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13 Comments

How would you use a huge piece of content (10k+ words)?

I started working on a long blog post, then it went over 2k words, so I broke it up into a couple blog posts, and now after working on it a bit longer the whole series is up to 10k+ words.

My goals for the content are to:

  • Share on social regularly throughout the year to engage my audience (the piece has a lot of quotes which will help with the viral component)
  • SEO - it's highly relevant for my site's niche
  • New email subscribers - Ideally these new visitors convert to email subscribers

So, is it better to post the article as a single huge piece of content? Two or three long (3k word) posts? Or 5-6 medium length posts (2k words)?

Thanks!

  1. 3

    Post on your company blog, repost on Medium, link on GrowthHackers, link on Twitter, link on LinkedIn.

    1. 1

      I love the idea of repurposing and reposting the same content. I've done that some with my personal blog and it seems to have driven up organic traffic. Thanks for the tips!

  2. 2

    A recent hack I got from the CMO of a 1b+ valuation startup was they would give that big piece of content away as a free white book but removed the last chapter. After a couple weeks, they would reach out to all those who downloaded said white book, tell them the last chapter was out and to simply answer "Yes" if they wished to have it.

    The simple fact of changing the relationship and have them say they wanted it made the leads much (much much) more likely to soon say yes to a demo call of the product.

    Since you're having a big piece of content, it might be a good chance to try this hack for yourself. That's my 2 cents. Enjoy!

    1. 1

      That's a cool idea. I was actually thinking about turning the guide into an "email course" too.

      My product is too low-priced to justify demos, but I could justify a personal email for each sale at this point. I'm going to consider this.

  3. 2

    One thing I haven't seen suggested yet is to use it as an email course, break it up into 14 or 21 parts and send one part every day.

    https://nathanbarry.com/email-marketing/ Check out the email course section on this post.

  4. 2

    IMHO the best solution is to split it into multiple posts.

    This not only maximizes your SEO potential (because each post targets a different keyword) but it also allows you to drip the content on social media throughout the year.

    Let's say for example that you are creating a digital marketing guide.

    First of all, create a page optimized for your main keyword "digital marketing guide".

    In this page you are going to put a short introduction and all the links to the different posts with a summary of each one.

    Then create a page for each topic and optimize it for the appropriate keyword (example: one page targeting "SEO guide", another one targeting "social media guide", etc.).

    Real life example: https://adespresso.com/guides/google-ads-beginners/

    To convert visitors into email subscribers, just put a link near the end of each post that says something like:"If you like what you are reading, I send out a weekly email about this topic, subscribe here".

  5. 1

    For SEO reasons it might be a good idea to have large chunks of content (2000 words+) that are split by topic so that you can have a custom title and headline for each chunk, and perhaps you can navigate between each one with links in the bottom to "Part 2" or w/e to show that they are related.

  6. 1

    I wouldn't post the article as a single huge piece of content. Just because in reality, the average blog reader isn't generally going to go on to read a full 10k word blog post after dropping on the page. A small percentage will but it's just wasted content.

    It depends on the niche/industry of the content and the content itself but 5-6 medium length posts may work better.

    Personally, if I have something good that is 10,000 words, I adjust the content into a lead magnet and expand on it a bit more. Free eBook/guide sort of thing but also then split that content up and adjust it so it can be used across a few blog posts also.

  7. 1

    What about packaging it as a free mini-course on the topic?

  8. 1

    Along with whatever else you decide, i'd also package it as an ebook and give it away for free on sign up to your newsletter. We did something similar last year and to date we've collected a couple of thousand emails.

  9. 1

    All of the above. Post the 10k on your site. Use the short versions on reddit, FB groups, here, and point to bigger piece.

  10. 1

    Hey Karl,

    I did something very similar. I created an 8,000 word content marketing guide. Originally, I packaged it as a gated resource. I was using it in my client outreach email campaigns.

    Then, I just decided to submit it to a Medium publication to see what would happen. Two weeks in, it performed very well. It got over 13,000 reads, a bunch of shares on Facebook and emails newsletters. It doubled my goal conversion rate on my site.

    Sure, some people may get turned off by the size of the piece. But the people who have engaged with it are super engaged. They highlight and share and comment. They've been reading it and then they'll read again.

    I would just put it out and then break it up into the smaller subtopics later. That's what I plan to do. You can dive a little deeper there or take a different angle. (Or you can make it into smaller pieces before release if you really want to. I was just took the ready, aim, fire approach.)

    You can create anchor links to the different sections and then hyperlink to those smaller pieces when they reach them in the longer piece. This way people that only care about that topic can read about it instead of bouncing.

    That's just my two cents, though. Good luck.

    -John

  11. 1

    Package it into a eBook (which you could sell?) then maybe you could serialise it over a period of time via blog posts to which would increasing returning visits to your site.

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