Hollywood studios measure success by their ability to turn a single movie into a marketable franchise. If a movie generates enough box office revenue, it opens the door to sequels, spinoff movies and a host of merchandising possibilities.
The franchise principle relates well to building a blog. A blogger can drum up a following for their blog through composing a series of related blog posts. This is a great tactic for a small business owner trying to get customers to use their products or services. A high quality series of related blog posts can benefit your small business blog in several ways:
Elevated SEO Value
A major goal behind any online content – including blog posts – is obtaining a high search engine ranking. Creating a blog post series can make it easier to realize the goal. These blog posts will likely use many of the same keywords and be focused on closely related topics. Search engines will notice this trend and rank the posts higher under searches for relevant keywords. Higher rankings in turn mean higher traffic to your blog.
Greater Niche Expertise
Nothing boosts a blog’s credibility faster than making it seem authoritative to followers. A blog series can paint the blog writer as a subject-matter expert. This opens the door for expanding the reach of their content. Blog writers can write guest posts on other related blogs. They can draw higher numbers of social media followers. For a business owner, that means more customers and more sales.
Creates Customer Resources
Successfully answering customer questions helps business owners build credibility. A blog post series can create a useful resource by providing answers. It serves a similar function as a FAQ page, but can go into greater detail. Business owners can link to these posts on social media channels when communicating with customers. Customers will appreciate the relevant information they find there and be more inclined to return to the blog often.
Builds Blog Momentum
Nothing drives traffic to your website or blog faster than original and informative content. A blog post series is a good SEO content marketing vehicle because it gives people a reason to keep coming back. The initial post will spark their interest and subsequent posts will fan the flames of that curiosity. If interest in the initial posts are high, it will also lead to sharing on social media and that means a higher number of readers will be checking in to read the next post.
Explores In-Depth Topics
It is impossible to flesh out some topics in a single 300 or 400 word blog post. Creating a blog series gives you latitude to cover more ground on complex subjects. You can break a topic into related sub-topics and devote a single post to each sub-topic. This lets you devote entire posts to relevant videos, include interviews with experts on podcasts and do other things that might make a single post feel crowded if everything was inserted into the same post.
John C is a freelance writer available on WriterAccess, a marketplace where clients and expert writers connect for assignments.