22 solid tips for quality blog & social posts

Generating leads from your posted content

In most cases, a post does not yield a lead or an opportunity. If you want leads from your posts or for it to generate business opportunities, then take advantage of these 22 tips.

In these strange times, we are confronted with a different way of communicating with one another, mainly through virtual conversations and virtual meetings.  It’s our experience that people respond best when you keep it as personal as possible. 

With a track record in B2B, we have gained extensive knowledge about the user experience (UX), conversion optimization, marketing automation, and Google analytics. B2C is also no stranger to us, we also have the necessary background to understand B2B2C processes and understand the customer behind our customers’ target group. And to guarantee alignment between often parallel marketing communication from B2B and B2C.

The first question we get asked by clients is how the interaction on social media messages can be improved. The second question is why informing messages work better than contextual messages and are there any ways to create higher visibility and ranking?

Likes and shares of your posts will likely come from your closest environment, typically that includes family, friends, colleagues, customers and suppliers. They love to hear from you and are especially interested in reading what you have to say. Maybe they attended the event or webinar you organized and were enthusiastic and willing to share or like your message. This engagement, of course, helps build your community.

In many cases, contextual blogs try to help, inform and train people. So basically you’re trying to share valid tips, best practices, avoid mistakes, and share results.

To help you optimise the return on your content, we’re sharing these top 22 tips to help you get conversion or leads.

1. Articles with long titles (14+ words) get 2x more traffic, 2x more shares and 5x more backlinks than articles with short titles (7-10 words). Just test it. You will see the difference.
2. So-called listicles (articles with lists, 7 tips for…, 5 reasons for…) get 2x more traffic and 2x more social shares than other article types, followed by guides and how-tos. For the full study, see: https://www.semrush.com/blog/anatomy-of-top-performing-articles/
3. Apply Linkbait. For example, try mentioning important independent names/associations/websites within the industry you are targeting. They will likely follow you back and like your message, bringing you to the attention of a larger relevant audience/target group. 
4. Longreads of 3000+ words gets 3x more traffic, 4x more shares and 3.5x more backlinks than medium length articles (901-1200 words). We are very curious about this. If anyone disagrees, let us know your experiences. We often post shorter blogs, but that’s not because we don’t want to make them longer. We just want to make sure everything is relevant. So, that’s why this article is 22 tips and not 50! 
5. Share new insights on a high-profile topic. If the focus has long been on only one subject, then that works like a magnet. You can see that around you on various social media platforms.
6. Make a strong statement in your title. Don’t be afraid, speak up. Support your opinion with findings and insights.
7. Critically write about a specific group of people or beliefs that will trigger opponents to publish a counter-story. Don’t be afraid here either. We would like to hear whether people can come up with more tips and whether they want to debunk this story.
8. Share hugely detailed information and statistics. We also share many figures in this blog, and many people use these figures to convince people internally or externally.
9. Encourage interaction by, for example, asking for an opinion, asking questions or asking for a response.
10. Always add images (images / videos, animated gifs) (65% increase). A blog, a post, a post without an image has little value. People often think in images.
11. Share your best content. This point may seem obvious, but we see plenty of examples of poor quality content posted online.
12. Test your mail sharing at different times. According to Hubspot, the best times to post content on LinkedIn are Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays between 7:30 am to 8:30 am, 12:00 pm and 5:00 pm to 6:00 pm, or Tuesday between 10:00 am and 11:00 am. Stats published my mailing platforms are a pretty accurate source of knowledge, as they have been tracking this activity for years and test it frequently.
13. Make your point in the first three lines. The reader will only click on ‘read more’ if the first three lines are interesting.
14. Think about whom you want to reach in your message and what your content is. The person who makes the purchase decision probably does not care about all the specs, while a product owner does. This tip is a difficult one because the platform is also decisive in this. Only take this into account if possible.
15. Trigger readers by naming results in your title. For example, ‘65% more growth…’ This type of claim is powerful. However, be careful, any statements you make in a title, must be followed through with evidence.
16. Use #. Hashtags positively affect the algorithm. If you don’t use hashtags, you have 50% less impact in your feed. Three hashtags are the magic number. An overload of hashtags harms the number of views and engagement. Do not use more than six. Check in the LinkedIn search bar, whether these hashtags are used more often and are sufficiently popular with other users. If not, choose other hashtags so you can be found better by non-connections.
17. Comments on your posts are the real engine to increase your reach, likes only have 50% impact. Sharing has even less impact, namely 25%. 
18. LinkedIn, for example, like other social media platforms, wants to keep the visitor on its platform for as long as possible because it makes them more valuable to advertisers. How you shape your message has direct consequences on your reach. Place your message first without a link, and via edit again with a link. You bypass the algorithm.
19. Posts from highly skilled users score higher than those who are not. So above all, share in a personal capacity.
20. React actively to industry-specific posts/messages.
21. Tell from your personal experience.
22. Posts are often ‘content’ in the early funnel, so using emotion is essential. Be creative in the image or design within your post.

Although this blog contains approximately 3000 words, we have stopped at 22 tips. There are many other tips, but they need a bit more explanation. So let us know if you want to know more.

And we stopped because we absolutely must remain relevant!

Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash

About the author Gerard van den Bogaart , Managing Director at BBN Netherlands (Referro), has been working with SMEs and within the corporate environment for over 20 years. He has been working with marketing intelligence along with online marketing, campaign management, marketing automation and telemarketing for many years and understands the need for e-mail campaigns to generate good ROI.