good content. There's a few things to keep in mind. No umber one write in a conversational tone, so use the words you or I. Think about a college lecture. I know when I was in college and the professor would just talk at the classroom. You know what everyone was doing, sleeping or on the phone or daydreaming. But the moment it creates the professor to create a conversation, people paid attention. The same goes with your blog content. Think of this introduction. Instead of saying, here's how you can get more search traffic, follow these steps, you should do something like wouldn't it be nice if you can get more search traffic without paying a dollar for advertising? And after you write that sentence, you can transition to something like I know I would love it. I never started with a lot of money when I created my first website, So why wouldn't you want search traffic, especially if you can generate it for free? Right, and then you can do a question mark. In essence, you're engaging the audience, you're creating a conversation, and then from there you can keep going. All right, now that we've all agreed that free content's better, than paying for content. Let's go into how you can generate more search traffic. Here are seven ways to skyrocket you're searching traffic over the next thirty days, and then you can go into it. I know that wasn't fully smooth, but off the cuff, I'm trying to create an introductory paragraph for a random topic. Nonetheless, the point that I'm trying to make is write in a conversational tone. Once you do that, you would then want to get into the body. Think of like you know, when you're in an elementary school, the professor has to write an introduction body and then conclusion. The body should break out the main points that you're trying to prove using subheadings. This way, people can skim your content and understand what they're gonna get. Each paragraph shouldn't be more than five or six lines. Sometimes it'll be more, sometimes it'll be less. In addition to that, you then want to wrap everything up with a conclusion. The conclusion should be to the point, summarize the whole article, and end it with a question. Right, So, the last statement within your blog posts should be a question. The reason you do a question is it engages people. It increases the chance of getting more comments. But that's how I typically structure a blog post. And when I go through the whole process, I have the headline, then I create the introduction, I outline the body, then I write the conclusion, and then I fill in the body. Then I publish it. When I'm doing this, the one thing to keep in mind is don't forget the conclusion. Because people are known, and I have a company called Crazy Eggs, I have a lot of data on this. People go to a blog post, they scroll all the way to the bottom, read the conclusion. If they like it, they scroll back up. We've been seeing this trend for years. It hasn't changed, So make sure you don't forget to write a conclusion. Neil kind of alluded to something that I really like doing inside of If you're using WordPress blog, this especially helps. I like having checklists for people to execute on because once you have a process nail down, you hand it off to people on your team, your editorial staff, your writers as well, and you have a checklist. So in WordPress, I believe the plug is called a WP blog checklist, and in there you can put certain criteria that you want for your blog post. So for insat Apple. It might be each post must be three thousand words, or more kudos for five thousand words. The second item on the list might be every single claim must be backed up by a link or a case study. That way, everything you know you're claiming and there is being shown by backed up by research or data, because people like data. The more statistics you have, the better, right, And we like having a unique image for each blog post as well. So we use a service called design Pickle where we paid three hundred and seventy dollars a month and basically we can make unlimited images out there. Neil uses stock images, and I think you know he pays how much time don't you pay for a month? I think I pay like one hundred bucks or two hundred bucks or three hundred bucks a month for Photolia there you go. So it's super cheap for him, I mean, and he writes a lot more. And I believe there's also a site that I have right now. I think we paid for an app Sumo Deeal for stock unlimited and it's basically I think we paid forty nine dollars for lifetime access. I don't know if it's still there, but you can check it out stock unlimited. But the idea is we want to make sure that we have at least one blog post in there. Go ahead, and as you're writing, check out a website called Hemingway app dot com. That's h E M I n g Way app dot com. As you're writing your headlines, your titles, your paragraphs, your conclusion, et cetera, it rates your quality of writing from like a scale of zero to whatever. It will say good or great or poor, whatever it may be, and it'll highlight the areas that you need to improve and I'll tell you what's wrong. So that way your content sounds a lot better. Plus when people read it, they'll enjoy it too, because it'll help teach you how to write in a way that not just educates, but can also guide people through follow the steps and make them convert eventually into a paying customer client. Yeah, so once you have these, you have a certain criteria for yourself. It's going to be unique for each and every single person. But once you have that established, hand it off, create that checklist, use a plug in like you know WP blog checklist, and you can just check things off. Your staff can do that, and then that way you have an actual process and you're not just going to shooting in the dark anymore. So with that being said, that's enough from today's article. Join us today for an article, today's podcast, and we'll see you in tomorrow's episode of Marketing School. This session of Marketing School has come to a close. Be sure to subscribe for more daily marketing strategies and tactics to help you find the success you've always dreamed of. And don't forget to rate and review so we can continue to bring you the best daily content possible. We'll see you in class tomorrow right here on Marketing School.

Get ready for your daily dose of marketing strategies and tactics from entrepreneurs with the guile and experience to help you find success in any marketing capacity. You're listening to Marketing School with your instructors Neil Patel and Eric Sue. All right, guys, before we start, we got a special message from our sponsor. If you want to rank higher on Google, you got to look at your page speed time. The faster website loads, the better off you are with Google's Core Vital update. That makes it super super important to optimize your site for low time. And one easy way to do it is use the host that Eric and I use, dream Hosts. So just go to dream host or Google it, find it, check it out, and it's a great way to improve your low time. All right, it's time for another episode of Marketing School. I'm your host, Eric Sue and I'm Neil Patel, and today we're going to talk about how to write a amazing blog posts. So, Neil, what's the story behind us? Why would we even want to write amazing blog posts in the first place? In general, with marketing, if you can educate and provide a lot of free information out there, it doesn't matter if you're in the B to B category or the B two C category. People will see your website and find you or the company as an expert in the field. When people see someone as an expert, they read the information, they love it. What do they do? They usually tell their friends about it. They can need to tell them over the phone, in person, email, They could even share it on the social web Facebook, Twitter, et cetera. Or they'll be like, Wow, this company offers such amazing information. I wonder what their paid product or service is like, which causes them to end up signing up your product or service. We did set kiss metrics Number one way we generate signups blogging for a consulting company. Number one way we generate signups blogging or technically clients at that point. Number one we generate sign ups for crazy egg blogging. And it's not just us. Other people are experience the same thing. Look at HubSpot, look at Moss all examples of companies who are leveraging awesome content in order to generate more sales. There's a really good post on this by tomash Tunguz, who is a venture capitalist at Red Point Ventures, and he does a lot of blogging. And he is also very good with statistics, so he knows how to program in R which is a statistical programming language. And he showed the compounding effects of content marketing over times. So this is basically the effect of blog posts. And you can see if any of you are familiar with the concept of compounding interests. Basically you see over time that as you continue to blog, it continues to stack up overtime. So search for Red Point Ventures compounding content marketing through Google and you should be able to find it. And then basically his blog posts, the reason why they're quote unquote amazing is because he has these statistical graphs in them. They're short and to the point, and he gets a lot of visits to it. I looked at the domain authority of his just his blog. It's a personal blog, and I believe it's either sixty or seventy, which is extremely high. And you just have to have one thing that stands out when you're writing, you know, great blog posts, because there's a lot especially let's just say you're in the internet marketing space, there's a lot of people out there that are copying. They're doing the same thing over and over and it's basically an echo chamber. The reason why, let's just say you look at Neil's blog posts why they stand out, or you look at kiss metrics why they stand out, is because more often than not, their their long form blog posts, and there's they're backed by data. Every single claim is linking to something, and sometimes they're backed up by infographics, and basically they can serve as a canonical resource out there. Back in the old day, you know, companies like eHow out there they're just generating a lot of content for content's sake. They're paying pennies on a dollar for content just to write three to five hundred word articles and those would rank really well. In today's day and age, that just doesn't work anymore. So, you know, when you need to write, when you're trying to write an amazing blog posts, you need to do something that stands out, whether it's something that's long form, or you have something you're showing something unique, perhaps a video or you know, statistical graphs like what Tilmatra Goose is is showing e how was also really prime example of what you shouldn't do. So Google ended up releasing an algorithm update called Panda and what Panda does. Is it stops blog posts that just suck or content that sucks from ranking. I remember one day I was installing a bidet in my house in Las Vegas, and I was trying to figure out, all right, how to install a bidet because I didn't want to pay someone toinsa. I was like, how hard could it be? I googled it. I found an e how article and guess what that article had The title related to how to install a bidet, but it only discussed what a bidet was. And I'm like, this article is shit? Why does even rank for this keyword? And I was upset And after that point in my life, I've never been to E how again. Even from Google. I won't click on an E how article. Yeah, and I think what you need to do? I mean you think about from your perspective, what are the blogs that you really enjoy visiting? And I'll give you another example if you visit Wait, but why dot com? These are super long, in depth articles and this guy draws stick figures and it's it's pretty funny, so there's there's humor involved their long form articles and the stick figure actually look pretty well done. Wait, but why he actually wrote an article with him interviewing Elon Musk, and I think it was you know, a couple maybe, I think all in maybe it was like a fifteen thousand word or twenty thousand word project, but it was broken down into sections. So that's something that's amazing. That's something that stands out. And if you think about it, you know, companies like Wikipedia out there, they rank really well because they're constantly writing long form posts and people are upgrading them over time, and that's what you want to do. So, I mean, you know, long form is something that that can do well. I think, you know, when whenever you're trying to rank for something, you can also look for, you know, the keyword that you're trying to rank for perhaps, or the type of title that you're searching for. Search Google, look at what's out there, look at the top three results, look at what elements you can copy from each one and then make it into your own. You can definitely mix it up. I don't think you're you know, don't copy things word for word, but if you can just pull elements that you like, eventually you're going to be able to make a recipe for success for whatever you're trying to do when it comes to writing really good content. There's a few things to keep in mind. No umber one write in a conversational tone, so use the words you or I. Think about a college lecture. I know when I was in college and the professor would just talk at the classroom. You know what everyone was doing, sleeping or on the phone or daydreaming. But the moment it creates the professor to create a conversation, people paid attention. The same goes with your blog content. Think of this introduction. Instead of saying, here's how you can get more search traffic, follow these steps, you should do something like wouldn't it be nice if you can get more search traffic without paying a dollar for advertising? And after you write that sentence, you can transition to something like I know I would love it. I never started with a lot of money when I created my first website, So why wouldn't you want search traffic, especially if you can generate it for free? Right, and then you can do a question mark. In essence, you're engaging the audience, you're creating a conversation, and then from there you can keep going. All right, now that we've all agreed that free content's better, than paying for content. Let's go into how you can generate more search traffic. Here are seven ways to skyrocket you're searching traffic over the next thirty days, and then you can go into it. I know that wasn't fully smooth, but off the cuff, I'm trying to create an introductory paragraph for a random topic. Nonetheless, the point that I'm trying to make is write in a conversational tone. Once you do that, you would then want to get into the body. Think of like you know, when you're in an elementary school, the professor has to write an introduction body and then conclusion. The body should break out the main points that you're trying to prove using subheadings. This way, people can skim your content and understand what they're gonna get. Each paragraph shouldn't be more than five or six lines. Sometimes it'll be more, sometimes it'll be less. In addition to that, you then want to wrap everything up with a conclusion. The conclusion should be to the point, summarize the whole article, and end it with a question. Right, So, the last statement within your blog posts should be a question. The reason you do a question is it engages people. It increases the chance of getting more comments. But that's how I typically structure a blog post. And when I go through the whole process, I have the headline, then I create the introduction, I outline the body, then I write the conclusion, and then I fill in the body. Then I publish it. When I'm doing this, the one thing to keep in mind is don't forget the conclusion. Because people are known, and I have a company called Crazy Eggs, I have a lot of data on this. People go to a blog post, they scroll all the way to the bottom, read the conclusion. If they like it, they scroll back up. We've been seeing this trend for years. It hasn't changed, So make sure you don't forget to write a conclusion. Neil kind of alluded to something that I really like doing inside of If you're using WordPress blog, this especially helps. I like having checklists for people to execute on because once you have a process nail down, you hand it off to people on your team, your editorial staff, your writers as well, and you have a checklist. So in WordPress, I believe the plug is called a WP blog checklist, and in there you can put certain criteria that you want for your blog post. So for insat Apple. It might be each post must be three thousand words, or more kudos for five thousand words. The second item on the list might be every single claim must be backed up by a link or a case study. That way, everything you know you're claiming and there is being shown by backed up by research or data, because people like data. The more statistics you have, the better, right, And we like having a unique image for each blog post as well. So we use a service called design Pickle where we paid three hundred and seventy dollars a month and basically we can make unlimited images out there. Neil uses stock images, and I think you know he pays how much time don't you pay for a month? I think I pay like one hundred bucks or two hundred bucks or three hundred bucks a month for Photolia there you go. So it's super cheap for him, I mean, and he writes a lot more. And I believe there's also a site that I have right now. I think we paid for an app Sumo Deeal for stock unlimited and it's basically I think we paid forty nine dollars for lifetime access. I don't know if it's still there, but you can check it out stock unlimited. But the idea is we want to make sure that we have at least one blog post in there. Go ahead, and as you're writing, check out a website called Hemingway app dot com. That's h E M I n g Way app dot com. As you're writing your headlines, your titles, your paragraphs, your conclusion, et cetera, it rates your quality of writing from like a scale of zero to whatever. It will say good or great or poor, whatever it may be, and it'll highlight the areas that you need to improve and I'll tell you what's wrong. So that way your content sounds a lot better. Plus when people read it, they'll enjoy it too, because it'll help teach you how to write in a way that not just educates, but can also guide people through follow the steps and make them convert eventually into a paying customer client. Yeah, so once you have these, you have a certain criteria for yourself. It's going to be unique for each and every single person. But once you have that established, hand it off, create that checklist, use a plug in like you know WP blog checklist, and you can just check things off. Your staff can do that, and then that way you have an actual process and you're not just going to shooting in the dark anymore. So with that being said, that's enough from today's article. Join us today for an article, today's podcast, and we'll see you in tomorrow's episode of Marketing School. This session of Marketing School has come to a close. Be sure to subscribe for more daily marketing strategies and tactics to help you find the success you've always dreamed of. And don't forget to rate and review so we can continue to bring you the best daily content possible. We'll see you in class tomorrow right here on Marketing School.