Types of Blog Posts: Styles & Strategies for Effective Content Marketing

Blogs are an important tool for getting your content out there and building your personal brand or internet presence. But not all types of blog posts grab people’s’ attention the same way. To most effectively harness the power of blogging, you should get familiar with the different types of blog posts and what they can do. In this article, we will cover various types of blog posts, their best use cases, and example topics to help with your content marketing.

In addition to pointing out these categories, for each type of blog post, we will list very clear examples and ideas to with generating similar ideas.

Quick Navigation:
Best Blog Post Types For SEO, Affiliate Revenue & Traffic
Best Blogs For Lead Generation
Best Blog Post Types For Link Building
Best Blog Post Types For Social Media
Best Blog Post Types For Sales Support
Best Blog Post Types For Email Marketing

 

Best Blog Post Types For SEO, Affiliate Revenue & Traffic

When you’re writing for SEO and traffic, you want to capture the attention of as many people as possible. SEO isn’t just about keywords, after all. While your keywords are important, the number one driver of your search engine rankings is quality, authoritative content. Nothing can replace great content! With that being said, for SEO, blog posts need to be targeted towards keywords, and optimized.

 

Top/Best Articles

Top/Best articles are more than just “Top 10” listicles. These articles have much more detail. When you’re saying that something is the “best” of whatever you’re writing about, you need to be able to back that up with lots of information. This will give your blog the authoritative voice it needs to impress your audience. In addition to helping boost your SEO and website ranking, top/best articles can also help you build your network by linking to the things that you’re ranking.

Best articles are highly competitive keywords, especially for affiliate marketers because “best” related keywords indicate the searcher has intent to purchase a product now or in the near future. This intent means that affiliate links can often perform extremely well at generating sales if it drives traffic for the intended keywords.

When you do top/best articles, you should definitely write about something you know well or can devote plenty of time to research. You don’t just want to list what’s popular— you want to find what’s best. For example, if you were doing a “Best Coffee Roasts of 2021,” you wouldn’t want to just list Starbucks, you’ll want to research different options and types of coffee roasts. You’d want to dig in and find more in-depth information to show your audience that you’re an authority on the subject.

Example Topics: “Best Dog Beds,” “The Best Laptops For Your College-Bound Teen”. “Top TV Trends of 2021”

Example Articles: Best Hiking Dog Breeds, Best Budget Hiking Backpacks, Best 5 Weight Fly Rods

 

Education / What Is / Definition

Definition blog posts are great for SEO because searching for definitions or for information to understand a high level topics is one of the top things people do on the internet. How many times have you casually googled a word you didn’t know, a term you didn’t quite understand, or a topic you wanted to learn more about? These blog posts have the potential to be useful for your audience, as well as improve the SEO of your site! You can write this type of blog for both advanced terms and basic terms.

These articles often involve covering a topic very thoroughly, much like this article you are currently reading, and answering all types of questions users would want to know, while also pointing to other helpful resources.

Example Topics: “The History Of Mascara,” “Baking Terms Defined,” “What Is SEO?”, “Types of blog posts”

Example Articles: Beginner’s Guide To Fly Fishing, What Is A Tent Vestibule, What is Moisture Wicking?

 

Tutorials / How To

This style of blog post falls into a couple of categories, but explaining how to do something can be an effective blogging strategy. Especially when you find topics that you know your ideal target audience is searching for online.

Keyword research can help identify topics that have search volume. When quality articles don’t exist, this represents a content marketing opportunity to rank organically for keywords, and this can be taken advantage of. This is especially the case when you can find “how to” keywords that represents your target audience searching for a solution to a problem your product or service can solve.

Example Topics: “How to create a blog in WordPress,” “How to optimize a blog post for SEO”, “How to conduct keyword research for free”

Example Articles: How To Become A Travel Writer, How to Use A Fish Finder, How To Cast A Spinning Reel

 

Product Reviews

Product reviews are a great way to attract an audience because nowadays everybody checks for reviews before making a purchase. This type of blog post should give an in-depth review that goes beyond what customers might say on a sales site. You want to make sure that your review is the most complete and can answer all kinds of questions a potential customer might have. You can also use affiliate links to generate some income from this type of post!

In addition to generating organic traffic, this can help build a partnership with another brand, gain links back to the website, and help with the overall site authority.

Be sure that you give an honest review of the product in question— if you give a glowing recommendation to something that is made cheaply and breaks right away, your audience will stop trusting you.

Example Topics: “2021 AirPods Pro Review,” “Three Meal Kit Reviews,” “The Best Business App of 2021”

Example Articles: Riversmith Fly Rod Rack Review, Fox River Socks Review, Gossamer Mariposa 60 Backpack Review

 

Best Blog Post Types For Lead Generation

When you want to attract customers to your business, you want to show them exactly what you can offer. In these blog posts, your expertise should be on full display to show potential customers how great you are at what you do. These posts should also be on topics that will interest individuals that are in the middle end of a buyer’s funnel so that some type of offer and value can be given in exchange for information.

 

Vs Posts

In a Vs post, you are comparing brands, products, subjects, or other things relevant to your business. These posts should be insightful and cover the nuances of each of the compared items so that your readers understand the depth of what you have to say. They should come away with an understanding of where you stand and why you make the recommendations that you do. These can also be done in an informational style for subjects or categories that may be confusing to consumers.

These articles can be great for driving organic traffic via SEO, but they may also be hugely valuable tools for sales teams when speaking with consumers that are trying to determine what product or service is best for them. Think along the lines of Zoom vs Microsoft Teams. This asset can help drive organic traffic, but also help highlight the benefits and disadvantages of certain products or services. Keep in mind, that for organic rankings, an unbiased approach is likely necessary to rank and drive traffic.

Example Topics: “Cadbury vs. Hershey’s Baking Chocolate,” “iPad vs. Surface Pro,” “Nikon vs. Canon DSLRs”

Example Articles: High Ankle Vs Mid Vs Low Cut Boots, Down Vs Synthetic Sleeping Bags, Wet Flies Vs Dry Flies

 

Problem / Solution Posts

Problems draw crowds, and solutions keep them reading. For this kind of blog post, you can talk about any type of relevant problem, so long as you have a solution, or help read the leader to helping solve a problem. This can be a conceptual problem that you worked through, or maybe a physical problem that you’re good at troubleshooting.

Not only can these articles be SEO powerhouses, but they can be great selling tools for sales teams. Knowing your target audience means knowing their biggest problems, and helping them find the best possible solutions. These articles can help drive highly relevant traffic to your website, and help build trust with current prospects.

Example Topics: “How To Get More Subscribers,” “How to Increase Online Leads,” “How To Hang Your Pictures Level Every Time,” “Fix Your Bad Business Habits”

Example Articles: Butt Chafing Prevention & Treatment, How To Become A Travel Writer, How To Stay Warm While Winter Hiking

 

Best Blog Post Types For Link Building

Linking to other sites and having other sites link to you is crucial for any online business. Blog posts are a great way to improve your link building! They’re written content that can have all kinds of embedded information, including links to other sites.

 

Guest Articles

Guest articles work two ways. You can host a guest article, or you can write a guest article. Writing a guest article for somebody else’s blog exposes their audience to your content and may generate interest and traffic that way. In addition to this, the link from the other website, to your own site will help improve your site’s authority, and hopefully rankings ability in the long run. Hosting a guest article brings a new voice to your site that can entertain your readers and help build up your ties within the industry. Either way, you get to develop your network!

Example Topics: “What Your Dog Groomer Really Thinks,” “An App Developer Speaks Out,” “Guest Post: A Professional Photographer Shares Her Secrets!”

Example Articles: Why You Should Be Looking for CRO Agencies for Your PPC, Merging Passions To Change Your Life, Balancing SEO and PPC to Maximize Search Results

 

Infographics/Calculators

Infographics are a fantastic resource for getting site visits. They’re both informative and entertaining. They also deliver a nice break from your average blog post, and they give you a chance to add some fun color and content to your site. (They also make fantastic social media posts because social media algorithms reward images!)

Calculators are similar to infographics, but they are more specific to helping people figure out some sort of total. These typically look like tables, whereas infographics can be tables, charts, graphs, illustrations, or any other kind of image.

The largest benefit of these types of articles is that they add a ton of value to readers, and therefore, are assets that tend to organically build links to your website, and therefore, will boost the authority of your website. Some calculators and infographics can also be great organic traffic assets. This is the best type of calculator or resource, as you can generate traffic, as well as links consistently to your site.

Example Topics: “Timeline of Computer Development,” “How Much Walking Should I Do In A Day,” “Deepest Lakes Compared”

Example Articles: Hiking Calories Burned Calculator, Hiking Time Calculator

 

Interviews

Like guest articles, interviews are a great way to build connections and improve your network. This type of post can be done by emailing a question list to somebody— it doesn’t have to be done in person or over the phone. You should pick interesting people or important people in your area of interest to catch your readers’ attention. You can ask industry questions, questions about current events, or even some personal questions to make your readers feel like they’re getting to know this person.

Example Topics: “Check, Please: An Interview With A Professional Editor,” “Sitting Down With A CEO: What She Wants You To Know About Business,” “Beauty Guru Secrets: Tips From A Master”

 

Best Blog Post Types For Social Media

Social media is all about personal connections, and these types of blog posts are all about the kinds of personal details that make people want to share them. Posts that do well or even go viral on social media are often shorter posts that can be scanned easily, or topics that are very relevant in the moment. Shocking news, or contrarian views on topics can also be highly effective on social.

 

Lists, Checklists, And Listicles

Lists and listicles are fairly quick reads that people can flip through easily and that you can pack chock full of keywords. Lists are easy to scan and are often great for social media sharing, which can help grow your audience. Lists are also great because they can be themed to the calendar, current events, trends, and other time-appropriate ideas. You don’t always have to rank lists, too— you can just list out several related things for a quick, fun read.

List and checklist articles also can have great SEO and link building value. Checklists can help generate leads, and links organically, and list articles that go heavily in depth have the potential to rank for high value keywords if the search volume exists.

Example Topics: “Ten Fun Facts About Presidential Pets,” “10 Coolest Offbeat Vacations,” “Top 20 Accessories for Techies”

Article Examples: Backpacking Checklist, Best Hikes In Rocky Mountain National Park, Best Hikes In New England, Fly Fishing Accessories

 

Expert Advice

Expert advice posts are kind of like interviews, except instead of asking one person several questions, you’re asking several people the same question. These posts can be really quick to compile— you can ask multiple people the same question over Twitter or another social network, and then edit your list together from there. This can be a great way to give your audience a snapshot of what’s going on in your industry and expose them to a lot of different, interesting perspectives.

In addition, using other expert advice can help amplify your content as they have more reason to share it as it contains information from them. These types of articles can be beneficial for more than just social media as well when targeting keywords, or being used for link building activities.

Example Topics: “Experts Weigh In: The One Thing You Should Know About Content Marketing,” “Opinions On Skincare Routines,” “What’s The Most Important Thing To Consider When Buying A Car?”

Example Article: Trail Runners Vs Hiking Boots, Best 5 Weight Fly Rods

 

Personal Stories

Even though you might never see them face-to-face, your audience is made up of real people just like you. Telling personal stories and sharing personal experiences is a great way to connect with them. By reminding your audience that they’re reading a real person’s work, you foster a social experience that builds an emotional connection to your business or brand. This type of content is becoming significantly more popular in the age of influencer marketing where people’s daily routines, favorite gear, and background are highlight sought for by audiences.

Sometimes personal experience might be relevant for tips or other style content as well. This can add a personal touch that adds to the reader’s trust.

Example Topics: “My Daily Routine,” “My Dog Adoption Story,” “My First Time Flying”

Example Articles: Tips For Finishing The NH 48, Lessons From My First Winter Camping Trip

 

Unbelievable / Remarkable Stories

Like personal stories, remarkable stories help create an emotional attachment to your business. You definitely want to keep these light, positive, and/or humorous— people get enough serious news and often would rather share something with a positive emotional impact. Just be careful with these— if you post too many “remarkable” things, people might stop finding them remarkable. There’s a balance between getting your audience excited and losing them to what they think is fiction or overselling.

Example Topics: “The Craziest Proposals,” “A Daring Rescue,” “A Bold Plan Paid Off” – You get the drift.

 

Checklists

Checklists are a simple concept that most people use in their daily lives, even if it’s just mental. By applying checklists to your industry or business, you can create a blog post that’s highly linkable and likely to be revisited. Be sure to be specific about what the checklist is for and what the steps or items are!

As stated prior, checklist can have tons of SEO value as well.

Example Topics: “Fishing Trip Packing Checklist,” “Dog Grooming Checklist,” “Photography Session Planning Checklist”

Example Articles: Backpacking Checklist, Hiking First Aid Kit Checklist, New Hampshire 48 4,000 Footers

 

Best Blog Post Types For Sales Support

When you’re trying to support your sales team, you need to understand what specific content they need. Usually, this is content related to the product or services you offer, as well as content that shows how you support your existing clients. Your customers will want to know a lot about your services or products, so you should have content on hand that will help your sales team answer those questions quickly.

Content that highlights the particular problems that your target audience has, helps them solve those problems, and explains how your product or service is a great solution to the problems that your audience is experiencing can be extremely beneficial. This content can be used to nurture leads and opportunities through the sales funnel, and eventually into sales.

 

Case Studies

Case studies are a great way to show potential customers just how happy your existing customers are with your business, and how your products or services helped solve the unique problems they were having. To write this kind of post, contact a few of your best customers and talk through how they have successfully used your product or service. This type of blog post can also be great for generating leads because it lets potential customers imagine themselves having the same experience as your successful clients!

Case studies can also capture links from customers / clients by having them share these articles on their own websites. You will often find websites turning case studies into downloadable assets that are acquired by readers after giving contact information. This is a common lead generation tactic with case studies.

Example Topics: “How [X Company] Grew Their Businesses in 2021,” “Social Media Success With [X product or service],” “How One Client Doubled Their Income”

Example Content: Case Study: Why Paladin Realty Switched from Smarsh to Intradyn, Amazon Fulfillment — Reaching More Customers When It Matters Most

 

Questions You Should Be Asking

This type of content is great for your customers because it helps them know what to ask… but it’s also great for your sales team because they can have the answers prepared in advance! If you provide smart questions that your sales team can give smart answers to, your clients will feel more secure in their choice to work with your business.

You will often find websites turning this type of content into downloadable eBooks or white papers that are acquired by readers after giving contact information. This is a common lead generation tactic with case studies.

Example Topics: “Questions You Should Ask Your Accountant,” “Questions You Should Have For Your Home Decorator,” “Questions You Should Have For Your Wedding Photographer”

Example Content: 5 Questions to Ask Before Choosing Your Next Bolting Tool, Ask These Questions Before Making Your Next Aviation Decision

 

Best Blog Post Types For Email Marketing

If you’re going to be emailing your blog posts to your customers and potential customers, you should make sure that the blog posts have value and serve a purpose. While all blog post types should be emailed to your list, there are specific types that may be especially valuable for an email list. If you email somebody a story, they’ll wonder why you sent it. But if you send them a deal announcement, content that solves their problems or answers their questions, product updates, or company potentially a company newsletter, they’ll be more likely to read the email and the post all the way through. Everybody gets a ton of emails every day— make yours stand out by making it valuable to the reader.

It is important to remember that your existing clients, newly generated leads, and old but not converted opportunities may all need to be treated differently. A segmented email list is essential for optimized performance, and many times, content should only be sent to specific segments of email lists, rather than entire lists.

 

Testimonials

These are similar to case studies in that they involve customer feedback, but testimonials are shorter and don’t go into as much detail. They should highlight the kinds of success your customers have, and ideally will include testimonials from multiple customers.

Example Topics: “[X Companies Experience W/ Y Product Or Service],” “Customer Feedback,” “What Our Clients Loved In 2021”

 

Recent News / Breaking News

Email can be a fantastic way to immediately get news out to your audience. These emails should be linking to blog posts on news topics. In addition to being great for email, Google News has now created a massive opportunity for media outlets and websites to take advantage of time sensitive topics. This can easily be seen with breaking news stories, sports games, and other events.

Example Topics: “Nor’easter storm coming this weekend”, “Injury update for XYZ Player”, “X event cancelled/postponed for Y reason”

Example Articles: Bills Vs Patriots Recap, Dalvin Cook Injury

 

Company News

It’s important to keep your clients and potential clients in the know about how your company’s doing. This is especially important as your company grows and you expand what you have to offer. For an emailed blog post, you shouldn’t do a whole newsletter but rather focus on succinct, important news briefings. Think of this type of blog post as headline news rather than a full news broadcast! Be sure to keep this information pertinent to your email list, and segment out certain audiences if needed.

Example Topics: “Coming Soon In 2022,” “Reflections on Our 2021 Growth,” “Exciting New Product Launch!”

Example Blogs: December ’21 Vitalian

 

Deals

An exclusive email deal is a great way to encourage fence-sitters to take the plunge and sign up with you. Deals can also be a way to encourage repeat business or a good way to gather feedback. You can offer your customers a percentage off, a free product or subscription, a discount on future purchases, or some other kind of deal depending on what your business is and what you can afford to offer.

This doesn’t necessarily have to be done in a blog post format, but this is an easy way to track results, and make it easy to share and provide any needed direction to viewers.

Example Topics: “20% Off Code,” “Buy One Month, Get One Month Free,” “Free Accessory With Purchase”

 

Product Updates & Product Support

These types of posts are crucial for your customers! If anything changes with your product, your customers should know about it. An email campaign is a great way to get the news out. But these posts are also great for potential customers to see, too, because they demonstrate the support you offer post-purchase. Your potential customers want to know that your support extends past the initial transaction— they want to see how you show your customers that you support and value them, or that their is consistent effort to improve the product/service.

Example Topics: “Important Software Update,” “Tips For Using Your Device,” “Client Support Information”

Example Articles: Archive Operating System (AOS 6.10) Updates, Major 2021 Semrush Updates: New Features to Power Your Marketing

These are just some of the many types of blog posts you can use to market your content effectively. Blogs are a great tool that can be used in almost any way you can imagine and can support businesses in any industry. Getting familiar with the different functions of blog post types is one way you can easily increase your web presence and your business’s success.