In this episode Ross and Talia talk about what elements you have to include to create high-engaging, sharable blog posts that drive results.
The transcript
Ross:
One of my favorite sites is the wayback time machine. And I just plugged in, getuplift.co into the wayback time machine. It looks like since 2017, your site has relatively been the same, but the one thing that has been different is the increasing amount of traffic. You’ve been crushing it, you’ve been killing it, you’ve been getting tons of people visiting your site. I first and foremost want to give you a shout out for staying true to the OD, original design of your site. When we blog and when we’re creating blog content, the goal is to really see that ongoing traffic long-term, and you’ve been able to do a great job about it. And I think one of the things that you’ve done well with your content consistently over the years is to ensure that every post that you publish has a bit of your personality in it.
Ross:
So what I want to talk about today is how folks who are listening, who may not be sure where to get started, or maybe they’ve seen traffic tank, maybe they’re not generating as much results from their content, let’s talk about how they can improve their blog experience so it can be as good as Talia Wolf’s. Let’s jump in and dive in. The first thing that I think folks need to embrace is ensuring that they have charts, graphics and visuals in their content. You want to have graphics and visuals that connect with people. We are visual creatures by nature, so when you do that, it connects with folks. What are your thoughts on the whole idea of creating visuals? Do you think people should stick to just static texts or do you think there’s always a room and an opportunity for graphics too?
Talia:
For me it’s 100%, I use images all the time. My go-to is actually screenshots. You were mentioning my blog, which by the way, Ross, I feel like you and I need to jump on a call, let’s say, every Monday morning for like 10 minutes so you can just cheer me on. You say all these amazing things about me, so I’m powered up throughout the week. Thank you for that.
Ross:
No worries.
Talia:
I use a lot of screenshots of a few things. Either of landing pages or if it’s a sequence, I just like to show as much as possible. So I’ll also do a lot of screenshots from Google Analytics and stuff like that. Screenshots are my biggest thing, and I also notice that a lot of people share them. And what I do is I try to add all sorts of annotations on them. So I’ll have like arrows or I’ll have like a mock or highlight certain things so that they also stand out. And then when people share them on social media, that will also stand out and create curiosity.
Ross:
I love it. I think that’s a great approach. Screenshots are also one of my favorites. I think when it comes to creating cool visuals, a lot can be done with a simple screenshot, especially when you work in the wonderful world of digital marketing. And I know some of you might be creating content around something that’s very niche and has nothing to do with the wonderful pixels that we see on a regular basis. And in those cases, you might want to create something that’s a little bit more dynamic by actually taking a camera and taking a photo of it. Or maybe even recording a video and talking on video about a certain thing and breaking up your blog format. Where while somebody is typically used to being met with a block of texts, instead as they scroll, they see a video of you discussing something. So let me go into your mind a little bit for a second. Let’s say you’re reading a blog post about how to do the perfect shave, whether it’s shaving your armpits or your legs or your beard, it doesn’t matter. Let’s say you’re doing a perfect shave.
Ross:
What is better than reading the content around how to do it than scrolling through and then seeing a video tutorial around how to do the perfect edgings or whatever that may be. There’s nothing better than videos. So if you can invest in having some multimedia assets as part of your blog content, it just makes it more rich, it makes it more interesting and it’s going to make it more engaging. And you can also look at other sources and take their video content that already exist and embed it into your content as well. So you are not limited to just using the content you create, you can also use content from other sources. What’s your approach as it relates to using content from other sources. Is it something that you’ve done in the past, do you think it’s good practice? And do you have anything else to add as it relates to embedding multimedia assets in your content?
Talia:
Well, I have to say that I don’t really … I mean, this isn’t considered really multimedia, but my go-to is GIFs. I absolutely-
Ross:
Right. I believe that works. If it works in the multimedia, let’s throw it in.
Talia:
I know. They’re the best way to just show feelings and emotions, and because I’m all out on my blog and everything’s out there. So GIFs are a great opportunity for me to just do that, and also I’ll put in even sounds. So I think it was my previous blog posts that I was collabing with Alex, which I think we spoke about a while ago about YouTube. I wanted to emphasize the idea that sometimes you put out content and there’s crickets. So I just put in a snippet of sound that just press on it and you hear crickets. I’m into different types of visuals and sounds and things, I love that.
Ross:
Yeah. It’s so good, I agree with you 100%. I’ve used GIFs all over the internet. I’ve been increasingly using them to Twitter. I’m not going to divulge us into the wonderful world of Twitter right now because we’re talking about blogging experience. But long story longer, I do love GIFs and I think that they’re a great way to enhance your blog experience. So I’m going to throw it back to you. What else do you think folks can do to improve their blogging experience? We’ve talked about charts, we’ve talked about graphics, we talked about multimedia, YouTube videos, GIFs, et cetera. What else can folks use to enhance their blog experience when they’re thinking about improving the way that they present themselves and create content that’s engaging?
Talia:
I think one of the most important things is helping people who read differently. So for example, I’m a skimmer, I’ve got to, I got to be honest. I don’t always read everything, I stop at the bolded headlines or bullet points or lists that makes sense to me and grab my attention. So I think that using that technique of bullet points and lists and numbering things is a wonderful way to help skimmers and different types of people who read in different ways to read your content. And what’s great about it is that people love to share these type of bullet points and lists, because normally what you are essentially putting in a list is either steps to doing something, maybe it’s successful things that you’re highlighting, maybe it’s quotes.
Talia:
Whatever it is, it’s stuff that can be copied and paste really easily into a tweet or into a Facebook post. So for me, I love to break my blog posts in different sections. There’s always going to be some sort of list, some sort of bullet points where people can stop for a second. And even if they’re skimming and not reading the whole thing, they’re going to read those points.
Ross:
I think this is a fundamental idea that truly can change the way that people create content. When we go to school, we’re taught about MLA formatting, APA formatting, all of these formats that existed and had a purpose in academia, but really don’t work or translate well into the wonderful world of the internet. And I think if you can understand the way that people read on the internet and embrace headers, bullets, lists, et cetera, it can truly be a cheat code. And actually act as the foundation for your writing process that will improve everything that you publish. One of the first pieces of content that I created for the internet was in MLA format. It got no love, no engagement, nobody liked it because it was difficult to read, it was not formatted in a way that was engaging. And by simply taking that piece and then looking at it from a lens of the internet, I was able to improve it tenfold. And I think so many people can embrace that.
Ross:
All right. What else can folks do to improve their blog experience if they were trying to come up with ways to just make their content or their blog maybe even work for them? You’ve been running GetUplift since 2017 or so as a blog and as an entity online. What has been one of the most successful ways? I know your answer to this, this is why I’m asking it to you. But what has been something that you’ve done well in your content to really help turn your website into something that can actually have meaningful results on your business as a whole?
Talia:
For me, as you know, the biggest pot is setting up lead magnets and calls to action. So for almost every post of mine, there is some sort of call to action. Whether if it’s to download a certain worksheet or a cheat sheet that we’ve created, whether if it’s to check out a workshop that we’ve created. I’m always trying to add some sort of call to action that’s related, that’s valuable for our readers, for anyone who isn’t on our list yet. I love to create these calls to action. And you can have it at the end of the blog post, you can put it within the blog post. I like to have them throughout, in different places in the blog posts. Not in a spammy way, but really, as I mentioned, in a very valuable way. So if I mentioned, for example, that you should follow these kinds of reports in Google Analytics or you should create these reports in Google Analytics, I will link to our Google Analytics checklist. Or I talk about some type of cognitive bias or a psychological trigger.
Talia:
I won’t start diving into it in the blog post, but I will send you to the cheat sheet or to the PDF that we have that breaks that down. So for me, it’s about giving the right calls to action in different various places. And you can also play with the different ways that you do this. You can have an actual call to action button, or you can play with link text. My preference is linked text. I can also say that for my clients, for like Social Media Examiner and iPhone Life, some of the things that we do is actually embed these types of banners within the content. So while people are reading, they have a call to action to download something, to join a list, to check out a workshop and so on. Those are my ways. What do you think?
Ross:
That’s genius. I have to admit right here on the air that I completely shifted my approach to blogging after having one conversation with you about how much value you are generating in the back of call to actions, sent a note to my team while we were talking, I think this was while we were in Orlando and I was like, “Get call to actions on every single post that we have. We need to promote our lead magnets, we need to promote every single thing that we’ve ever created that is free and available online.” And it fundamentally changed the business, I would say.
Talia:
Oh wow, that’s amazing. That’s so cool.
Ross:
Yeah. Call to action folks, and make sure that they’re included in your content. So another one that I think folks should consider … and this one ties back to the point that you raised around people read differently with bullets and lists. The other idea that I think is fundamentally important for folks to embrace with their content is to use different types of emphasis within their texts and within the paragraphs. Using bold, using italics, using underscores, using those types of things to really just make your content feel a little bit more engaging. They have the same purpose as the bullet points, as the list, keeps folks engaged, it keeps people interested. And if you can add a few bold, a few italics within your content, it’s going to just go a long way to really connect with your audience a little bit further. So let’s wrap this up.
Ross:
We’re getting to the end of this episode, I want to just quickly summarize all of the ideas that we’ve shared with folks today. And then after that, Talia, you can tell these fine folks where they can find out more. So starting from the top, inject charts, inject graphs, inject any type of visual into your content. Whether it’s a photo, whether it’s a screenshot, it doesn’t matter. You want to break up that block of texts with some type of visual that is interesting and is engaging. The second one is multimedia assets. People are visual by nature. Sure, right now you’re listening to us by audio and that is also a preferred preference, but I would say, visuals rule the day. Throw in the mix a podcast, throw in the mix a YouTube video, throw in the mix a GIF. All of that content makes your content more engaging. Embrace bullet points, embrace lists, people scan things.
Ross:
We don’t live in an academia world, so don’t be afraid to add headers and satisfy those people who are going to visit your blog and they’re going to scan your titles to really see whether or not this is something that they should read. Ensure that every single post that you create has a call to action, ideally driving to a lead magnet or something that is worth giving your email for. And then finally, don’t be afraid to have a little bit of fun by throwing in a bold and italics. And as a person, anyway, it’s always better to be bold and italics and regular, so why not do it with your content as well? All right. Without further ado, Talia, please tell these fine folks where they can find us, how they can connect with us and how they can see us again soon.
Talia:
All right. So, join us in our Facebook group, facebook.com/groups/action driven podcast. We are in there, we’re having conversations. We miss you, come join us. And other than that, please give us a five star review on any of the platforms that you’re listening to. And that’s it from us for today. Thank you very much for listening.
