You have seen those people who write a long blog post and get thousands of shares, comments and more! You may wonder why they are getting so many shares, likes, and comments when you’re hearing crickets.
You know you should be writing longer posts, but perhaps nothing is coming to you right now. And that makes a difference between you and these bloggers who are getting seen and heard while you’re not. These bloggers know they need to write an Epic Blog Post every so often to keep up their readership and gain traction on their sites.
Okay, so what’s an epic blog post? And why do you need it?
Today’s post is going to surround this subject so you, too, can gain traction in your business and turn new prospects into paying clients! I’m going to go teach you what’s the difference between an epic blog post and a regular blog post and then I’ll answer the BIG question of WHY you need an epic blog post in your content marketing system.
Epic vs Regular Blog Post
There are several differences when it comes to writing an epic blog post versus a regular blog post. Here are some that separate the two:
Length
Information/Education
Use of Backlinks
Let’s go to make sure you gain the clarity to move forward on creating your first epic blog post.
Length
Length is crucial when you’re writing an epic versus a regular blog post. For example, most of my blog posts are anywhere between 700-1300 words long. You might consider a 1300 word blog post to be epic, but unfortunately, it’s not.
You see, an epic blog post contains more information, guiding, training, and education than what one could say in a little 1,000-word blog post. Many gurus like Buzzsumo considers an epic blog post to be around 2,000 – 5,000 words.
Some of you just had a slight heart attack, didn’t you? Writing a 700-word blog post is almost kills you! How can you write a 2,000+ blog post?!
This is a great place to segue into another area I want to focus on that will help you know why epic blog posts are so lengthy.
Information/Education
If you have been reading my blog posts for some time now, you know that I give so much information away. But since my blog posts are only 1,000 words long, it’s not enough to really go into detail.
What makes an epic blog, well, epic, is when you add so much detail into that blog post that it’s becoming a mini-training to your audience. That is one of the separations between a regular blog post and an epic blog post.
Think of it like this: a regular blog post can give you ideas and a sense of what to do next in your business or life. But an epic blog post is going to walk you step-by-step through a process, it’s going to show you the HOW and it’s going to lend you a hand in how to best support your new venture.
That is what an epic blog post is all about: giving your audience a mini training on a particular area that they are having trouble with. This could be an How-To post, a 10 Ways to doing something your audience is uncertain about, or a Step-by-Step guide to train them to do something that will help your audience move forward in their business or lives. See this link to get ideas on what your epic blog post could contain.
What is something your audience wants you to lead them step-by-step through? What can you teach them in one particular area that they are confused about? This is the start of your epic blog post, my friend.
Your topic may even need some research, so do be scared and plan an hour to research some ideas for your epic content! Because Google LOVES backlinks and that’s the next section we’re going to talk about.
Backlinks
When you pinpoint one thing you want to train your audience on, then conduct some research to it. Research gives you credibility and authority on your subject. It shows you are wanting to help your audience succeed in where they are at in life right now. It gives your brand more sincerity to how you want your audience to be successful and how they can make it happen.
But there are a few reasons why researching your topic is great (one is related to Google and one is not):
- Your audience loves it when you have already done the legwork for them and now they don’t have to carve out 5 hours of their time to search for something that you have just written about! Plus, when you provide a backlink, your audience can click and go – another reason they love your epic blog post because they don’t have to search for something you just researched!
- Google loves it when you use backlinks! Backlinks for your website is one way to verify to Google that your website is credible. It tells Google that you’re serious about your blog and you’re doing your part to help build your website by linking out to other credible websites. This, my friends, creates what we call Google Ranking. The more you backlink to credible websites for your blog post, the better ranking it’ll get on Google. We all want to be number one on Google, so doing your researching and back linking it to your website builds your ranking with Google.
Usually, in a regular blog post, you wouldn’t use backlink too much as it’s generally coming from your own knowledge on the subject matter. But when you write an epic blog post, you want it to be from your knowledge, yes, but also you want it to be so detailed that you are forced to go outside of your knowledge and provide research for your audience so you can provide them more value in one place rather than many places.
When you use a quote or you give a shout out to a company or website on your blog, backlink it to that website. Did you notice that I gave a shout out to Buzzsumo earlier in the blog? I backlinked it to an article where I received information about how the company considers an epic blog post to be well over 2,000 words long.
**NOTE ON USING BACKLINKS: Ensure that you are backlinking to credible websites like Buzzsumo, Forbes, Entrepreneur Inc., Huffington Post, etc. This is your brand we’re talking about! Don’t backlink to websites that are shady or look out of date or are old. Your credibility is at stake here, so don’t be pulling for information on crappy websites! Make sure the websites are current and credible!**
Now don’t go crazy with backlinking! You don’t want your whole blog post to be nothing but backlinks! That would be extremely annoying. So be strategic and smart when backlinking; you’re providing immense value to your audience, so backlink when you can and do it from a place of, “This will help you” or “this is why I claim these numbers” sort of deal.
Always be helpful and then be strategic in providing value to your audience.
Alright, since we have established ground rules on the difference between a regular blog post versus an epic blog post, let’s get into the why you need an epic blog post in your content marketing system.
Why you need an Epic Blog Post in Your Content Marketing System
Now you know the difference on what makes an epic blog post epic, it’s time to get into why you need one in the first place. I’m going to touch on a few reasons why I believe you need one in your content calendar so you can begin thinking of what your epic blog post will be.
It could become Evergreen
When you write an epic blog post, your blog article can be an evergreen blog article. What’s an evergreen blog article? An Evergreen blog article is where you write a blog article that can be used and shared over and over again forever because the ideas and principals will never go out of use.
Here are some examples that will probably never go out of date/use because they have remained the same for so long (like over the past 5+ years):
Productivity principals
Content Calendar usage
Mindset
The basics of psychology
Basics of survival
Basic health care needs
I just mentioned a few, but the few I mentioned are things that will never go out of style. When you cut your finger, you put a band-aid on it. That has been common sense since I don’t know when! We all know that there is basic psychology for selling, getting someone to do something for you and how we as humans operate. You get the picture.
Whatever you decide to write about, it needs to be the foundational theories or principals that will never go out of date.
For example, inside my industry, I cannot see creating a content calendar for your business ever going out of date. Content marketing is always changing, and unless it stops, I feel that I cannot necessarily make an evergreen blog article out of content marketing. But having a content calendar for your business that will never go out of date or style because businesses have been using content calendars for years (since before the computer was invented)! They used a calendar to know what they are going to say and how they are going to promote a product/service.
I know I could easily create an epic blog post surrounding my topic on a step-by-step content calendar and how to use one (which I have written and you can see it by clicking here). That content will probably never go out of date and I can reuse it and repurpose it as much as I want!
This is what I mean when I say Evergreen: when you create an evergreen blog article, you can then use it for all sorts of things because you can always promote it, no matter what! Here are some ideas on what you can do with an evergreen blog article:
Turn it into a workshop/class/webinar
Make a video training and sell the training
Topic for a podcast
Create a paid course around it
Break it into a 5-day challenge
Break it down, make a worksheet, and sell the worksheet for your audience to use
This is just a small list of what you can do with it, but it does two things: 1) Grows your email list and 2) Builds your income.
Make it become a resource for your audience
Your epic blog post should be something your audience is thirsty for and when you write it, then share it and share it some more! Then put it in your toolbox for when you hear a perfect and ideal client say something like, “I wish I knew how to do [your epic blog post].” Then you can provide value to them by saying, “Hey, I wrote a blog article about that. Here’s the link!”
Here’s an example: When I first started to blog, I was blogging about marriage and life and I wrote a blog post about what someone should do when they move to Ramstein Air Force Base, Germany (the military term for moving is called PCS-ing). Do you know that it has gotten a TON of shares on Pinterest and has been visited close to 3,000 times! That was my epic and evergreen blog article for when I was writing about marriage and life!
It has become a referral for military wives to go to and read about what they ought to consider when they move to Germany. It is also evergreen because it’s my experience and that experience will never change. I wrote that article 3+ years ago and it’s still getting shared to this day! That is exactly what you want when you write an epic post article: to have it be a referral for your audience for the next 5-10 years!
It continuously grows your email list
Just like I was saying before, when you create an epic blog post, you’re creating a way for people to get on your email list no matter if it’s three years old or ten years old! You’re still drawing in new prospects because it’s a matter of resource that people are always looking up!
Laura Pence Atencio from Social Savvy Geek says that she wrote a blog post on how to grow your Twitter and she’s still getting people to read it when she wrote it over 7 years ago! Since then, she has gotten it published in New Zealand and she made a report to download for her audience. That, my friend, is how to gain new prospects 7 years later!
Your epic blog post should always contain a call to action where people have an opportunity to get on your email list.
You can share it over and over again!
If you’re having an off week and you don’t feel like blogging, then why not share and recap your epic blog post again? It’s a way to look at it and share it with potentially new prospects! And get more people on your email list as well.
There you have it!
An epic blog post about an epic blog post!
Whew!
There are so many opportunities that open up when you create an epic blog post that people love and keep referring to! It helps you get seen, ranked on Google, shared, grow your email list and more! This is just the beginning of your content marketing journey to using an epic blog post as the foundation to many more products, services and free upgrades for your business.
Now, if you’re ready for the next step in your epic blog post journey, I have something for you. If you’ve been wanting to create a system to get people to read your blog, get on your email list, and buy a product or service, but you’ve been feeling stuck or unsure on what that could look like, then Get Seen and Win New Clients NOW is for you!
Inside of Get Seen and Win New Clients NOW, you’re going to master the new skill of discovering your audience’s desire and then move them into an irresistible offer that they cannot say no too! Laura and I are going to show you our exact strategies on how we wrote content, provided content upgrades, led people into a series, and then offer a paid product that our audience couldn’t refuse! You’ll get to learn that and more inside the 5-day Training!
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