You’d be hard up to find many websites today that don’t have a blog. And why shouldn’t every company include a blog on its site? Blogs have a number of marketing benefits for companies: driving website traffic, creating customer leads, and solidifying client engagement, among other valuable qualities.
However, sometimes a site needs more than a strong blog to keep its readers or customers coming back for more. Websites must continually strategize new and more innovative ways to present content to visitors. Read the following ideas to discover new ways to attract visitors to your site that bring more value than just another blog post.
1. Create Educational Infographics
Infographics are a great way to present valuable information to readers while building up your company’s branding. With an eye-catching design and interesting data or tips, infographics attract visitors to your site and make your brand memorable. Not to mention, they make great shareable content for social media, bringing traffic to your site for many months (or years) ahead. To find some of the most popular infographics in the industry, be sure to take a look at the selection at marketinginfographics.org.
2. Interview Experts in Your Industry
Conduct an interview with someone who is an expert in your site’s industry, and publish the interview in the form of an article or video, like this one of Seth Godin. It isn’t uncommon for someone to purchase a magazine because they wanted to read the interview with the famous actor or politician advertised on the cover. Similarly, website visitors may be equally excited to read about an online interview you conducted with a known expert in the field relevant to your site. Develop this into a monthly or bimonthly event to keep readers coming back with each published interview.
3. Host a Webinar
Give readers the opportunity to tune in to your website for an educational webinar on a topic that has high search potential. Select focused topics for your webinars that relate to your site’s product or subject and provide educational benefit to visitors. Even though you might be able to present the topic of your webinar in the form of a blog post, unlike a text form article, webinars can be a better and more engaging way to communicate with users.
4. Conduct and Publish an Industry Study
Provide insight into your industry by conducting and publishing industry research and analysis, like this one from a Medicare blogger. Visitors to your site will be interested to learn in what ways your industry or field is changing and growing and what trends are causing those changes. Especially if your industry has shown a lot of profitable growth in recent months, readers will be more likely to follow your company and remember your brand as a leader in the industry.
5. Leverage User Generated Content
A great way to attract more visitors to your site is to put the spotlight on the visitors themselves. Highlight user generated content like user photos and videos, customer reviews, testimonials, and social media tags. Not only does this give your site an element of personalization, but it also establishes a sense of trust between your customers and your brand.
6. Give Visitors Something for Free
Who doesn’t love getting free things? Give visitors to your site insider access to things relevant to your site or product. Free product trials, music downloads, ebooks, high resolution photos, tutorials, or design templates are just a few things you can offer visitors that are little cost to you but provide huge value for your website.
7. Create a Quiz
Quizzes are a great way to attract attention and retain engagement from visitors to your site. Nicole Kleist did a fun quiz entitled “Which Top Blogger Are You?” in the fashion blogging space.
Unlike blog posts, which can steer readers away with lengthy blocks of text, quizzes that evoke curiosity are more likely to keep visitors on your site. Let site users share their answers on social media and encourage their friends to take the quiz too, and you benefit from a growth in site traffic and new customer leads.
There are few websites that can rely on their blogs alone to attract and retain site visitors. Even if you have great content on your website, a blog article may not be the best form to present that content. Experimenting with different ways to present information to your readers or customers is key to keeping visitors to your site engaged and attracting new visitors.
Try out some of the ideas mentioned above on your site to attract visitors, or try coming up with even more innovative (or crazier) ways to communicate to users. You might be surprised at how much site traffic growth you can achieve and how much value you can add to your site by straying away from the usual blog post.
