4 Fail-Safe Blog Posts that Will Work for Your Business

Posted by Bamidele Onibalusi

This is a guest post  – Bamidele Onibalusi is a marketing expert and entrepreneur who has been featured in Forbes, The Huffington Post and Fast Company amongst others. He is available for consulting and freelance writing work, and he runs the Effective Business Ideas blog.

Welcome Bamidele…

Research has shown that businesses that prioritize blogging are 13x more likely to enjoy a positive ROI compared to businesses that don’t.

And businesses that publish 20 or more articles monthly get 5x more traffic than businesses that publish less than 4 articles monthly.

Let’s be realistic, it is impossible for the average company to publish 20 articles a month…

But when you don’t have the resources and time to publish new articles every day, how do you maximize your blogging ROI?

By publishing the right type of content!

I’ve been blogging for 5 years now and I’ve come to realise that not all blog posts are equal. There are literally hundreds of blog post types that you can write, but not all are the same. Some blog posts will work, and some will barely move the needle.

In this article, I’ll be sharing 4 fail-safe blog posts that will work for your business.

Let’s get started.

1. Resource Article

The “Resource Article” can generate upward of 10,000% more views than any other blog post.

It is perhaps my favourite type of blog post to create because of the almost instant avalanche of traffic it generates with no extra effort from you. It’s like a miracle.

Whenever I publish a resource article, I always record a traffic spike immediately; while there’s nothing big about a traffic spike, what’s most interesting is that this traffic continues, and it keeps increasing, for years to come.

Below is a screenshot of a month of traffic to a resource article I published in January of this year:

(the article was published on the 12th of January, and it was read 6,206 times in its first month without me doing anything extra to promote it; the average blog post on my blog gets around 800 – 1,000 views within the same period!)

Here’s another screenshot below that shows that the same article has been read 28,634 times within 7 months of publication:

Below is a screenshot showing traffic to a different resource article on another blog I own:

(The blog was averaging 500 visitors a month when this particular resource article was published; traffic doubled the month the resource was published, it doubled again the following month and it has only increased ever since. 2 years later, not only has the resource content been read over 40,000 times, but more people keep reading it every month)

Below is a screenshot of another resource article that has been read by over 200,000 people in 3 years:

(The screenshot only shows 194,000 views because, unknown to me, Google Analytics tracking for my site was missing for a whole year; in reality, real traffic to this resource should be in the neighborhood of 240,000 views or more. That’s just one article!)

Why Resource Articles Work

I’ve written resource articles that have been read over 200,000 times, and my resource articles routinely get 10,000% more views than the average article on my blog; but more importantly, they have a longer shelf life because traffic to them keep increasing, not reducing.

Resource articles work for one key reason; they give people the actual solutions to their problems instead of tips. Instead of telling people to solve a problem they have, your resource article gives them the exact thing they need to solve that problem. For this very reason, they are widely bookmarked and shared.

BONUS: I’ve created a “resource article checklist” specially for Bluewire Media readers. This is a practical checklist aimed at ensuring that you meet the requirements for creating massively successful resource articles. Click here to download it.

2. Ultimate Guide

The “Ultimate Guide” has a tendency to drive genuine business leads.

What’s the worth of being perceived as a thought leader in your industry? To some businesses, this is worth five figures; to some, it is worth six, seven figures or more.

Often, the difference between closing powerful deals via a simple email, or a phone call has to do with how you’re perceived in the industry. If you are not perceived as an expert, you’ll have to send proposals upon proposals and go the extra mile to close deals, with no guarantee of success. If you’re seen as an industry leader, people will literally be begging you to work with them.

One of the best ways to establish yourself as an authority in your industry is by publishing “ultimate guides”; ultimate guides are definitive guides to a subject in your niche, and they are often very comprehensive and contain visuals and multimedia.

Due to their depth and comprehensiveness, people love, share and constantly reference ultimate guides; search engines rank them really well too, as this is in line with research that shows that Google is likely to rank longer content better.

In May 2011, I published the ultimate guide to guest blogging; at over 4,000 words and with several examples, screenshots and graphics, it is one in-depth guide. Since publishing that article, it has been read over 24,000 times and that single piece of content has led to several five figure deals, and countless four figure deals, for my freelance writing business.

What’s more important is that people who reach out to me as a result of that article are already primed to let me handle their content needs; due to the comprehensiveness of that article and the understanding demonstrated in it, they see me as a content expert and ask little to no questions before hiring me.

The right article can demonstrate your expertise in magnitudes, and if you want to establish yourself as a no questions asked expert in your industry, perhaps the key is to start creating more ultimate guides.

3. Case Study

Case studies have a way of convincing people to say…

“Okay, Take My Money… Please!”

Unlike ultimate guides and resource articles, case studies won’t necessarily generate a lot of traffic; however, we know that more traffic isn’t always synonymous with more leads.

The power of case studies lie in their massive conversion power; not only are you demonstrating your expertise but you are actually presenting your audience with proof of that expertise inside your article, and this has significantly high conversion power.

Basically, a case study article shows people the results you’ve seen for your business, or for someone else, following a process you advocate. If you’ve been trying to get them to do business with you to no avail, a case study instantly establishes your authority by telling them that what you teach works.

Often, when I get new leads that are confused about what I can do or the effectiveness of my services, I simply forward them a case study I did that analyzes the results. This makes it easy for them to do business with me.

4. List Post

The previous three blog post types are what I like to call “power articles”; it’s practically impossible to be creating them on a consistent basis unless you are a big company with massive resources. In that case, you need to tap into the other “general” types of articles… but which of those is most likely to give you the best bang for your buck?

From my experience, list articles do really well traffic wise; occasionally, you’ll have that list article that goes viral and exceeds your expectations but even the average list article will perform better than other types of articles.

Try including the occasional list article into your content calendar and, besides having some filler content to help you meet schedule, you’ll also generate more traffic in the process.

About Bamidele

Bamidele Onibalusi is a marketing expert and entrepreneur who has been featured in Forbes, The Huffington Post and Fast Company amongst others. He is available for consulting and freelance writing work, and he runs the Effective Business Ideas blog.

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