The Science Behind 100,000-View Blog Posts
Did you know that all successful blog posts have a similar shape? For real. We’re not talking about the shape of the content, we’re talking about the shape of the analytics. Analytically, blog posts with 100,000 views are all pretty similar.
The content pros at Animalz explained this idea in their latest blog post. They analyzed a bunch of blog posts with over 100,000 views. We’ve got the scoop for you right here…
Successful blog posts have 5 phases:
- A traffic spike when the post is first published.
- A trough, where it looks like growth is stagnant.
- A growth phase where views increase over a few months.
- A plateau phase when growth levels out.
- A decay phase when traffic to the post starts to drop off.
The initial traffic spike is usually driven by email, community posts, and social media.
Once the excitement around the new the article dies down, it hits the trough phase.
And then search engines swoop in to control the growth, plateau, and decay phases.
There’s no real timeline for all of these phases other than to say that the spike phase never lasts as long as you’d want, and the growth phase can take longer to kick in than you’d like.
When Animalz brokedown the traffic by phase, they found that the majority of views came during the plateau phase — not the spike or growth phases.
What can you take away from this?
- Distribution matters. Posts with over 100,000 views all have a solid promotion strategy. This leads to a strong spike phase. The views that come during the spike phase help gain backlinks. Plus, those views give search engines a bunch of data to determine how people interact with your content.
- Growth comes from search. If you’re not writing and structuring your content with SEO in mind, you likely won’t experience growth.
- Decline happens. It might take years, but traffic decline is inevitable. That just means that you gotta have a plan in place to rework old content.
There’s a ton of data here. You gotta read this one yourself 🚀
140+ Social Media Statistics that You Need to Know in 2018
Hootsuite just dropped a TON of stats on us. Over 140 of ’em. Clearly, we can’t fit all of those into this email. So we’re giving you the best stats with some commentary from the marketing minds behind the Daily Carnage.
Their stats. Our insights. Let’s get rolling…
“The most popular Instagram hashtags are #love (1 bil), #instagood (845 mil), #fashion (560 mil), #photooftheday (572 mil), and #beautiful (514 mil).”
As tempting as it is to use these hashtags and reach audiences in the hundreds of millions, don’t. These hashtags are so overused that they’ll do nuthin’ for you.
Here’s the hashtag strategy we stick to.
“52% of people who discover a new product on Facebook say they are interested in buying it. Among 18- to 34-year-olds, that number increases to 78%.”
Facebook ads can absolutely k-i-l-l it for your brand. But, you gotta do them right.
“Tweets with video get six times as many retweets as tweets with photos and are three times more likely to be retweeted than a post with a GIF.”
You already know about the power of video. But we’re curious to see how video will compare to Twitter’s new audio-only feature.
YouTube
“70% of YouTube users have used YouTube to help solve a problem, and 86% use it to learn new things.”
If you’re wondering how your business can leverage YouTube here it is: teach something.
Any industry can have teachable moments. Maybe you’re an appliance store that sells sinks. You can teach people how to safely unclog a sink, when it’s time to call a plumber, or what style sink looks best in a modern home.
Honorable Mentions:
- A whopping 93% of Pinterest users use the platform to plan purchases, and 63% of millennials use Pinterest to discover new brands or products to buy.
- 79% of B2B marketers see LinkedIn as an effective source for lead generation.
- Daily active users spend an average of more than 30 minutes in the app each day and open the app more than 25 times a day.
That’s what we’ve got. The rest is up to you 👇
Memories
Boxes contain more than just ‘things.’ They can hold memories, opportunity, new beginnings, reasons for celebration, the possibilities are almost endless.
What you view as a box, FedEx views as so much more.
This new campaign from FedEx is about the experiences that a box brings to whoever receives it. In their first ad, a man receives a box of memories from his ancestors, but of course you can’t ship memories by mail. Or can you?
Yes, that’s right, we’re featuring an ad from FedEx today. It’s probably the first time we’ve ever seen a delivery service attempt to bring emotion into advertising. We dig it.
See how FedEx brings memories to life…
“If you’re not making mistakes, you’re probably not experimenting enough.”
Noah Kagan
Ads from the Past
Aah, yes…sanitary woolen underwear. Better stock up before the cold weather hits.
This ad comes from sometime in the late 1800s. Probably around 1890. And in case you’re wondering, this company still exists.
