How To Increase Engagement & Shares

Darren Rowse ProBlogger.net

~ Darren is a speaker, author, blogger, podcaster. He is the founder of numerous online businesses. His main two sites are ProBlogger.net and Digital-Photography-School.com.

There are a few types of content that I find do well with building engagement and shares to my site. Let me quickly mention 2.

1. Beginner Content – many bloggers forget that one of the reasons people use Google is to search for questions that they’re too embarrassed to ask their friends. Sometimes it’s the most basic content that I write that gives readers a quick win to a felt need that gets the most views but also that gets a really nice response from readers (often privately via email).

For example, I get a lot of thank-you emails about my post How to Start a Blog in 5 Steps. It’s beginner focused but does really well.

2. Visual Content – we find that infographics and cheat sheets are a particularly hot type of content for my photography blog audience.

There’s something about the information presented visually that people love to share.

The key to it though is that we always link deeper to a longer, meatier tutorial on the same topic. The infographic gets the eyeball and share but it’s the tutorial that often leads to the subscribe.

For example, this infographic on getting well-exposed images got thousands of shares but also drove a lot of traffic to our tutorials on the topic.

John Chow JohnChow.com

~ John is a blogger, speaker, and entrepreneur. He rocketed onto the blogging scene when he took his blog from making zero to over $40,000 per month in just 2 years.

For me, posts that are a bit on the edge of an issue works well. I never take the middle group and try to please everyone.

I will always take the extreme one side or the other side.

If you try to please everyone by taking the middle ground, you’ll end up pleasing no one.

The readers will either completely agree with me or completely disagree, and that’s great because then they’re getting into a flame war with each other, and that creates great user engagement.

Evan Carmichael EvanCarmichael.com

~ Evan‘s goal is to help other entrepreneurs stay motivated and give specific strategies that can help you build a successful business.

My favorite posts are the ones that make me feel something.It makes me inspired or makes me think.

It shifts my perspective. It’s something that if I saw it posted by someone else, I’d want to share it too.

Jeff Goins GoinsWriter.com

~ Jeff is the author of four books including the national bestseller, The Art of Work. He helps people share their gift with the world.

I’ve found that the best posts to increase engagement are the ones that ask people to share something they’ve created.

SyedBalkhi.com // OptinMonster.com

~ Syed is the co-founder and CEO of OptinMonster. Prior to OptinMonster, he founded WPBeginner, the largest free WordPress resource site.

My favorite type of blog posts are STEP-ticle.

It’s a combination of a list article which we all know works great and a step by step how-to guide.

This is by far the most useful type of content you can create because it’s educational, easy to follow, and extremely shareable.

Zac Johnson ZacJohnson.com //Blogging.org

~  Zac is an entrepreneur and a super affiliate, with nearly 20 years of experience in the online marketing space.

When it comes to creating content, you want to focus on creating something that will provide value for you for many months or even years to come. I personally get hundreds of emails per day and many of them will ask the same questions… such as “how to make money with a website or blog”.

So the best way to answer all of the emails is to simply create an amazing resource I can provide to each of them time and time again.

That’s exactly what I did with my make money blogging resource guide. It’s a detailed 2,000+ word article that covers all aspects of making money with a blog, but also walking the user through the process step by step — covering the basics of picking a niche, setting up your site and how to market and monetize your content.

To make the guide even more effective, I decided to create an original infographic to go along with it.

This not only helps the end user bring more visualization to the process and see how it might work with their own content and audience, but it also allows for a lot of creative ways for me to market the article as well — especially through social media and engagement on other sites.

To finalize the answer — create something your audience finds real value in, make it better than what’s currently out there and also add a creative twist to it so you can easily market it through other sites and get it shared on social media.

Tim Soulo Ahrefs.com // BloggerJet.com

~ Tim is the head of marketing at Ahrefs and you can get more great marketing tips from him on his personal blog called BloggerJet.

My favorite type of blog post for generating some engagement and hype is, of course, a controversial post. I love to make bold catchy claims in the titles of my articles, so they catch the attention of people on Twitter and Facebook.

And then in the body of the article, I try to give proof to my claim with some good arguments. To be honest, the majority of articles that I write these days are controversial.

Here’s a nice example: “I Just Deleted Your Outreach Email Without Reading. And NO, I Don’t Feel Sorry”

But don’t get me wrong. Making a bold controversial statement is super easy. Anyone can come up with a catchy title that would strike a nerve. The hard part is to actually deliver on that title and explain with good arguments what made you think so.

Otherwise, people will simply consider you a joke and will never ever read your articles again.

A good example of delivering on a bold claim is this article of mine: “Guest Post ROI: The Data Behind 273 Guest Posts Says It’s No Good”

While everyone is praising the power of guest blogging, I wrote a post explaining why it’s actually a terrible marketing strategy.

But I didn’t just share my personal opinion only – I did a huge research! I reached out to 500+ bloggers and marketers and got a lot of real numbers from them.

If it was just my opinion – no one would listen to me. But I did a huge research, which gave me the right to make bold claims.

This post turned out so good that Neil Patel, Brian Dean, and Jon Morrow commented on it.

Minuca Elena MinucaElena.com

~ I create awesome expert round-ups that provide quality content, bring huge traffic, get more leads and help bloggers connect with influencers.

My favorite type of blog posts is expert roundups. Here are the main advantages of publishing an expert roundup:

1. Reaching out to a new audience. An expert roundup is a type of content very useful even for a new blog, because if you write a post on your blog and share it, it will reach your Facebook friends and Twitter followers (or any other social media channel you use). The advantage of an expert roundup is that your blog post will reach the audiences and the followers of all the bloggers that are included in the post.

2. You get to learn for free from top bloggers. For example, if you want to learn what is the best content marketing strategy that bloggers in your niche use to promote their blogs you can pay for a 1-1 coaching call, enroll in a course of another blogger OR you can create an expert roundup and ask top influencers.

A highly successful businessman won’t probably have much time to answer your question if you send him a personal email, but he may do it for your audience.

3. Quality content for your readers. When you write a usual blog post, your readers will find out only one person’s opinion about that topic.

In an expert roundup, your readers will benefit from the knowledge and experience of many other experts in your niche.

4. An increased number of shares and comments. Sometimes, the experts featured in a roundup will leave a comment and almost everytime they will share the post on different social media channels.

5. Connecting with influencers. Through an expert roundup post, you can build a long-lasting relationship with other bloggers in the same niche or from related ones. In both offline and online worlds, having connections with influential people is extremely valuable for growing your business.

Also, you get to make new friends that can become business partners or clients for your services.

6. Backlinks. Most of the time, contributors to a roundup will have a page on their blog with all the blogs where they were featured as experts. This page will contain a backlink to your blog post, and even months or years after the post was published you will still get new visitors to your site from the readers of that blogger.

Sometimes, bloggers that are frequently interviewed create a blog post with all the sites where they were featured in that month or on another specific period of time.

My most successful expert roundup features 110 bloggers and the post has over 1.9k shares and over 150 comments.

Tom Hunt VirtualValley.io  // TomHunt.io

~ Tom is a TEDx Speaker, Dragon’s Den Fail, re And Founder of Virtual Valley: a platform that connects Entrepreneurs and Rockstar Virtual Assistants.

My favorite type is the emotional hero’s journey.

Here you tell either your own (or your clients) emotional rollercoaster of a story through certain trials and tribulations around achieving something significant within your niche and then finish the post with an uplifting and positive ending.

The connection that you build with your readership with such posts will be strong and the uplifting note you include at the end will skyrocket your share count.

Warren Whitlock WarrenWhitlock.com

~ Warren is a keynote speaker, IBM futurist, influence engineer, radio host, author and an influencer.

My audience is people, not platforms or channels.

My favorite blog post is the type that my audience enjoys and engages with.

I’ve yet to meet someone who only engages with one type.

I tell stories. Share things that help my audience in whatever format tells the story best. I start with the story and utilize any resources I can.

Matthew Woodward MatthewWoodward.co.uk

~ Matthew is a multi award-winning businessman, internet marketing blogger and international keynote speaker.

My favorite style of post to ensure the best reader engagement and encourage social sharing is most definitely a problem-solving tutorial.

Tutorials will help you to create a good teacher and student relationship with your readers.

You can do this by creating posts that include actions that are easy to replicate for great results which then helps to build trust and engagement with your followers.

As a rule, I always make sure all of my tutorials are laid out in a simple, step by step way that is easy to follow and understand.

Every post will also come with case studies and real-life evidence to show real results that readers can expect to see from implementing the tips shown in the tutorials.

When you spend the time to create posts that provide actionable tips that actually help your readers to solve their problems and achieve their goals you will naturally get more social shares too.

As you can see on my testimonials page, my tutorials have had a direct benefit for those readers who actually took action to implement what they read on the blog.

One reader even said “My business has literally made hundreds of thousands of dollars (and our clients have as well!) thanks to his advice. Our company has greatly benefited from his blog and we look forward to each post.”

When you put in the effort to create content like that, your social shares will soar as your hard work naturally spreads by word of mouth.

Kate Erickson EOFire.com

~ Kate is a creator, engager, and implementer over at EOFire, a 7-day a week podcast that interviews today’s most inspiring and successful entrepreneurs. EOFire.com

My favorite post that I know will increase engagement and social shares is a list post.

I like lists that provide a certain number of top tools, resources or insights.

These posts are always great because they’re easy to read through and they provide quick wins for our readers who are searching for things that will help them save time, help them get to their goal faster, or avoid pitfalls they didn’t see coming.

Lilach Bullock LilachBullock.com

~ Lilach is a social media expert, consultant, trainer and professional speaker.

My favorite type of blog posts are list posts. In particular tools. Not only do they generate a lot of shares but people often bookmark them and revisit so it’s a great way to drive a ton of traffic.

I’ve started converting them into content downloads too which are proving very popular.

When writing about tools I always provide a short description rather than just listing them.

That provides more value and helps drive engagement too.

Dustin W. Stout Dustn.tv

~ Dustin is a social media enthusiast, designer, consultant, and speaker. He is also the co-founder of Social Warfare Plugins.

My favorite blog post type is “Best [X] for [X]…” resource lists.”

This is where you hand-curate the best tools, apps, resources, tactics or strategies for a specific task or objective. I prefer this to large numeric list posts because let’s face it— nobody has time to sort through every tool, every resource, every app, etc..

What people need is the BEST tools for their jobs.

I’ve created several of them and they’ve always been some of my most successful posts. The best example of this is my “Best Places to Find Free Images Online”.

It’s my most highly shared and continues to be my most highly visited blog post of all time.

Glen Long SmartBlogger.com

~ Glen is the managing editor of SmartBlogger.com . He’s also the assistant instructor on Jon Morrow’s Guest Blogging Apprenticeship Program, where he helps students get published on some of the biggest blogs in the world.

Here are three ways we’ve found to get more engagement for your blog posts:

1. Be a little controversial. When you take a stand on a topic you’ll attract strong opinions on both sides of the argument people will want to comment and lively discussions will emerge from the opposing points of views. That’s what happened with our post 13 Reasons Why Blog Ads Are A Silly Monetization Strategy (And What to Do Instead)

2. Pick a topic that already has a lot of buzz. When you write about something that people are already talking about (or at least thinking about) it’s not too hard to get them to continue the conversation on your blog. I think that’s what happened with our post How to Get More Traffic from Every Post by Republishing on Medium – we tapped into a rising wave of interest in the Medium platform.

3. Borrow the engaged audience of another blogger.‍

Certain guest writers have a loyal audience who’ll support their work – wherever it’s published.

Kevin Duncan of Be a Better Blogger is one such writer. His guest post The Ultimate Guide to Writing Comments That Open Doors with Popular Bloggers received over 300 comments – many from loyal readers of his own blog.

Mike Allton The Social Media Hat

~ Mike is a content marketing practitioner, blogger and the chief marketing officer at SiteSell. He writes about content marketing, social media and SEO.

While there are many different kinds of blog posts that I write for a variety of business purposes, my absolute favorite are newsjacking. Taking a breaking news story from my industry and writing about it, sharing the details and application to my audience. While those posts typically have very little long-term value, the immediate benefits are tremendous:

First, the spike in traffic and engagement is almost guaranteed. Everyone loves to share news and helpful information with their own audiences, and my posts facilitate that.

Second, by writing about these developments, I am able to quickly create authority in my industry. I specifically choose topics that have not yet been extensively covered, yet are of real interest, so that most of my audience will not have been aware, or already seen dozens of other articles.

But most importantly to me is the rush I get when writing these posts. In order to be a success, as I’ve already intimated, they need to be published in a timely manner. When there’s breaking news, you have a limited amount of time to get your version of the story out before others.

Wait too long and there will be countless more sources for people to read, and interest will have waned. So there’s a lot of pressure!

The nice part though is that the pressure is 100% my choice. As an independent blogger, I’m under no obligation to write about anything. So if I’m busy, the topic is uninteresting, or the timing isn’t right for any reason, I can skip it and write about something else another time.

Newsjacking is a technique I encourage every blogger think about and practice! You’ll have fun, and your audience will appreciate your insight.

Ron Sela RonSela.com

~Ron is a full stack marketer, specialized in digital B2B marketing funnels and influence marketing campaigns.

When I am deciding what type of blog post to create to attract the largest amount of followers often, there are a few questions I ask myself. The questions that I ask when picking a topic are these three.

What has been in the news recently? Which of the issues in the news recently are the most controversial? Lastly, I consider which subject will be communicated by me well.

These questions help me decide on a topic that can provide a massive stream of high-quality traffic to my website which is always my number one goal. My number two goal is making sure that the subject is also aligned with my websites mission.

Both of the criteria mentioned must be met. Otherwise, it makes my site appear to be traffic seeking only, and that should never be the sole purpose. The reason for this is that an audience who is interested in your site and tagline picked it because it is providing information of value to them, go completely off topic, and you will lose fans.

The reason I like to pick interesting issues in the news that are controversial is it allows people not just to read, but to interact. If they are passionate about something they are more likely, than not, to share the post giving it a better chance of going viral.

Now not every post I write about is there to push a viral stream of traffic towards my site.

However, writing about interesting topics in the news that pertain to my site make it much more likely to happen.

When I am writing my blogs, it is important to find a balance because the last thing I want to do with a controversial topic is to scare people away and if it is not in their belief system that is entirely possible.

Writing for your audience is an imperative part of increasing traffic to your blog, and that is my favorite type of blog post to create.

Kevin J. Duncan BeABetterBlogger.com

~ Kevin runs Be A Better Blogger, where he uses his very particular set of skills to help people become the best bloggers they can be.

If you want to write a post that will receive lots of tweets and shares, it’s hard to beat the good ol’ list post.

Jon Morrow and Glen Long call it “The Curator” – a large, epic-in-scale post compiling links to numerous different resources.

From “The Blogger’s Bucket List: 20 Must-Reach Milestones on the Path to World Domination” to “16 Ridiculously Simple Ways To Get More Email Subscribers in Less than 5 Minutes“, the most successful posts I have written – the posts that have received the most engagement from readers – have been curated lists posts.

If you want to receive more tweets and shares, I highly recommend them.

Aj Amyx AjAmyx.com

~ Aj is a coach, consultant, and speaker. H help entrepreneurs and creative people use Twitter to share and monetize their message.

I love to create in-depth “how to” articles with a video like “How Many Hashtags to Use in a Tweet.” Here’s a link to it if you’d like to check it out.

When it comes to creating blog posts, I feel many people think they just need to crank them out as fast as possible. The reality is a monkey can create a blog post these days, so the marketplace is very noisy.

[socialpug_tweet tweet=”In order to get engagement and social shares, your content needs to be worthy of people talking about and sharing. ” display_tweet=”In order to get engagement and social shares, your content needs to be worthy of people talking about and sharing. “]To pull this off, you must plan and do a bit of research before writing.

Plus, you must be willing to transfer your personality, confidence and certainty into the content you are creating.

Here’s what I do to start: I use the Google Keyword Planner to find exactly what long tail keyword phrases people are typing into the search engines. This is how I came up with “How Many Hashtags to Use in a Tweet.”

Once I discovered 10 people a month search “how many hashtags per tweet,” I knew people would be interested to know the answers. So then I go into research mode to back up the answers with data. Then, I take it to the next level by creating a video to go with the blog post.

Servando Silva Stream-Seo.com // ServandoSilva.com

~ Servando started blogging back in 2006 and finally focused on Affiliate Marketing in 2011. At Stream SEO, he is publishing his journey and adventures related to SEO, Social Marketing techniques, and mobile marketing.

My favorite type of blog posts to get a good amount of social shares and also engagement (comments, shares, emails, etc.) are case studies and step by step guides.

The reality is that there are hundreds or thousands of top list posts with catchy titles but providing low-quality content. Posts such as “5 Twitter mistakes you are making” or “Facebook is dead, here’s why” are great for click-bait but usually provide low value with a few exceptions from very well known bloggers.

Instead, I prefer writing guides and case studies with real action and real results because they provide a lot more value and also help the readers to get ideas and follow strategies step by step. This is an empirical approach instead of a theoretical approach like many bloggers and gurus out there try to “teach” but they don’t even do what they preach .

Here are a couple examples I have published in the past that worked really well:

• Facebook Ads and how I grew a new niche site to 1,000 visitors per day in less than 2 weeks.

• Making $300 per day with PropellerAds and Viral traffic

Both posts have more than 100 comments and social shares because they’re actionable posts with real results in a certain amount of time. Crafting a “top 10 SEO mistakes” posts is a lot faster than writing a guide based on your own experience and results and my readers clearly appreciate it more by commenting and sharing it in their social circles.

Now don’t get me wrong. Top list posts or other kinds of posts can have great results too. [socialpug_tweet tweet=”One of my highest traffic posts has more than 1,000 comments and it’s a top list” display_tweet=”One of my highest traffic posts has more than 1,000 comments and it’s a top list”]. The reason behind all the interaction comes at the expense of time and organic traffic (SEO) doing its work during the years.

MY PERSONAL RECOMMENDATION FOR YOU  How To Write A Blog Post: A Tried and Tested Technique

But if you want to get engagement in the first days of publishing your posts, SEO is not going to be your main traffic source.

Of course, it helps if you have a big social media following or if you have an email list ready to read and comment in your post right after you publish it, and the connections you have with other people to make it go “viral” or reach more eyeballs.

Adam Connell BloggingWizard.com

~ Adam is the founder of Blogging Wizard. He has built numerous successful blogs in various niches, one of which was running with over 30+ writers. He helps entrepreneurs reach more people online.

For both engagement and social shares, one of the best types of posts you can publish is this one. I like to call these group interviews; you might know them as expert roundups.

They’re done a lot now, but that’s because they work.

For example, this group interview about blogger outreach strategies and tools published on my marketing agencies blog has remained one of our most popular posts.

Here’s why:

When you bring together a bunch of the key influencers in your niche together, and they all contribute to your post, they’re far more likely to engage – whether it be to comment, share or link to your post.

When people see they’re featured alongside people that they look up to, the simple act of sharing with their audience can increase the perception of their authority.

But you can take this a step further, and here’s how:

After publishing a group interview on my blog, I wanted to make that content go further. It took a long time to prepare and there was a lot of information to digest.

The original had thousands of shares and received thousands of visits within the first few days. But it had more mileage in it yet.

Infographics can make information far easier to digest, so I spoke to Niall from TweakYourBiz.com and we decided to distil the advice in the post down and publish the unique infographic on TweakYourBiz.com.

We teamed up with 24Slides who generously created the infographic for us, and published it a while after the original post.

I emailed all of the participants and promoted it as I would a new post. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the chance much blogger outreach to promote it, apart from to those who took part.

As it stands, that infographic received an extra few thousand shares and has been seen by 30,000+ people.

Awesome right?!

[socialpug_tweet tweet=”Next time you publish a post; always think about how you can repurpose the content.” display_tweet=”Next time you publish a post; always think about how you can repurpose the content.”] Your content has more mileage in than you think.

Russell Lobo  RussLobo.com

~  Russell is a serial online entrepreneur with 6 years of experience in the field of finance blogging. He also blogs at a Russ Lobo, his personal site where he shares his niche case studies.

[socialpug_tweet tweet=”Skyscraper expert round-ups by far get the most social shares. ” display_tweet=”Skyscraper expert round-ups by far get the most social shares. “]

This brings in a lot of traffic. This also helps to increase social shares as the not only they share the post, their admirers, and well-wishers share it too.

Also, social shares are a strong signal for SEO so by having a large number of shares, your rankings increase too. One strategy which I have seen works best when you do a skyscraper expert round up is to connect with them after you publish the post and give them a quick blurb that they can share on their social media.

In addition to that, you can also make sure to reply and like every comment and retweet which helps increase the social shares. Since it is a very tedious and time-consuming exercise, though very fruitful, I would suggest employing a professional round-up expert to do it for you.

Chris Makara ChrisMakara.com

~ Chris is a digital strategist. He is specialized in SEO, social media and interactive marketing.

[socialpug_tweet tweet=”My favorite content type that I know will increase engagement and social shares is an expert roundup.” display_tweet=”My favorite content type that I know will increase engagement and social shares is an expert roundup.”] Expert roundups are starting to become the norm for generating higher levels of engagement because you can easily leverage the power of everyone that is involved in sharing and promoting it.

Whereas a standard blog post that covers a topic, you are left to do all of the heavy liftings on the promotion end to get the ball rolling.

Once an expert roundup is published, it’s as simple as contacting everyone who participated to let them know the post is live. Many will often reshare it on their social networks or even take a few minutes to leave a comment.

I have had great success with this approach where I had over 100 experts weigh in on their favorite social media management tools. It was a post on a brand new site and has nearly 3,000 social shares (even after losing all the previous retweet counts) as well as 25+ comments.

When the topic of the round up is evergreen, it makes it easy to periodically tag the participants on Twitter to remind them that they participated which can generate even more social interaction.

Philip Verghese Ariel PVAriel.com

~ Philip is a freelance writer and an editor of an English bi-monthly site. His blog is multi-niche but his main focus is social media and blogging.

When I started blogging, my most successful posts — in terms of engagement and shares — were the ones that talked about current issues; controversial topics, especially.

I have recently noticed that expert roundup posts are getting much more engagement than any other kind of posts. My last roundup got a lot of attention from the blogosphere and it got more shares than any other post on my blog.

A roundup involves many bloggers and that’s why the number of shares and traffic goes up.

A small disadvantage is that, in my case, a roundup post gets fewer comments than a ‘regular’ kind of post because its participants are professional bloggers that in spite of sharing the post with their followers, don’t have time to leave a comment too. Sometimes they just prefer to leave me a comment thanking me on social media, not on the actual post.

This is what happened not long ago when I republished one of my expert roundups on Huffington Post. The number of comments on Facebook was huge, but not so much on the original post or on Huffington Post.

[socialpug_tweet tweet=”Expert roundups are my favorite type of posts; they get more attention and social shares.” display_tweet=”Nevertheless, expert roundups are my favorite type of posts; they get more attention and social shares.”] I’ll publish my next expert roundup soon.

MaryFernandez at MaryFernandez.co

~ Mary is the visibility strategist and content marketing manager for OptinMonster.

[socialpug_tweet tweet=”My absolute favorite type of blog post for getting social shares is what you have created: an influencer roundup post” display_tweet=”My absolute favorite type of blog post for getting social shares is exactly what you have created here: an influencer roundup post.”]

Get a number of influencers to respond to a quick question or prompt, and include the number of influencers who answered in your headline.

Influencer roundups are not only highly shareable, but they also encourage shares from those who participated. They’re great for pitching to popular blogs as guest posts too!

Louie Luc BuzzNitrous.com

~ Louie shares traffic building tips and puts the latest online business ideas to the test on his authority blog over at BuzzNitrous.com.

[socialpug_tweet tweet=”My favorite type of posts to increase engagement and social shares are expert roundups and top lists.” display_tweet=”My favorite type of posts to increase engagement and social shares are expert roundups and top lists.”]

The former gets a group of influencers together (revealing their expert tips) who are the more likely to share that post with their followers. That alone brings in new visitors that will engage with that kind of content through comments, Facebook “Likes” and more shares.

It will also get you new list subscribers. This type of post is a great idea when you’re aiming to launch a brand new site and get things rolling for you. That’s precisely what I had in mind when I published my expert roundup on Paid Traffic.

The latter lists the top items in a category — it can be anything from simple curiosities or pictures to products, tools or services to bloggers, blogs or sites. People usually love top lists because they are easier and quicker to read through, are direct and to the point and are something they can relate to.

If you decide to list the most influential people in your niche and reach out to tell them… you are sure to see a huge spike in social shares and engagement.

Ashley Faulkes MadLemmings.com

~ Ashley is the Founder of Mad Lemmings, a company that helps entrepreneurs and small businesses get more customers through their website

If you want to go big on social shares and engagement, then in my humble opinion, you have to go big on your blog post as well.

In the past, I have gotten amazing results from Expert Roundups (like this one) because they [socialpug_tweet tweet=”Roundups have influencer leverage, tons of useful advice & tips &usually solve people’s problems or burning questions” display_tweet=”Roundups have influencer leverage, tons of useful advice and tips and usually solve people’s problems or burning questions.”] But, I have been wondering how to take this idea to the next level?

So, quite recently I combined an epic guide post with an expert roundup post – with my 100+ Ideas For Your Next Online Business. The guide is like nothing else out there, and is backed with not only very useful information but also influencer and real business owner advice.

How can you apply this to your blog?

– look for untapped ideas or areas in your niche (things people have not covered in detail, or enough detail)

– how you can provide exceptional value and information to cover this topic

– and last, but perhaps not least, who can you ask to add information to this post

I don’t have the results of my post as at the time of writing this, but in the past roundup posts of mine have had anywhere from 1.5k shares to 6.5k shares. Give it a try!

Andrea Beltrami TheBrandedSolopreneur.com

~ Andrea helps small business entrepreneurs by delivering content focused on strategies, tips, resources and tools for branding, design and visual marketing mastery.

My all time favorite type of blog post to create is a featured brands type of post, which is a visual post jam packed with TONS of examples from different brands I love and adore.

When I first got started the secret to my quick traction and readership growth was by creating blog posts that featured not only implementable training and tips but also a bunch of examples from other brands I knew and loved.

This allowed me to showcase real life examples on the topic I was writing about, and it also gave me a great opportunity to build relationships and good karma with me peers.

It was epic because I then had a legit, and non-desperate, reason to contact them, since I wanted to let them know I gave them some love by featuring them front and center in my post.

From there it was a LOT easier to foster a deeper friendship with them because the introduction and camaraderie were already there.

The icing on the blogging cake was that they usually showered my post with lots of social love in appreciation which grew my reach and introduced me and my content to a slew of new readers every week.

I call that a win/win, baby!

Here’s an example of a featured brands type of post.

Brent Jones BrentJonesOnline.com

~ Brent is freelance social media manager and copywriter · Visit his site to start your own online, service-based business

My favorite type of post to drive engagement and social sharing would have to be a video interview with an influential person. It’s really easy to embed a YouTube video, for example, in a blog post. Further, platforms like Hangouts make it simple to record a video interview remotely.

In fact, I publish new episodes of my video interview series, Better Freelancing, bi-weekly. I’ve been doing this video interview series for over a year now, and at the time I am writing this response, I have published 27 episodes.

I also previously published a complete guide on how to create your own video interview series for anyone that might like to copy the idea. It certainly takes a fair bit of time and coordination, especially as I like to edit each episode down to a short, bite-sized video interview of just 7-8 minutes.

But in doing this series, two things are accomplished:

(a) I get an influential person to collaborate with me to create a unique piece of content. It naturally draws the curiosity of those who follow both me and my guest.

(b) It further boosts my credibility to be connected with influential people, and it allows me to “borrow” some of their audience who otherwise might not be familiar with my work.

A regular, recurring video interview series (or podcast) is an excellent way to boost engagement and social sharing.

Highly recommended, although I will mention that both consistency and organization are important to make this concept work.

Elizabeth Bradley ElizabethKBradley.com

~ Elizabeth is a holistic, creative writer and blog mentor for life and health coaches. Her work has been featured on sites like Tiny Buddha, Olyvia, The Branded Solopreneur, and Cameron Diaz’ blog.

To answer your question, my favorite type of blog post is an in-depth pillar post.

I’ve found that the way to best stand out in any field online is to create remarkable posts that go way above and beyond the run of the mill vanilla variety that doesn’t build trust nor help the reader solve a particular issue.

A pillar post is 1200-5000 words or longer. An example would be my 4,000 Ultimate Guide To Facebook Groups post, which includes tips for not only my Ideal Readers ( Life & Health Coaches) but suggestions for artists, yoga teachers, and brick & mortar businesses. The vast majority of Sue’s posts are pillar content, and so are her guest posts ( like this one).

This very expert roundup that you’ve created Minuca is another fine example of a pillar post and shows how one can create great content by crowdsourcing it from experts that can help our Ideal Readers.
And when I craft pillar posts I make sure to have a pinable image for Pinterest that had compelling copywriting on it. Images that stand out on Pinterest are vertical ( long) and high-quality. They should be branded ( have your logo, font, and URL) too, which makes people associated the pins you create with your brand.

But the most important part is to have compelling copy both on the image itself as well as in the description box of the pin ( shared image). This compels the person surfing Pinterest to click through and actually read your post.

Great images that are branded are not only going to help you get more shares on Pinterest but on virtually all popular social media platforms.

Why is this? Our attention spans have become rather short from consuming so much content online and off. When we see a compelling image or copywriting that stands out, it catches our attention and makes us share it, or at least read it.

This means that creating blog posts that are not only in depth but visual will help you attract more readers. Using multimedia in your posts ( such as a video or perhaps an audio version of the post) will help differentiate your content from others in your industry who are merely creating short posts that lack depth and aren’t visual.

Gina Horkey HorkeyHandBook.com

~ Gina helps people start and grow their own freelance businesses by openly sharing what works and what doesn’t from her own journey.

Honestly, I don’t write typically for social shares. Instead, I write what I want to write that I think will resonate with my audience.

I think the posts that do well are the ones that showcase some of my story/experience and share the ‘real me.'

I.e. the more transparent and vulnerable I am, the more my audience connects. Makes sense, right?

Daniela Uslan DanielaUslan.com

~ Daniela helps bloggers find their superpowers, define their voices, grow their audiences and make readers fall in love with their blogs.

It’s not a type of blog post that gets me more engagement and social shares, but rather what goes into my post that makes the difference. There are a few key qualities that I find make a big difference in the amount of traction I get with a post:

1. Easily actionable advice

When my posts have action steps that readers can use to improve their content/blog today, I find that they get a lot more engagement and interest. I try to make it as easy as possible for my readers to implement what they’ve learned from my writing.

2. Honesty/story

Posts that are written with deep honesty and with bits of my story in them tend to get more comments and a stronger response than impersonal posts. People connect with my honesty and vulnerability, and I often get comments from readers thanking me for being so transparent.

3. Something unique or different

I try to include my own spin on whatever topic I am writing about. That helps people connect with me and my voice.

For example, I wrote a post about writing mistakes comparing them to monsters, and actually had pictures of the “writing monsters” in the post. That post got a lot of interest and was featured on a few other blogs as well.

4. Formatting for easy readability

All of my posts are formatted with lots of headings and bullet points so that readers can easily see if they are in the right place and what they will get from reading the post.

Cyril Nicodème Cnicodeme.com

~  Cyril is a  French developer specialized in web architectures. He loves to build web application in Javascript with powerful RESTful backends in Java or Python.

[socialpug_tweet tweet=” I’d say that my favorite type of blog posts are the ones that share data information about the related company.” display_tweet=” I’d say that my favorite type of blog posts are the ones that share data information about the related company.”]

I believe that transparency is a great strength and companies that share their analytics, revenues or various data sets are interesting because they provide not only information about the health of that company, but also the health of the niche where they are.

As a customer, you have an idea about what is happening to your favorite service, and you have hints about where they are headed (you can guess that a company that is doing well will invest more in the service, improve it and add more features).

If you are a concurrent company, you get information about the size of the market you are/will be in, how many potential visitors you could target, and thus better estimate your business plan.

Christoph C. Cemper Cemper.com // LinkResearchTools.com

~ Christoph is the founder, general manager and chief SEO. He specializes in advanced link building strategies to improve your organic traffic from major search engines like Google.

As a B2B marketer, I find business blogging a great way to help get your company out into the public and in front of people looking for your products or services on the internet.

Drumming up interest by driving traffic to your site to generate new leads and customers is really beneficial for your company, helps promote and strengthen your brand.

You need people to actually see your website, in order to make it a valuable marketing asset.

Every time you post a new blog on your website, it’s one more indexed page on your website, which means it is one more opportunity for you to show up in search engines and drive traffic to your website in organic search. Blogging also helps you get discovered via social media by creating content which people can share on social networks – Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.

Being able to see strong content and check out the author, as well as the influential professionals that shared it, is a gold mine for anyone writing or sharing content. But what Metrics measure the success of content and help us find the influencers sharing that content?

Indeed, it would be a pain to search for such a successful piece of content manually. That’s why we – from LinkResearchTools – built Impactana, a software for content marketing, video marketing, and influencer analysis. Bloggers all around the world produce a crazy amount of content every day.

Blogs, by nature, have a personal touch to them and for this reason, are generally seen as a trusted source of information. But the Web changes every day, good links can become bad links and the other way around. to get the best links possible, steal ideas from your competition, kill writers block, get inspirational ideas for any niche – including the most boring or uncommon ones -, profile people and outreach like a crazy ninja, will get you the best available content marketing and brand strength possible….so start blogging and “Make an Impact”!

Aaron Jones NextBigNiche.com

~ Aaron is an expert in affiliate marketing. He teaches his readers how to find a niche, start a site and to how to grow traffic.

Ryan Biddulph BloggingFromParadise.com

~ Ryan is the founder of Blogging From Paradise, where he teaches people how to earn money from blogging, generate more traffic, all that while traveling to exotic places.

Question posts work awesome. When I ask a question I seem to get answers on social media. Or via email. Or readers ask me questions in return.

Title your blog post with a question and see how quickly and freely readers will show up to answer it.

Maj Wismann MajWismann.com // WebSexolog.dk

~ Maj is the best sexologist and relationship therapist from Denmark. She is helping women and men around the world getting their love life & sex drive back

I write answers to questions my followers have. I´m a clinical sexologist, and people Google their questions a lot.

The best way I can help my readers is to deliver the best answer filled with my knowledge.

When I share the Q&A´s on my social media my other followers give their best advice and in that way you get a lot of engagement but also a lot of people own experiences and does and don’ts that will also help the man or woman that asked the question in the first place.

That is the type of posts on my Danish blog that is most successful.

You can see an example of why these blog posts are the best I can write and why I get so much engagement in this post (on my English blog) where I answered to a reader’s letter in which she was asking for my advice.

Niklas Laninge Dailybbitsof.com

~ Niklas is a Psychologist, entrepreneur, learning, and education enthusiast.  He runs dailybitsof.com a startup making learning fun, frictionless and bite sized.

Since our service is all about self-improvement I use our blog as a first step to taking our courses.

So, most of our blog posts are listicles or condensed version of our micro courses.

I try to make the combination of “advice most people need” (like productivity) and something connected to current events. I know, not rocket science but still very effective.

Having the advice come from a thought leader, or be inspired by one, never hurts.

Vladimir Gendelman companyfolders.com & drinkwarecompany.com

~ Vladimir is the Founder & CEO of Company Folders, Inc., an innovative presentation folder company that has won multiple awards, including ranking in Inc. 5000’s list of fastest-growing private companies in America in 2015 and 2016. He is a thought leader in print design and has published many articles including such publications as Forbes and Times.

My favorite type of blog post that increases social engagement are ones that provide answers to questions my readers have been asking.

The topics come from researching my audience and their questions. Then, I research other posts that might be on that topic to make sure I am not duplicating anyone’s efforts. Next, I put together a comprehensive in-depth analysis no one else is providing.

Readers appreciate my efforts and feel like I’m listening to them. This helps establish myself as a thought leader in my industry and builds trust between my audience and myself.

Thank you so much to all the bloggers that contributed to this roundup! I’ve learned so much from all of your comments. Please let me know in the comments below what is your next type of blog post you are going to publish, now after reading this post.

If you feel you’ve learned at least one valuable tip that is going to help you in your blogging journey, then please share it with all your friends and help us spread the word.

Minuca creates expert round-ups that provide quality content, bring huge traffic, get more quality leads and help bloggers connect with influencers. You can find her at her blog MinucaElena.com