We are pleased to have Pilar Galiana as a guest blogger. She is a digital marketing strategist who has worked with brands like Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, Nokia Canada and TD Bank to mention a few. These days she runs her own small business, you can find her mobile site here, www.ellasays.ca.

Last year I participated in Social Media Examiner’s  Blogging Success Summit 2011, and had the pleasure of hearing Denise Wakeman  speak. Denise has great tips on how to blog for your business and one of my favorite take-aways from her talk was her list of blog post types. Reviewing the various types of blog posts is a great way to generate blog post ideas. You may even find that certain blog post styles better suit you or members of your team. 

Blog post types:

• Opinion
• How to or How not to
• Interview
• Lists - top 10....
• Q and A
• Case Study
• Poll
• Reviews
• Features
• Guest blogger
• Video Blog
• Round up
• Photos

Opinion posts

Opinion posts are some of the most common posts out there and bloggers with huge followings can get away with simply sharing their opinion day in and day out. But, even well established bloggers add depth to their content by referencing other sources. Sharing your opinion is a great way to let your personality through, just be careful that your posts don’t turn into rants.

How to posts

“How to”....There are likely an endless list of things you could explain to your audience. In the YWD blog there are lots of “how to” posts, just like this one. What sort of “how to” post can you create for your audience? The “How not to” post is often a fun way to remind people the right way to do something by focusing on what not to do.

Interview posts

Interviews make great posts and they can even be presented with each question followed by the related response. And you don’t necessarily have to do the actual interview in person or on the phone, it can be done via email or even with a form. Interviews are a great way to feature team members, or even clients.

Lists posts

The truth is blog posts with numbers in the title and “best ..” or “top...” tend to rank well in search engines. People love them, they are easy to scan, informative and in many cases they are easy to create. They can be fun, “Top 5 reasons to go out to dinner” or more serious “The 3 foods you should eat every day” or “5 reasons why a variable mortgage is the best choice”.

Q and A posts

If you have commonly asked questions, these make great posts. They can even be distributed by customer services teams to respond to future inquires...and eventually reduce the number of inquiries you and your team need to respond to via phone or email. Rather than one long post with multiple questions and responses, consider creating a post for questions that way you get more posts and can optimized each blog title for search.

Case Studies

Case studies are a powerful way to show a client how your service or product helped solve someone’s problem. It may even help you showcase your product in new and different ways. The YWD team uses case study style blog post to showcase how their clients have used the YWD solutions.

Polls and Survey posts

People love to share their opinions and polls or surveys (they YWD team calls theirs a survey tool) are a great way to engage customers and create blog content. Most surveys and polls are set up with separate tools. I suggest the creation of a blog post when the survey is launched explaining the purpose of the poll or survey that links to the survey tool, then a second post to share the results. And hey, if you are getting lot’s of good input, you may even create a post mid way through.

Review posts

You can write reviews on a whole range of things like books, restaurants, products, web sites, articles, laws, hotels, events and the list goes on. If you are going to review something make sure it is relevant to your business and your blogging goals.

Feature posts

Depending on your business, you could feature a whole range of things. You could feature a house you are selling, or house you just renovated. You could feature the farmer who supplies your produce, or even a new wiz in your kitchen. You could even use these types of posts to feature different members of you own team.

Guest Bloggers

Inviting a guest blogger or acting as a guest blogger is a great way to grow your site’s visitors as guest bloggers often bring their audience with them and of course, the guest blogger is exposed to a new audience as well. Who do you know that you could ask to create a post for your site? It could be someone who is already blogging or someone who you know would do a great job.

Video posts

For some people, video blogging is the way to go. If you or your team aren’t camera shy, video blogs can be a great way to create content and distribute your message. And video blogs don’t need to be high production value videos to have impact. Many successful video blogs aren’t much more than a person facing a camera and talking. YWD’s Paul Chato has done a few video blogs and the rest of the team often creates “how to” videos that feature screen grabs or animations of what they are explaining.

Round up posts

Round up style blogs are a great way to repurpose content and extend the shelf life of social media content. The YWD team creates weekly Twitter Round ups - which feature Gustavo’s top tweets of the week with some additional commentary. Round up posts are also a great way to feature past content:  “Most commented posts of the year”, “Top posts on the importance of Mobile”.

Photos

Photography adds a great deal to any post and I recommend using photos in as many posts as possible. And on occasion, a photo with a caption can be your entire post. Consider an image of a house that is for sale, or a beautiful picture of a new menu item or photos from a community event that your company supported or participated in.

There are so many types of post that you can create. If you struggled with last week’s assignment of creating a list of 30-40 blog post ideas, try again now that you have reviewed this list of blog type options.

Your Guide to Starting a Blog the right way:

Week 1 - learning from those who have gone before you
Week 2 - setting goals
Week 3 - Content planning
Week 5 - Writing for the web
Week 6 - Building traffic through Blogs
Week 7 - Never stop learning

The Blog tool is included with YWD’s “Small Biz” and “The Works” packages. It can also be added to the “Basic” package as a separate tool for just $10/month.
Learn more about YWD Blog

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We are pleased to have Pilar Galiana as a guest blogger. She is a digital marketing strategist who has worked with brands like Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, Nokia Canada and TD Bank to mention a few. These days she runs her own small business, you can find her mobile site here, www.ellasays.ca.