Look anywhere on the Internet, and you’ll likely find an array of tips for improving your blog. These tips will come from anyone, including random bloggers on the Internet or blogging gurus and professionals.
No matter what type of tips they may be providing, there is truly only one tip that you need to follow—in order to have a successful blog, you need to create great content. If your content isn’t attracting readers by providing valuable information or entertainment, it’s not going to be read, and your blog will suffer.
Creating great content means understanding exactly what it is that your readers want to know and providing that content to them consistently. However, this is a concept that many bloggers struggle with. In order to create great content, you must have great ideas, and this is where the challenge for some bloggers begins.
Social feeds as idea generators
There are a variety of different ways to spark great content for your blog in order to attract your readers. One of the best options to influence great blog content is through the use of social feeds.
A social feed, otherwise known as an RSS, is a format that provides users with the most updated content in areas they subscribe to. For example, if you’re interested in manufacturing, you can subscribe to a feed that will push all manufacturing-related content from the Internet to your feed. Through a news reader, you can access this content from your computer or mobile device. This includes everything from other blogs to social media accounts, and it’s a great way for you to stay current with what others are saying.
You can also use these social feeds to boost the content you’re providing. First, you can use the social feed to determine what general topics your readers are interested in learning about. This can give you some general insight into the topics that your blog should be focusing on in order to drive content back to your site. For example, if your blog discusses manufacturing and you notice a variety of topics on 3D printing, then you will know that this must be something that your target audience is interested in learning more about.
Trend discovery
Social feeds can determine more specific topics your audience wants based on what is trending, and you can use this information to create strong blog posts that will gain attraction due to the relevancy of the topic. For example, using a social feed tool like Hootsuite can provide you with trending information on Twitter by highlighting the topics or keywords that are currently gaining the most visibility. An example of this would be the word “Ebola” when the Ebola crisis first started, whether in Africa or when it arrived in the United States.
You can use this information to see which information is trending, and you can then create your own blog topics that use these same trends in order to increase your blog’s visibility and gain some traffic. This works best, though, when combining the strong content with other SEO campaigns in addition to your Paid Search efforts.”Great blog content needs to be supplemented by a strong SEO campaign,” said Mattan Danino, owner of WebitMD.com, a Los Angeles based SEO firm. “Utilizing the right SEO campaigns in conjunction with a great blog post can promote the trending content that was created and push it out to the right audience to help drive traffic back to the blog.”
By utilizing a social feed to influence the blog topics you write, and by combining that trending content with a strong SEO campaign, you can ensure that your blog will gain the visibility and traction it needs to increase traffic.