Blog Content Engine Playbook

Understand the Purpose & Role of Blog Content

Understand the Objective
In this Playbook, we’re going to help you learn how to quickly crank out share-worthy,
clickable blog content that brings in more traffic and converts more of that traffic into
leads and sales.

But before we dive into the details of HOW to quickly create great content, first we need to
touch on WHY it’s so important to create content in the first place.

The fact is, businesses today need a blog more than ever.

Why?

In the next lesson, we’ll detail the big 3 reasons why we create content at DigitalMarketer across
all of our brands.

Why You Need Blog Content More Than Ever

Reason #1: Content Helps Maintain a Healthy Email List 

These days, email marketing is an essential part of just about every business. 

An engaged email list can be a huge asset to your company. But in order to keep your email list
engaged, you need to send them valuable and entertaining content on a regular basis. 

That’s where your blog comes in. 

Sending valuable, interesting blog content to your subscribers will foster your relationship with
them. You’ll train them to open and click on your emails… 
Then when you send a promotional email later on, your audience will be much more likely to
open and click on that email, too. 

As a rule of thumb, you should try to email content to your list at least once a week or so.

Reason #2: Content Sells 

A lot of marketers seem to have the impression that content and promotion are 2 totally separate

things. Almost as if there’s this big wall between them.

But there is no wall. 

Content sells. Absolutely. And this is particularly true when we’re talking about your own
content, published on your own website. 
Because when you’re publishing your own content, you can blend the content and the promotion
together. You can map your content back to an offer so that your content does more than
entertain and engage—it actually pre-sells your visitors on the value of your offer. 

We’ll talk about this later in the Playbook, but for now, the main concept to grasp is that content
—when it’s done right—will absolutely increase your sales.

Reason #3: Content Is Key to Retargeting 

Blog content is an incredibly powerful component of retargeting (AKA remarketing). 

In fact, this might even be the #1 biggest reason why we create content today. 

The combination of content and retargeting is a game-changer because it gives you an incredibly
effective way to drive highly relevant traffic back to your offers. 

Once again, we’ll dive into the details later on in the training. So if you’re looking for the details
on how to implement this—keep reading! 

These are just a few of the reasons why it’s so important to create content on a regular
basis. 

Of course, these aren’t the only reasons to create content. There are other, less measurable
benefits as well—like fostering goodwill, credibility, trust, and authority with your audience. 

But we like to focus on the 3 reasons above because they produce a measurable impact on your
business. 

So as you’re implementing this Playbook, keep these 3 things in mind. And even better, keep an
eye on your email metrics, your sales, and your retargeting campaigns as you begin to crank out
more and more content over the coming weeks.

Create Blog Content

Create Blog Content Quickly
In this lesson, you'll learn several methods of creating high-quality content... quickly. 

Choose and use the content types that make the most sense for you and your business. 

Remember, the key is to create high-quality content that can be… 

 Sent to your email subscribers to keep your list happy and healthy
 Used to ascend traffic to Lead Magnet opt-ins and low-dollar offers
 Used to segment your email list and retarget with ads based on a known interest

We’ve put together 5 blog post templates that will allow you to create high-quality content
FAST. The beautify of these templates is that you don’t have to sit down and write a long post all
by yourself; instead, most of the content comes from other sources—such as other contributors,
embedded videos or images, and so on. 

Without further ado, check out the 5 types of blog content you can create quickly: 

Post Type 1: Crowdsourced Post  

A crowdsourced post is one of the easiest ways to quickly create fantastic content. 

Essentially, the idea is that you reach out to a handful of experts in your niche, and ask them all
to contribute to the same post. In most cases, you ask them all to weigh in the same topic or
question the post is about. Like reaching out to executives in your field and asking them how
they organize their calendars to be highly effective. 

Here are a few examples of crowdsourced posts:

 14 Digital Marketing Experts Share Their Marketing Home Run of 2018

 5 Sales Experts on How to Spend the 15 Minutes After a Call
 29 Proven and Tested Strategies for Building a Profitable Affiliate Marketing Program

These posts work really well for a few reasons. 

First of all, since the content is crowdsourced, the majority of the post is written for you. 

And if you ask each expert a few different questions, you can even create multiple posts at once!
For instance, if you ask each expert to answer 3 separate questions, you can break each set of
questions out into a separate post—and have 3 blog posts completed with practically no extra
work. 

Finally, one of the best things about a crowdsourced post is that your experts will promote it to
their own audience once it’s published. So right off the bat, these posts are more likely to
generate more traffic and shares than a typical post. 

Download the Crowdsourced Post template here: 

Post Type 2: Content Aggregator Post  

Next up is the Content Aggregator Post. As you’ll see, this is another super quick and easy way
to put together a brand-new blog post. 

To create a Content Aggregator type blog post, all you need to do is take some content from
other areas and put it together in one spot (your post). You’re not creating brand-new content;
instead, you’re aggregating content from other sources. 

This usually takes the form of a list post, and the headline typically tells you how many items are
in the list. Here are a few examples from some of our sister companies: 

 21 Fun Guacamole Recipes

  25 Winter Bug Out Bag Essentials You Need to Survive
 43 Off the Grid Survival Life Hacks

Keep in mind, we did NOT write all the content in these posts. For the most part, we went out
and found content that we knew our readers would appreciate, and put it all together in one
place. The value that readers get out of this post is that you sourced all the material for them,
saving them time. Something they’re interested in conveniently located in one place. 

In the guacamole recipes example, we didn’t create any of the recipes ourselves. But that’s OK.
We’re not saying we did, we’re giving credit to the original source, and we’re linking back to it. 

In the off-the-grid survival life hacks example, we just found an article on another website in the
same niche and shared 3 out of the 43 tips from that blog post. Then we linked back to the
original post. 

And that’s really all you need to remember for Content Aggregator posts. You’re using someone
else’s content, so you need to give them credit and link back to their original article. But as long
as you do that, this post is a win all around for everybody: they get a link back to their website,
you get a quick and easy blog post, and the viewer gets an engaging article on a topic they’re
interested in.

Download the Content Aggregator Post template here: 

Post Type 3: Interview Post 

Next up is the Interview Post. And this is exactly what it sounds like! You simply interview
someone in your niche (preferably someone well-known), and publish the results on your blog. 

Here are a few examples: 

 Answering 11 Hard-Hitting Questions About Organic and Paid Facebook: An Interview

with Dennis Yu
 GDPR Summary: What Every Digital Marketer Needs to Know About the New
Regulations
 Talking Salesmanship: John Carlton on the Art of Feeding a Hungry Crowd 
Interview Posts are an especially easy type of post because you don’t have to come up with the
actual content—that comes from the person you’re interviewing.

If you’re able to get a well-known person in your niche to agree to an interview, their expertise
will lend massive authority to your post. And in most cases, they’ll also share the interview with
their list, helping you to reach an even wider audience. 

An interview post can also be a good way to get someone who’s never been on your blog before
to contribute. If you’d like someone to contribute to your blog but don’t think they’d be willing
to write a post… 

DON’T ask: “Will you write a post for my blog?”

DO ask: “Can I interview you?” 

The first question sounds like work—and nobody wants to do your work for you. 

But the second question strokes the person’s ego. It makes them feel important. So to maximize
your chances of your request being accepted, always ask the person if you can interview them.

It’s also best to conduct your interviews via audio, like over phone or a Skype or Zoom call,
because this will be the fastest and easiest thing for your guest.

Unlike a more formal video recording, an audio recording is more relaxed, less intimidating, and
doesn’t require the production of a video. In other words, the interviewee can do the interview in
their pajamas or not have to worry about having an interesting backdrop. They can do the
interview in a way that’s more comfortable and convenient for them, making it more likely
they’ll say yes or not cancel on you last minute. Again, you’re trying to make as little work for
them as possible. As long as the content they provide is solid, you’re golden. 

Just jump on a call for 15-20 minutes and make sure you record it. That way, you’ll have an
audio version of the interview, which you can have transcribed to turn it into a text-based post.
When it’s all said and done, you’ll have a fantastic blog post that took very little time to create.

Download the Interview Post template here: 

Post Type 4: Quote Post  

In a Quote Post, all you do is find a handful of useful quotes that relate to a topic your audience
is interested in. Put them together in one post, like one of these: 

 56 Inspirational Motivational Quotes About Success And Life

 16 More Quotes to Inspire Your Content Marketing
 The Art of the Sales Letter [Infographic]

Now in all of these examples, they went above and beyond by creating shareable images of the
quotes or a click to tweet feature to encourage the sharing of this post, and thus increase the
post’s traffic and exposure. 
This is a nice touch, but it’s certainly not necessary. 

Quote Posts tend to perform well because they allow you to share quick bites of valuable content
in a way that’s easy to consume and share. 

Download the Quote Post template here: 

Post Type 5: Embed Reactor Post  

The Embed Reactor is another easy blog post type that allows you to leverage other people’s
content in your own blog. The concept here is pretty simple: just embed a video, slideshow, or
infographic into your blog, and then write your reaction to that content. 
That’s why it’s called the Embed Reactor: first, you embed some content, then you react to it.

Here’s an example of this post type in action: 

 The Sales Hunter On The Myth That Customers Buy on Benefits 

YouTube videos are a great source of content for Embed Reactor posts, but you can also embed
and react to slideshows from slideshare.net or infographics from visual.ly.

When you do this, don’t feel bad about using someone else’s content. There’s nothing wrong
with it! In fact, one of the main reasons why people post content on sites like YouTube,
Slideshare, and Visually is because they want more people to see their content. So by embedding
their content into your post, you’re actually doing them a favor. Be sure to provide a link and
mention your source to the content you’re embedding, this will cover your bases. 

Just remember to follow up the embedded content with your own reaction, so that you’re adding
something unique and personal to the topic. 

Download the Embed Reactor Post template here: 

Now you know 5 ways to quickly create effective blog posts. But of course, there are many other
types of blog posts you can use. 

For more blog ideas, check out this blog idea resource. Use it as a handy reference guide as
you’re building out your stellar blog post content. 

Next up, we’re going to dive into what we call “Pillar Posts.” These are in-depth posts that
provide massive value to your readers and generate long-lasting organic traffic to your blog. A
good Pillar Post can bring in new visitors to your site year after year after year. 

RESOURCES:

 Ultimate List of Blog Post Ideas

  Download all 5 Blog Post Templates

Create Long-Lasting Content

In the last lesson, you learned how to create stellar blog content quickly. Now we’re going to
shift gears and talk about long-lasting content—content that continues to generate organic traffic
for months and months, sometimes years, after it was first published. 

Long-lasting posts are often big, meaty posts. They’re long, easily over 1,000 words. They’re
useful, actionable, well-written, and engaging. They’re filled with relevant images and
audio/video files to support the points you’re making in the text. 

We’re not going to lie to you: long-lasting posts take time and effort to create. But their benefit is
that they have a lasting ROI. Whereas many blog posts have a lifespan of just 24-72 hours, long-
lasting posts can continue generating traffic, providing massive value to your audience, and
building your credibility and authority for years. 

Some of our long-lasting posts at DigitalMarketer are still generating massive organic traffic,
even 5 years after they were initially published, like our “101 Best Email Subject Lines.”

For that reason, we sometimes think of these posts are “redwood content,” since, like redwood
trees, these posts live for a long time and keep growing year after year. 

But in order to accomplish that, you’re going to have to keep your pillar posts alive and
continuously updated. 

Google likes it when you tend to your content. If Google sees that you haven’t updated a blog
post in a long time, it’s going to view that post as less relevant because it will seem out-of-date.
And your organic rankings will slowly start to drop over time in favor of other posts that have
been updated or published more recently. 

But if you continue to update that long-lasting post, that will send a clear signal to Google that
you are tending to this post. It’s updated. It’s still relevant. And as a result, Google will continue
showing love to your pillar posts by ranking them in a high position among the search results. 

That said, you should NOT be updating your posts just for the search engines. Instead, update
your posts for the people who are actually reading these posts—your audience. Because in the
end, they’re the ones who really matter. 

In this short video our Director of Marketing, Amanda Powell, will walk you through creating
posts that will continually bring you traffic and give you some super-useful examples and
templates that you can use to guide your own long-lasting post creation: 

( viedos)

Below, you’ll find the examples Amanda referenced in the video: 

 What is Digital Marketing?

 What is Email Marketing? A Quick Guide to Getting it Right
 What is Copywriting?
 The Ultimate Guide to Digital Marketing
 DigitalMarketer’s 101 Best Email Subject Lines
 The Ultimate List of Blog Post Ideas
 Intonations of the Inbox Video

Looking for more tips? Here’s even more advice on how to create an outstanding pillar blog
post.

Choose the Right Call to Action for Your Blog Post

In the first module of this training, we talked about the most important reasons why you need
blog content. Reason #2 was because content sells. 

And in this lesson, you’ll learn exactly how to sell through your content. 

To be more specific, you’re about to discover how to effectively use content to generate new
subscribers and customers through the use of a relevant call to action (CTA). 

A CTA could be any sort of offer that you make to the visitors on your blog. Usually, this is an
offer to either buy a product or sign up for your email list. 

Many blogs fail to include a CTA at all. They publish posts that provide good information but
never ask the visitor to do anything. 

This is a mistake. 
Your blog visitors WILL ascend to the next level of the Customer Journey, but they’ll only do it
if and when you specifically ask them to. 

So how do you know what CTA to include in your blog posts? There are 2 key considerations to
keep in mind: 

1. Choose an Entry-Level Offer  

Don’t try to sell a $2,000 product from a blog post. Even $200 is much too high-ticket for the
vast majority of blog visitors. 

It’s asking too much too fast. 

Think of it like this, you’re asking someone to go from engaging with your free blog to dropping
$2k. That’s a big ask. As our CEO Ryan Deiss likes to say, you’re proposing marriage on the
first date. 

When choosing your CTA, you need to follow the sequence of the Customer Value Journey. To
do that, ask yourself, “What’s the next logical step for the customer to do, once they’ve read this
blog post?” Once you’ve determined that, think of an offer you have that relates to that next
logical step. 

RELATED: Customer Value Journey Playbook 

And with your blog—a free product—the next logical step is often to turn those visitors into
subscribers or low-dollar customers. 

With that in mind, the best blog CTAs are typically either: 

 An entry-point offer (a low-dollar product, typically around $1-$20), or…

 A Lead Magnet (a free resource, like a template or checklist, given for signing up to your
email list) 

RELATED:

 Lead Magnet Worksheet & Checklist

 Tripwire Worksheet & Checklist

The key here is that these offers have a low barrier to entry. All you’re asking from the visitor is
a couple bucks or an email address. 

This type of offer will maximize your conversion rate, helping you to convert the highest
possible percentage of visitors into leads and customers. Leads and customers you can nurture
and ascend to your core offer. 

2. Choose a Relevant Offer  

The more closely related your CTA is to the topic of your blog, the better it will perform.

This sounds obvious, but it’s extremely important and it bears repeating. 

If you’re publishing a post about weight loss, the offer should have to do with weight loss in
some way—perhaps it’s a weight-loss recipe book or a cardio workout. 

If your post is about how to get started playing the piano, then your offer might be for a quick
video lesson on how to play your first scale. Or a free ebook on reading sheet music. 

No matter what niche you’re in, you want your CTAs to match your blog content as closely as
possible. 

Keep in mind, this will probably require you to create multiple entry-point offers and Lead
Magnets. For example, here at DigitalMarketer, we publish content on a variety of topics—like
email marketing, Facebook ads, content marketing, copywriting, and so on. 

In order to make a relevant offer for each blog post, we need a Lead Magnet offer for EACH
topic. That can be time-consuming on the front end, but it’s well worth it when you’re able to
convert a high percentage of new blog visitors into email subscribers.

An Example from the DigitalMarketer Blog 

Let’s take an example from our own blog. We’ll be looking at this post: DigitalMarketer’s 101
Best Email Subject Lines of 2018. 
The topic of this blog, obviously, is email marketing. As a result, we know that anyone who
clicks through and reads this article is interested in learning more about email marketing. 

And that’s exactly why we were careful to include a CTA related to that topic: 
The link takes you to this landing page, where you can download our “Ultimate Email Marketing
Metrics Guide” for free if you opt in to our email list. 
The beauty of making an offer like this is that it gives you a chance to follow up with these
people over time. You can foster a long-term relationship with them. You can send them more
content, building up your authority and credibility. And of course, you can promote relevant
products. 

For these reasons, your chances of convincing this person to buy from you will be much higher
over the long-term if you focus on a relevant entry-point offer or Lead Magnet offer.

Find Writers for Your Blog

When it comes to finding writers and contributors for your blog, you may have questions like… 

Who should these contributors be? 

How can I find them? 

And how do I convince them to write for my blog? 

Not to worry, because this is the lesson where we’ll answer all those questions and more. 
How to Find Contributors for Your Blog  

First things first, you have to actually find  those people who will be willing and able to do a
fantastic job of creating high-quality content for your blog. 

Here’s the main principle to keep in mind when looking for contributors: 

You want to find people who are already writing articles similar to the content you want for your
own blog. 

This means you ideally want someone with: 

 Decent to good writing skills

 Experience writing for a blog
 Subject matter knowledge

It also means that anyone who is not already writing content about your topic is probably not
going to work out the way you expect. 

So how can you find this elusive person? It’s really not as difficult as it might sound, as long as
you know where to look. 

Here are our top 5 places to find blog contributors. And keep in mind this list is ordered from
best (#1) to worst (#5). 

The 5 best ways to find contributors for your blog: 

1. Poach Them from Another Blog 

This might sound unethical or illegal, but it’s really not. Searching other blogs for writers is one
of the most effective ways there is to find contributors of your own, and it doesn’t harm anyone
(after all, they can still continue writing for the original blog). So start looking at the writers on
blogs that are similar or related to your own blog (or what you want your blog to be). 

For example, if you run a photography blog, you might head over to Digital Photography School
to look for writers. On their blog you might stumble across this post: 
You read the article and you realize it’s well-written, full of good content, and thoughtfully
organized. Even better, it received 32.8k shares, which means it’s performed really well. Like,
really, really well.

To find the writer, usually, you just have to scroll to the bottom and find their byline. It should
look something like this: 
In this case, Johny seems like he might make a great contributor for your photography blog—so
all you need to do is visit his website and send him an email. Let him know you loved his post,
and ask if he’d be interested in writing some similar content for you. 

2. Google Blogs in Your Niche 

A second way to find blog contributors is to find bloggers in your industry who are already
writing consistently, but who have a smaller blog, and therefore, might be looking to grow their
audience or may not be having the kind of impact they want. 

Continuing with our example from above, perhaps you search for photography bloggers and land
on the blogs of someone like Kristen Kalp, Zack Arias, or Lin & Jirsa. Take a look at their
content and decide if it would be a good fit for your audience. 

If so, shoot them a message and ask if they’d like to be a contributor. If they’re serious about
growing their own blog, there’s a good chance they’ll jump at the opportunity to increase their
exposure and gain a valuable backlink to their website. 

Once again, the key here is that you’re finding people who are already writing about your topic
—so you can depend on them to deliver high-quality content on demand. 

3. Visit Followerwonk & Search the Bios 

Followerwonk allows you to search through Twitter bios to connect with people. And you can
use it to follow the same process for option #2 on this list—only in this case, rather than
searching Google, you’re searching Followerwonk’s bios. 

A quick search for “photography blogger” brings up 4,318 results. Now surely some of these
people would be interested in contributing to your blog! 
4. Create a “Write For Us” Page 

Another option is to include a page on your website inviting visitors to write for you. We used to
use this strategy at DigitalMarketer but later took the page down when we no longer needed it. 

Here’s an example of a “Write for Us” page at The Daily Positive. 

Notice what they include on this page—you’ll want to make sure to specify a handful of details,
such as: 

 What you offer/why they should want to write for your blog
 What kind of content you’re looking for
 What your rules and guidelines are
 Instructions on how to get started

Regarding that final bullet point: we highly recommend asking for a couple of sample articles.
This way, you can make sure the person is legitimately capable of delivering the kind of content
you’re looking for. 

5. Use an Outsourcing Site 

Finally, you can also turn to outsourcing websites like Upwork.com or Fiverr.com to hire writers
to create content for you. The plus side of these sites is that you’ll have no problem finding
plenty of writers—many of whom will be willing to work for an extremely cheap rate. 

But be forewarned: this option is #5 on our list for a reason. 

We’ve tried outsourcing writing in the past using these kinds of sites, and the results were
extremely inconsistent. Every now and then you might find a great writer, a diamond in the
rough… but you’ll also find yourself wading through badly written content.

These sites can also be a time-suck. You can find this diamond in the rough writer, but it takes a
lot of time. It’s almost like going through an interview and hiring process. 

So consider this a last resort and don’t outsource your writing until you’ve tried the first 4
options in this list. 

How to Pay Your Contributors  

As you know, writing a blog post isn’t easy. It takes work. And no one is going to write blog
posts for you unless they’re getting something in return. 

For the most part, as a blog owner you have 2 things you can offer them: 

1. Money 

Money is pretty self-explanatory. You can simply pay someone to write posts for you.

The amount you pay can vary wildly, and will depend on a number of factors. How specialized is
the topic? It’s much easier to find a fitness blogger than it is to find someone to write about
nuclear physics. So it only makes sense that you’ll need to pay more for a blog contributor who’s
a nuclear physicist. 

Quality is another consideration. Of course, more money doesn’t always mean you’ll get higher-
quality content. But generally speaking, very low-priced writers will be less skilled and
experienced than those who charge more for their services. 

When it comes to paying a writer, we’ve found that a writer will often tell you his/her going rate.
And you’ll have to determine if their price is fair/within your budget. For us, in our industry,
we’ve found this rate is typically $200-$400 per blog post. This varying rate depends on the
needs of the post itself (a post that requires more research will require more payment) and the
writer’s experience. 

In our experience, it’s better to pay near the top end for high-quality content. Because if you do,
your content will stand a better chance of performing well, your audience will grow bigger,
faster, and eventually you won’t need to pay your writers at all. 

Instead, you’ll be able to pay your contributors with…

2. Exposure 

This is another huge benefit contributors can get from writing for your blog. By writing posts for
you, they’ll be able to spread their name and message to a wider audience. 
It’s a win-win situation, because you get free content and they get more exposure.

Once upon a time, we paid our contributors at DigitalMarketer. But today our audience is now
large enough that we’re able to attract world-class contributors without paying them. (Although
we still spend money to edit, polish, and promote our contributors’ posts.) 

So keep that in mind. While you may need to pay contributors now, the day may come when
writers will be chomping at the bit to write for your blog just to get in front of your audience. 

Go here for more tips on how to find writers for your blog

You’ve Published Your Blog Post, Now What?

Use Internal Links Often
You’ve published your blog post—congratulations! 

But you’re not quite done yet. 

Creating and publishing your blog post is a big achievement. But if you stop now, then odds are
very few people will ever see that post you worked so hard on. 

That’s why you still need to do some work to optimize, repurpose, and retarget your content to
generate long-lasting traffic that will help grow your audience, your influence, and your business
over time. 

You’ll learn how to do that in this section, starting with the importance of using internal links in
your blog posts… 

The best-performing blogs make frequent use of strategic internal links. An internal link is
simply a link that sends visitors to another page on the same website. For example, you’ll notice
that this post on the DigitalMarketer blog: 

The Customer Value Journey Explained in 800 Words or Less 

Includes internal links to many related posts, including… 

 What Is Digital Marketing?

 Your Digital Marketing Strategy Template (AKA The Customer Value Journey)
 Customer Value Optimization: How to Build an Unstoppable Business

These internal links create numerous benefits, such as: 

( VIEDOS)

 Improving SEO and helping your blog to generate more organic traffic
 Keeping readers engaged with additional relevant content
 Educating visitors on important topics they need to understand 
In this video, Amanda Powell is back and will explain why internal links are such an important
piece of your blog strategy and give you some tips on how to use them on your blog: 

Click here to see the “Customer Value Optimization” post Amanda used as an example in the
video.

What's Next?
Understand the Purpose & Role of Blog Content

Create Blog Content

You’ve Published Your Blog Post, Now What?

 Use Internal Links Often

 Share on Social Media
 Repurpose Your Top Performing Content
 Retarget Your Audience

 Overview
 Resources

Share on Social Media

You’ve hit publish and now your post is live. Besides using internal links, you’re going to want
to use social media. An effective social media strategy will help get your post out into the world,
driving traffic to your site and increasing engagement on your social media channels. 

In this lesson, you’ll learn a 3-step system to effectively post (and repost) your content on social
media. We’re going to focus mainly on Facebook and Instagram since they’re 2 of the biggest
social channels out there. But you can apply the same strategy to whichever social channel is the
best fit for your business.

Step 1: Share Your Post with a Strong Call to Action 

The first step is simple: just share your post on social media.

Give a quick bit of copy and include a CTA to go read the entire article. Also, don’t be afraid to
use emojis and to grab people’s attention, drive engagement, and give a more native look to your
posts. 

In most cases, you’ll need to supply an image of some kind. As you can see in this Facebook
example, we use custom images (as opposed to stock images) for our posts to give our brand a
consistent look and feel:
But you don’t have to create your own custom images. Use the best image you have available
and refine your look over time. 

The process is a little different on Instagram, mainly because of the rules about including links.
Since DigitalMarketer has over 10K followers, we are able to add a link directly to a Story. So
when people swipe up, they’ll be taken to the blog post: 
If you have fewer than 10K followers, you can still drive traffic. Just change your bio link to the
URL of your new blog post and include a CTA in your Story to check out the link in your bio to
learn more. Make your creative and copy compelling enough that people will take that action. 

Here’s an example of a blog link in the bio: 

And that’s all there is to Step 1. The next step is to…

Step 2: Monitor Your Performance 

Keep track of every post you share, and analyze their performance. Your goal here is to identify
the top-performing posts so you can wring the maximum possible benefit from them. 

Note that when we say “top-performing posts,” we’re referring to those posts that generated the
most: 

 Link clicks
 Shares
 Comments

This is important because these are the posts that you’ll focus on in the next step to generate even
more traffic.

Step 3: Repost Pillar Blogs & Top-Performers in New Ways 

Now that you know which blog posts are doing the best job of resonating with your audience, it’s
time to take those blog posts and break them up into different creatives to continue to drive even
more traffic. 

One highly effective strategy is to simply repost the article in a variety of different ways. Here
are some of the changes you can make to repost on Facebook: 

Change the CTA (for example, ask a question).

This blog post was one of our top performers on Facebook, so we reposted the link with a
question that would make readers go, “What is that?” 
This second link share actually performed better than the original one.

Post compelling quotes from the blog.

In this example, we shared a quote from the author of the blog post along with the link. We have
a graphic designer on staff to create these quote images, but if you don’t, you can easily create a
quote image using Canva, Stencil, and other inexpensive resources. 
Take a few tips from the blog and create a mini-infographic. 

We took 4 separate insights from this blog post and then created a tip image—basically a tiny
infographic—from the blog post content. This can make for a compelling and share-worthy
graphic.
Here are a few other ways you can repost links on Facebook: 

 Share a different image from the blog

 Create a video slideshow with images from the blog
 If you have an infographic on the blog post, break that up into snackable images to share
separately 

You can use the same general strategy on Instagram with just a few easy changes.

Repost the Story with stickers. 

You can just take the same exact Story and add some flash with stickers, emojis, and additional
copy. If it fits with your brand, you can have a little fun with it. We took the original Story image
and added the “Cat Reading GIF” and the “yasss” sticker: 

Here’s another example that’s a little less silly. We took the original Story that we had already
posted, and reposted it adding copy and the “now reading” sticker: 
Post quote images. 

Remember how we posted the quote image and tip image on Facebook? Well, this works even
better on Instagram! Take those same images and post them on Instagram, using them to drive
traffic to your blog post and start valuable conversations. 

You can’t link directly to the blog from an Instagram post, but you can still include a strong CTA
using one of these 3 methods: 

Method 1: Send a DM (direct message) containing the blog link to anyone who leaves a
comment. 

Here’s an example of how that looks: 

Notice the caption. “Want 5 more posts + examples? Let me know and I’ll DM you the link!” 

Then, simply send the link to everyone who leaves a comment: 

This can be time-consuming, but it’s well worth the effort since you’ll be sending highly
interested people back to your blog post. 

Method 2: Update your bio to link back to the blog post. 

Then, simply add a caption to your image that says: “Check out the link in our bio for more!” 

Method 3: Post another story with a link to your blog post (if you have 10k followers). 

If you have enough followers, you can always post another story with a link back to your blog
post. Then, add a CTA to your image caption that says: “Check out our story for more!” 

Here’s what that might look like: 

As you can see, sharing blog content on social isn’t “one and done.” 

Instead, you’ll get the best results—and generate the most traffic—by breaking down each post
into several bite-size chunks and testing multiple CTAs.

This way, you’ll be able to share your best posts multiple times in a variety of different formats,
allowing you to appeal to a larger percentage of your audience.

Repurpose Your Top Performing Content

Many content creators operate under the impression that every single piece of content they
publish must always be 100% brand-new and original. 

Believe it or not, this is NOT the case! 

In fact, it’s possible to squeeze more ROI from your content by reusing and repurposing your
best-performing posts into other formats and mediums. 

How does this work? 

It’s conceptually similar to the process you learned in the previous lesson. Except instead of
reposting the same blog multiple times on social media, this time you’ll be using the original
blog post to create additional pieces of content. 

Step 1 is to find a post that performs well. If you notice one of your blog posts is generating
higher-than-average traffic, comments, likes, shares, etc., that’s a good sign that this topic is
resonating with your audience. And that makes it a great post to repurpose. 

How, exactly, do you repurpose a blog post? 

Essentially you just convert the content into a different format. This way, you give people
another place to find it and another way to consume it. 

Some of the new formats you might use include: 

 Turning it into a Lead Magnet to generate leads

 Recording and publishing it as a video on YouTube
 Creating an infographic
 Building a slideshare presentation that you use for a webinar
 Making it into a case study that you present at a conference 

Here’s an example from the DigitalMarketer blog. We published this post, and discovered that it
performed really well: 
So we took the same content and published it as a PDF Lead Magnet, allowing visitors to
download a copy if they gave us their email address. Here’s what the landing page looks like: 
But we didn’t stop there. We also recorded a YouTube video on the topic, sharing some key
insights and linking back to the blog post: 

( VIEDOS)

The idea is simple: when you find a blog post like this that works really well, take maximum
advantage of it by leveraging it in as many different ways as you can. This way you can get more
ROI from your best ideas, while also being able to churn out new content more quickly and
easily. 

Now, don’t get us wrong: you DO need to create new content on a consistent basis. Absolutely. 

But you don’t need to reinvent the wheel every single time. Especially when you’ve already got
existing pieces of content that your audience loves and would gladly consume in different
formats. 
Because, remember, not everyone in your audience is going to read every blog article you
publish, or even read your blog at all. So taking a piece of content from your blog that you
worked hard on and is generating good results for you there, and turning it into other forms of
content that you can use to reach other areas of your audience will only help your overall
marketing strategy.

Retarget Your Audience

In this final lesson, we want to introduce you to one of the single most powerful content
strategies:

Using content plus retargeting to generate leads and sales from your blog. 

(VIEDOS)

Remember when we said near the beginning of this Playbook that “content can sell”? Well, this
is one of the most effective ways we’ve discovered for monetizing your blog. 

In this video, Amanda will explain why retargeting your content is such a powerful strategy and
how you can use it as a step to generate sales. So your free blog can help you nurture your
audience and make money. 

RELATED:

 3 Tips to Set Up a Retargeting Campaign in 24 Hours (Even if You Have Never Heard of
Retargeting Before)
 4 Reasons Why You Should Be Retargeting Your Email Subscribers on Facebook
 Boomerang Traffic Plan Execution Plan 

And that’s it! You’ve made it through the Blog Content Playbook. 

You've come a long way in a short amount of time. And now you have several ways to create
content very quickly. You also have a number of ways to repurpose top-performing content to
generate more traffic and sales from your blog. 

Remember, you can use your new content to... 

 Keep your email list happy and healthy

 Generate traffic through search engines and social channels
 Segment your email list and blog visitors
 Retarget with ads based on a known interest to generate sales 

Now go create some content!