Our Thinking

Blog Cluster Strategy

“If you build it, he will come.”  This quote, from the movie Field of Dreams, captures the hopes of many marketers:  write great content on your blog, and an audience will be magically attracted to you.  Thanks to Google this is partially true, but are there things that you can do to help the process along?  The answer, of course is yes.  To start, consider the following ideas:

  • Blog Intentions
  • Six steps to strategic blogging
  • 16 Blog topic ideas
  • 17 ways to great social engagement

This post, however, is an example of a completely different way to grow your readership: create content clusters of related blog posts, and then cross-link them.  It stands to reason that if a person lands on one particular blog post, they may have an interest in closely related posts.  Planning several blog posts around a particular theme –  planning the posts in clusters instead of simple individual posts – can make this happen.

The second benefit of this is that these clusters are ready-made raw material for a longer whitepaper or other form factor.  (More on repurposing content.)

This week’s action plan:  Planning future blog post clusters is great, but what about everything you’ve written in the past?  This week, go through your archives and identify the clusters where you can graft cross-links after the fact.

Bonus Blog Bit:  Beyond the in-line cluster strategy, there are a number of WordPress plug-ins that automatically identify related posts; while not perfect, these also can help generate more internal connections – and readership.

This post has been written by 108’s Senior Advisor and former CEO Randall Craig.