Why How To Posts Can Be Great Traffic Generators

Looking to increase your traffic to your business blog and get more eyes in front of your brand and products? Ensuring your business has a blog is a great place to start, and keeping it updated regularly will help to build a stead stream of traffic. If you want to generate some great, relevant, useful and search-optimized content that your right people are looking for, consider adding some handy How To posts into your editorial calendar.

Why How To?

How To posts are great for a number of reasons:

1. They position you as an expert in your industry
2. They’re easy to write, because you can often write the content in instructional list form
3. Generally, no research is required – you’ll often be writing what you know, in your own words
4. They offer relevant information your customers will find useful, which will encourage them to come back to your blog
5. They contain information your customers are actively searching for, getting warm leads in front of your brand
6. They can be great for SEO, since users frequently search ‘how to’ topics online

Which How To Topics Make Good Posts?

If including some How To topics will suit your business blog, how do you know which How Tos to write? Topic ideas can come from virtually anywhere, but it’s always good to start with the basics.

Consider the questions you’re generally asked by your customers. If there are a few that come up time and time again, add them to your editorial calendar and blog them as a series. While these topics are great because you already know your customers are interested, they offer the added benefit of saving you some time in the long term. The next time a prospective client emails you about the topic, you can send them a helpful link to the How To post, inviting them to call you for more information should they have any further questions.

Other places to come up with How To post topics:

• Keep an eye on questions and conversations on social media
• Stay in the know on industry news, and weigh in on topical issues
• Get back to basics and ask yourself what you would need to know if you were a new customer
• Invite your existing customers to ask questions, or encourage them to participate in an online poll or survey

How To Write a How To Post

Writing a How To post doesn’t differ all that much to writing a regular blog post, although you’ll want to focus on keeping things simple, and in a more linear, step-by-step format. Break the information down into shorter chunks or paragraphs, and don’t be tempted to gloss over anything you think is obvious. Information that’s well known to you may be completely new to your readers, so maintain a focus of explaining your topic to someone with no existing knowledge.

While the amount of information and detail you provide will depend on the complexity of the topic you’re posting about, it also pays to summarize each chunk of content with a subheading, to make it easy for your customers to skim read it.

We’d love to see your How To posts – share them with us via the comments below.