Imagine writing a great, comprehensive article. You spend days to prepare it, preceded by astute research. Then, after all this… you open the drawer, toss it inside and close the drawer forever. Doesn’t seem smart, right?
Outstanding writing is not the only thing needed to make a successful blog content. You’ve got to promote and distribute it. In other words: make people see (and read) it. There’s plenty of ways to do so, and one of them is a landing page. Could it work well? Let’s answer some questions to find out!
Questions to Answer
Is there any chance a landing page can help you promote your blog?
Of course there is, but under certain conditions, especially the one mentioned before. The quality of blog posts have to be high enough – no promotion will save poor entries, lack of writing skills or boring topics. Even if you get much traffic to such posts, people will bounce off your blog as soon as they realize there’s nothing interesting to read. So beware!
How can you use a landing page to promote blog content?
Usually, it works the exact opposite way: you write on your blog and then direct people to your landing page, but why not flip it over when you need it? You can effectively promote your blog in an indirect way and still use the blog to direct traffic to a landing page in certain situations.
You’ll start to promote it right after getting leads. It works like this:
- First, create and publish your landing page – build it as if it was a regular landing page, but keep in mind that you’ll want to mention your blog sooner or later.
- Then drive some traffic to it – it won’t work without visitors.
- Third step would be getting leads as usual. If you don’t know exactly how, take some time to read our guide – collecting leads.
- Now you’ve got them: newsletter or event sign-ups, people who are interested in your freebies and so on. Send e-mails to your leads regarding what they were signing up for, but include information about your newest blog posts. From time to time you should send an e-mail dedicated to the blog only.
If you prefer a more direct approach, you can simply build a landing page with a blog subscription form. Subscribers will then get an update about new blog posts via e-mail or an RSS channel. Keep in mind, though, that in this case, you’ve got to treat your blog as a product and try to “sell” it.
Include real testimonials – comments from people who read you, pick some best lines and highlight them on a landing page, show people that your blog has something to offer. Great content is not all you need to achieve success.
What can you do with landing pages?
There are plenty of other purposes for a landing page – it’s a versatile tool designed for all kinds of marketing campaigns. Almost every landing page can be used elsewhere at no additional costs with little effort put in a bit of redesigning.
Exemplary landing page purposes:
- Newsletter sign-up – collect leads for an e-mail subscription to send them useful information about special offers and your industry from time to time.
- E-book download – offer your visitors a valuable reading by creating an e-book and let them download it via a landing page. Get leads on the occasion.
- Event registration – whether it’s conference, webinar or a training session, creating a simple form that gets leads and allows signing up is just a child’s play.
- Product presentation – show your visitors a specific product you sell. Include detailed photos, a short description, testimonials or a video. Count down to release date with a dedicated timer widget.
- Audio and video podcasts – so you’ve got something to say and you’re launching a podcast. Show it on your landing page to get proper attention to your work!
- Industry reports – publish an in-depth document about your industry to guide your visitors into its nuances.
How to build a landing page for a blog
Once you’ve decided your website’s purpose, it’s time to actually create it. In this case you’ll need a landing page builder, especially if you don’t have any IT skills but still want to create beautiful effective page.
Take your time to come up with a great, catchy headline. It will most probably be the first thing your visitors see on your website, so it has to be great, to say the least. Also, don’t forget about relevancy – avoid annoying click baits that make users feel cheated. The headline should contain information about what’s the landing page is all about.
Design your content to fit the goal of a landing page. Avoid describing everything, just give some key information – enough to encourage your visitors to perform an action on your landing page. Keep it short and informative.
- If your end goal is to promote a blog, all you need is to briefly say what’s it about and add few links to exemplary posts.
- If you’re looking forward to sell a product, just say what the customer’s going to get, show it rather than describe it. Include some photos and/or a video. Say a word about two or three crucial features, but don’t make it a complete list. Leave something to discover.
- If you want people to sign up for your newsletter, give something in exchange – an e-book, facebook group invitation or a possibility to suggest a topic for a next article.
Simple means superior
No matter what you expect from your landing page, the whole website design should be focused on its goal. No menus, no distractive links, ads and banners. No walls of text and no many-fields forms. Keep it the simplest way possible.
Final Tips & Tricks
Now you’re on a right path to promote your blog content via landing page (and the other way around). On the final line of this quick guide I want to give you a few more tips to take under consideration:
- Split test – you don’t know you do things right unless you check it. And in terms of landing pages split testing is the best way to see how they perform. It works in a pretty simple way: after creating the whole landing page, you can change one thing and then launch two versions at the same time to see which one works better (gets more conversions).
- Spend some time on writing engaging CTA – a call to action can be the nail to the coffin if you decide to go an easy way. Nobody buys “Buy now!” stuff, I assure you. It takes more effort to come up with something interesting.
- Create a form ASAP – as short as possible. Gather only the most important data. The more fields to fill-in, the lower conversion. If it’s about blogging newsletter, collect e-mail address and maybe a name, nothing more. People don’t like to share too much information with companies, and there’s nothing to be surprised of.
I hope that these pieces of advice will help you on your way to use both landing pages and increase your blog’s potential. If you still got questions about blogging further, check out these 2019 blog ideas.
About the author, Sylwester Karnuszewicz:
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