You already know that good content is the smartest way to get traffic on autopilot for years to come, but it’s, not easy to figure out which type of content performs the best it can be pretty confusing, especially when everyone is claiming to be An expert and anyway, what do you write about?
How should it be structured who is going to read it and then what about the marketing? Well, today, I’m going to help you to fill in the blanks, because I have been a professional digital marketer since the 1990s, and by the end of today’s tutorial, you will know what type of content to make.
What kind of results you should expect? Even before you begin you’ll also know how to structure your content, and then you’ll know how to promote it. So today I’m going to teach you how to use list posts for traffic generation now a list post is a high-value piece of content that contains a list of numbered points or useful tips.
And if you’re already familiar with my content, then you’ll know that I personally use these myself, and that is because they work so well so list posts have always been a proven way to drive traffic.
They’re, quick and easy to make. They’re, a great way to demonstrate your knowledge and to build credibility. They’re great for SEO, and google loves these types of articles list posts work so well because they’re incredibly shareable.
They help people receive an aha moment which makes them want to share that content with their friends and family and people also interested in that topic. They’re, easy to scan, read and people find them very useful, but while they are quick and easy to make it’s really about more than just creating a list of numbers and then filling in the blanks.
The fact is, most list posts, aren’t very useful, so people don’t share them and then the marketer doesn’t get the traffic that they expected. So let’s. Make sure that you have the best possible chance of success? Let’s head over to the computer and make a list post step by step before you do anything.
You have to define your goals. So let’s. Draw on goals on the digital whiteboard, so it’s, okay, getting all this traffic. But what do you want to do with it? We need to have a conversion mechanism, because, obviously i want you to make as much money as possible.
So we don’t just create these articles and drive traffic for the sake of it. We have to have an end result. We have to have what revenue right. So what is it going to be for you? Do you want this traffic to click on an ad? Do you want them to become leads? Do you want them to generate sales for best results? I always recommend that you start with lead gen.
So if we convert this traffic into leads, then we can sell to them over and over and over again it’s going to be different for every type of business model. But if you ask me that’s, the best one, but it might be different for you, so you decide what that conversion is going to be for you and your business.
You have to make that decision for yourself and we do this. So we know what type of call to action to use, so we have a cta call to action inside the the piece of content. So once we know what the call to action is going to be well, we just tell them directly what they need to do to take the next step.
So i’m, going to walk you through a structure in a couple of minutes, but for best results your cta should be relevant to the rest of the article. So, for example, if you’re teaching people how to play guitar, then the cta needs to follow on so it need.
It needs to be the next logical step that they should take to solve. That problem. I’m, going to talk about problems in a second, because that’s. How you deliver value that’s? How you create the the big heart moment it’s by solving problems and simplifying those problems.
We’ll talk about that more in a second and then before we create anything. We have to have an idea of how it’s going to be marketed, so you have to have some kind of loose structure of of an email subject, line and very roughly what the body is going to be.
So let’s. Put in email, so we know what people are going to connect with on the email list. We also have to have a rough idea of what social media channels we’re, going to use so draw social for that, in addition to social media, we should also be thinking about outreach.
So let’s put on outreach on there. So that means are we going to ask people to promote this piece of content? Are we going to go out there and say hey? I noticed that you’ve shared a similar piece of content.
Would you be interested in sharing this too? So once we’ve defined our goals and we know roughly what we’re going to do now. We have to think about the content itself before we get into the research phase.
We have to enter this with the right state of mind, so we have to know that we want to make things simple. So what i mean by that is, we can take a a complicated topic or an issue or a problem, and then we can simplify it.
We can break it down into individual steps that they need to take to solve that problem, or we can take something that is difficult and then make it easy. When you do this, the content now has enormous value.
It separates itself from everything else out there, and it becomes this incredibly shareable, incredibly valuable piece of content that people want to share with other people, because they’ve received value from it.
A good way of doing that is making things step by step. So we we break it down into the logical steps that they need to take. I ‘ Ll. Show you how to do that in a second when we come to actually creating the content.
So, with all this in mind, now we have to move on to the research phase. A good tool to use, for this is buzzsumo.com. We can use a limited number of searches every day for free, so what i want to do is type in some seed keywords.
So some very rough ideas of what we’re going to target, so i might type in learn, guitar and then click find content. What it’s going to do now is show me the best performing content for those keywords.
So it’s going to show us the the level of facebook engagement, twitter shares, pinterest shares, reddit engagement, number of links, evergreen score and then the total level of engagement for each piece of content.
So now we know what is performing well on social media. So now we have some kind of very loose structure, a very loose model of the content that we should be creating. We at least know what the marketplace responds to now.
We’re, not going to copy this. What we are going to do is cherry pick, the best bits of the best performing content to create something unique. So i’ll. Show you how to do that using a free tool in a second.
So what i want you to do now is go through this list. Take note of the websites that are publishing this type of content because they have your target audience and at some point in the future, you might want to include these in your outreach program.
So now we know what type of content the market responds to. For example, four slide: guitar tricks: you can learn four guitar tricks, you can learn. So maybe we want to include the word tricks in our content.
People seem to respond positively to that so spend a little bit of time with buzzsumo get the lay of the land. See what people in your space are really connecting with and sharing on social media? Here we can see.
You know this piece of content has had what nine thousand almost ten thousand shares so use this as a rough general guide, we don’t wan na we don’t want to use this as gospel information. We just use it as a basic guide before we move on to the next stage, which is keyword.
Research for this. We’re going to use semrush semrush has a free version available. You don’t have to pay anything to get this data. So let’s type in in the keyword, magic tool. Let’s type in learn, guitar tricks.
We can choose where we want to bring the data from. So if we’re targeting usa traffic leave it as usa, if you want to target another country, go through the list, find your country there and then click search.
Now we’re, going to get a limited number of results for free that’s perfectly fine, because it just tells us that there is some activity, some level of interest in this particular topic. So we’re, not looking for any particular search volume per se.
What we’re looking for is just activity. However, if the search volume is crazy, high, like hundreds of thousands of searches a month, then avoid it learn. Guitar tricks has a search volume of 30. The keyword difficulty is 74.
. Now i’ve spoken to semrush professionals, the people behind semrush about keyword, difficulty, they told me themselves don’t pay that much attention to keyword. Difficulty, if you create a good piece of content, then you should be able to do pretty well with all things being equal, so don’t worry too much about the keyword difficulty.
Another indication is cost per click cpc. So that tells us that people are paying to run ads to target this key phrase, so that tells us there’s money there, so we might want to go for guitar learning tricks.
So when we’ve got an idea of what our keywords are going to be. Let’s head over to a tool called phrase.i. Oh, you can use it for free. Let’s, just double check because it’s been a while, since i’ve signed up so you can use.
I think it’s. Maybe five documents for free. So what is included on the phrase free plan? So yeah? You get five documents every month that’s, probably enough to do this, but what i’m going to do is put an affiliate link in the description.
So if you want to upgrade to the full version, the same version that i have i’ll earn a small commission for that recommendation, but i only ever recommend tools i personally use. So, as you can see, i’m using phrase at the moment, so we want to go to the content section go to outline builder and now we type in our keywords.
What it’s going to do, is go out and have a look at the serps search engine results pages. It’s, going to look at quora reddit it’s, going to give us an idea of what people are. Actually searching for so let’s type in learn, guitar tricks or learning.
Guitar tricks click enter. So now it’s, going to go out and bring back quite a lot of data. Here it’s. Asking me to expand uh this list by getting an add-on. Apparently this is a bug that’s experiencing at the moment and and they have promised that their customers, it will be fixed soon, but we don ‘
T really need this. Auto complete keyword list anyway, google will give that to us for free, i’ll. Show you how to do that now. So if we go to google and we type in learning guitar, then we’re, going to have a drop down list, an auto complete drop down list, so it’s.
You know lots of keyword, ideas there. Anyway, let’s, go back to phrase, so we’re, targeting learning guitar tricks. Here we have a list of related questions that people are also asking about this topic, so we might want to include these in an outline.
If we scroll down, we can see what’s being asked on quora and also if we go down far enough, we’ll, get to ready, so that’s. What people are really interested in when it comes to learning guitar tricks? So here we can choose some questions to answer, because we we really want to be starting with problems.
So we just address. Excuse me: we address problems that we can solve, so we might want to address some of these. How can i teach myself to play the guitar? What is the best method to learn qatar? We might want to add that.
Is it possible to learn guitar by yourself? So we would go through this list and create some kind of very loose structure, and then we can go ahead and create document when we do that. What phrase is going to do is: go out to the search engine results page and bring back the top 20 results.
I think it’s also going to take a deep dive into quora and also into reddit. So take note of this: on the left hand, side we have a content brief. This is going to contain your very least structure. We can also add research, we can add links in there and then we can pass that on to someone else to write the article for us if we want to so we can outsource this because we have the key points that we know the the article should Cover i’ll.
Show you another way to do this in a second. On the right hand, side we have lots of really valuable information, so, for example, it tells us that the average word count of our competitors is over 2 000 words.
So our article should be somewhere in that region too. It should have five headers, at least should have at least one link out and then how it should have some images as well. So here you can go through the results of the serps and the sub headings.
So subheadings are great for seo. These are key points and look at the very first result. So 10 mistakes you could be making as a beginner guitarist. That is a listicle itself and it’s currently hitting the number one position position.
Excuse me in the serps so that’s, the power of listicles, and we could go through that and add these suggestions to our outline. So, for example, if we find something relevant, let’s say pick slides. We can add that to the list double stops.
That could be a good one too. Let’s scroll through this, so rehearsing stand up and sitting down. That could be a good thing to talk about, so we would go through this list and build a fairly loose structure now.
Traditionally, you would use this to create one piece of content, and you can do that. You can absolutely do that, but what we are going to do is use this to create a master piece of content, a master list, if you like, and then at some point in the future, you’re, going to drill down into each one of These and create an individual listicle.
So what that means is you are now creating a series of listicles think about how powerful that is. I’ll, draw it out as a diagram, so it’s, easy to understand. So let’s start with this master list, so this could be the 10 best ways to x.
So each point here so point: one point two point: three: each one will have a paragraph of content and then link out to another article that takes a deep dive into that particular point. So each of these now link out and what happens over time is we create this kind of hierarchy structure? So when we do this, when we create this type of hierarchy, well, search engines, love it.
It’s, easy for for your readers and your audience to get value, and ultimately this structure is what will create an authority website. So let me give you an example because let’s say we have this piece of content: six, quick, guitar techniques, every player should know.
If we go through this list, which is palm muting and choking vibrato string bending all these different techniques, what we could do is take a deep dive into well, let’s, say string bending, so now we could go.
We could create a separate piece of content, the 10 best ways to master string, bending and then link out. Let me show you another way to create an outline, so we start with the customer journey. So let’s start here with a problem, and then we arrive down here at a solution and we think about all the steps that someone needs to take in the order.
They need to take them to arrive at that solution. So you could use that as a very loose structure for a piece of content for a listicle, or we could take just this step and then we could take a deep dive into that list out all the steps that they need to take.
And now we have dozens and dozens of high value, listicles or list posts that can help us to build an authority website. Let me show you how to get even more ideas, because back in phrase we have this section questions we have serp questions, so this has been pulled from the search engine results page.
So there are more questions that we can answer and we also have. We have people also ask phrase, goes out and pulls all them in to this, so there we can see more problems that people are having and then we can drill into quora and then reddit.
We also have this related section. If we click there, we can now expand out and go beyond this piece of content, so 10 guitar tips. I wish someone had taught me again that’s. Another list post. Can you see how powerful they are when they’re when they’re done right here we have an 11-step program for beginners that’s, a list post.
So let’s. Take one of these. Let’s, go with what is the best method to learn guitar, so we can take a deep dive into that topic. So if we go to this search field here we can ask phrase oops. We can ask phrase to bring back information for just that.
So now we have a master list of list posts. We’re, going to create, let’s, take a deep dive into one of these and start building one out. So what is the best method to learn? Guitar, let’s, give ourselves a bit of space to work here in phrase.
You can create a brand new document if you want to so what is the best method to learn? Guitar, let’s. Go with this piece of content. Let’s, go with that, so the best way to learn guitar in three steps.
What we could do is paste that in here, so now we have some research. Now, obviously, we’re, not going to take this piece of content and just use it. What we are going to do is use that as inspiration as some kind of loose guide, to help us figure out the right type of content to include in this piece of content.
So let’s. Go through this, so the best way to learn. Guitar at home, let’s, paste that in there as well nine tips for learning guitar by yourself. We could paste that in there. So now we have a lot of content, a lot of inspiration to go through, and this gives us a real, solid structure for that one problem.
So what is the best method to learn? Guitar so hopefully, hopefully, you can see that instead of just creating a numbered list and then filling in the blanks and all that that doesn’t really provide value.
Instead, what we’re doing is starting with a real problem. People want to learn, guitar tricks and then we’re drilling down to a very niche level, and then we’re, going even further into the niche. So what we’re doing is creating a series of list posts that will support each other, and this gives us linking opportunities.
So we can create almost like an internal network on our websites of of a high value series of list posts that each one is individually shareable, but each one connects to the other. Hopefully, you can see how we’ve weaved, that together and the seo benefits of that is going to be immense.
Also when people share it on social media. Guess what’s going to happen when they come into your funnel or your piece of content? They’re, going to click through they’re going to move around and they’re, going to get immense value.
So now you have the the seed point of starting an authority website all based on this one single strategy, and because each piece of content will have that golden aha moment it increases the shareability.
So obviously we don’t stop here. We also need to add images so for this i’m. I’m, going to use a website called pixels.com, so let’s type in a seed keyword. We’re, going to get lots of images that we can use.
These are royalty, free images and we can just take them put them into to the websites. So we need strong images to increase that shareability on social media, the one that i use quite a lot. I tend to use pixels a lot, but i also use another site called freepik.
com. They do have a free version available. I’m using the the premium version at the moment, which costs about 13 bucks a month 13 euros. I think it’s. Well worth it for me, but as far as i know, they do have some free options.
So free pick and then pixels they’re, pretty good sites to use for your images. So once we’ve got a piece of content all made. How do we go out and promote it? So obviously we can promote it on email, social media, but at the beginning of this i mentioned outreach.
Let me show you how to do that in a really cool non-invasive way that should get you some good results. So for this we’re, going to go ahead and use tweet deck so that’s tweetdeck.twitter.com. What this is is going to allow us to do is see what people are sharing on social media, what they’re discussing when it comes to our niche, and then we can get involved and join in the discussion.
We can reach out to people who are sharing similar pieces of content and say: hey. I ‘ Ve also got this. Do you fancy giving you know sharing this amongst your audience? So here we’re, going to create columns so on the left hand, side, click, add column, hit, search and now let’s type in something like learn.
Guitar add that to the list – and here we can see that people are sharing content about learning guitar, so this person here camden learning, has shared a piece of content that is similar to yours. So we might want to reach out and say: can you share our one two, but we want to make sure that we’re getting in front of an audience right, so there’s, no point asking people to share share our stuff.
If no one is consuming what they’re already sharing, so let me show you how to target those twitter accounts here we have this filter, icon click on that go down to engagement and we want to have at least well let’S say at least one like you can change this.
If you want so, you can have at least one retweet. If that’s, what you’re, going for – or at least one reply i’d, say the minimum is at least one like. So let’s close that up and now we’ve changed the results to a list of people that have engagement, that’s so important.
So now we know if we reach out to this one, let’s say this: this twitter account we have a better chance of driving traffic back to our content because remember it’s, not the best piece of content that gets discovered.
It’s, the best marketed piece of content. So with that in mind, if you are consistent with this, you can achieve amazing results like matt. He has made over two million dollars thanks to my training and if you want to know the secret – and you are serious about this – then head over to profitcopilot.
com traffic and get that free training course, where i will show you how i got over 30 000 website Visitors every day for free okay! So now that you have a great piece of content that people will share, let’s, put it in front of even more people, so check out this tutorial, where i show you how to access little secret traffic groups that you can use for traffic Jen thanks for watching and i’ll, see you again soon take care.
