Top 5 Cutting Edge Blogging Tips That Drive Leads

Do you hate writing blog posts?

We certainly do. At least we did about three years ago.

But over time we have come to learn the expert tactics, tools, and resources that go into writing a killer blog post.

Now we gained an understanding and an appreciation for the art form that is blogging.

It’s similar to when you gain an appreciation for taking good care of your car with consistent oil changes and car washes.

Blogging is a thing of beauty and can become your biggest lead generation source when done correctly.

Top 5 Blogging Tips to Drive New Business Leads [Video]

Blogging Tip #1 – Scout Your Competition

Don’t you dare reinvent the wheel young sir or miss.

Unless you are a rocket scientist releasing new findings regarding your travels to outer space or are truly the #1 industry leader; we recommend you scout your competition and re-write the best blog posts on the web.

Of course we advise our clients to make new additions, insights, or add take-aways to any content they rewrite but it’s always best to rewrite content that is already proven to be popular, interesting, and share worthy on the web.

Be sure to use http://buzzsumo.com/ to find out what blog post topics are trending in your industry.

Updated: We now highly recommend using, Ninja OutReach, as the best prospecting and automated outreach tool; to help you connect with industry influencers, gain digital PR, social shares, build links, and more!

Blogging Tip #2 – Write a Killer Title

Spend an extra five minutes before you begin writing to make sure you have the absolute best title possible for your blog post.

Do a Google search for a similar topic and take note of the titles of blog posts that are on page 1 of Google.

These are the titles that have performed the best, warranted the most social shares, and natural links. (hint hint… You may want to have a similar title. )

Finally ask yourself, would I want to read this article if I just read the title alone?

Here’s an example blog post we wrote for an international fitness model client.

Now if you were a mom, would this interest you?

Blogging Tip #3 – Add A YouTube Video

One of the absolute best ways to differentiate your brand online is with video. People love people and absolutely love video. Thus a video is the perfect combination.

Whatever it is you’re discussing or showcasing within your blog post content can be turned into a video.

Use http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/ if you need to do any type of screen recording and have a professional video intro done online at fiverr for 5 bucks.

Finally make sure to give your YouTube video a keyword rich title that is similar to your blog post title and embed it within your blog post! You’ll instantly enjoy an organic search engine ranking boost from this trick.

As a bonus tip add Youtube cards to drive leads directly from your YouTube channel!

Blogging Tip #4 – Include Inspiring Photos

Adding the right photos to your blog post can make a major difference in terms of the traffic, social shares, and links that your post receives.

Start by going to canva.com to create an incredible looking and free blog post cover image for your post. Include the title of your post and use relevant imagery.

This cover image will become the image people see on Facebook and Pinterest so be sure it is attractive and also warrants interest in reading your article.

Here’s an example of a few graphics we made on Canva in a matter of minutes. 

You can click on them too!*

Blogging Tip #5 – Include A Relevant Offer

Before you ever write a new blog post you should have a marketing or sales goal in mind. Ask yourself what do you want to accomplish with this post?

Then be sure that you include a call to action, relevant offer, or introduction to the product or service you are ultimately looking to promote.

It is often times most strategic to provide a lead capture, free download, or other complimentary information in exchange for a lead towards the bottom of your blog post.

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How to Setup YouTube Cards to Drive New Business Leads

How to Setup YouTube Cards


If you haven’t heard the news, YouTube has rolled out a new “advertising” feature called, YouTube Cards.

These Cards will soon replace what we have all come to know as annotations. Annotations are those little text messages that popup over a YouTube video that you’re watching.

YouTube ad cards are a huge improvement from the outdated annotations and include an image, title, and smaller text.

They are somewhat comparable to Facebook ads in that you can use an image as part of your strategy to get your audience to click on your ad cards in order to drive them to a landing page of your choice.

Why YouTube Cards Are Better Than Annotations

Youtube Cards offer an incredible opportunity for video marketers to drive inexpensive leads and traffic to the landing page or website of their choice.

Specifically YouTube Cards will be powerful for local business marketing or any business that has a great lead magnet to give away on a landing page!

Since ad cards include an image and a larger text, they will undoubtedly convert better and receive more clicks.

Here are the three main reasons why you should immediately begin using these ad cards within your digital marketing campaign.

1). YouTube Cards Are Mobile Friendly!

(Considering 50% of YouTube traffic is attributed to mobile viewing devices, this is big. Annotations were not mobile friendly thus you lost half you audience when you used them).

2). YouTube Cards Include a Picture & Bold Text

(Similar to Facebook ads, YouTube cards include an image. However, unlike Facebook, there are no restrictions to the amount of text used in your card image. This implies big time conversions!)

3). YouTube Cards Come in 5 Variations

  1. Merchandise Cards – For anyone wanting to advertise physical products related to their video
  2. Fundraising Cards – For anyone wanting to link directly to a fundraising project on approved 3rd party sites.
  3. Video Or Playlist Cards – For anyone wanting to link directly to another related video or YouTube playlist.
  4. Fan Funding Cards – For anyone wanting to accept donations from their viewers for their awesome free content on YouTube.
  5. Associated Website Cards – For anyone wanting to drive traffic to their website or a landing page of their choice. (The card we’re most excited about).

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How YouTube Cards Can Be Used to Drive New Leads Inexpensively

YouTube cards are free to add to any video that you upload to your YouTube channel.

We can tell you right now card variation #5, the “Associated Website Card” will become the most popular amongst the card variations.

Using an associated website card you can drive new traffic to any landing page or website of your choice (that you own).

Since paid video views on YouTube come in around 2 cents per view (depending on your targeting), we would expect a great video with an attractive YouTube Card to drive website clicks at anywhere between 50 cents and a dollar.

Considering any clicks from a YouTube Card have previously watched a video with your content, it’s like your audience has already been primed to buy/ convert with what ever offer you provide them on your landing page.

How to Setup YouTube Cards

Now that you’ve been introduced to YouTube cards, lets go ahead and take a closer look at how to setup them up properly.

In the following video we will cover:

1). Where to Find YouTube Cards in your YouTube Dashboard

2). How to Confirm Your Website With YouTube so you can use the cards

3). Best Practices for creating a YouTube Card that Converts

What do you think? Will you try YouTube Cards to drive new leads for your business?