A big fat key to content marketing is creating lots of content. The other big fat key is making good strategic decisions on what that content should be.
To that end, Copyblogger has some good advice on creating 4-part series i a gues post by Stefanie Flaxman, Rainmaker Digital’s Editor-in-Chief. The title is “How to Turn One Content Idea into a Fascinating Four-Part Series.”
A good idea that I plan to adopt immediately.
The blog goes into detail. Here’s the idea:
Installment #1: Establish your authority
Choose the content idea and post an introductory (but really good) how-to. You are building anticipation and your authority in your reader’s mind.
Tell them at the end of the post that you’ll be publishing a tutorial with complete information on how to the Wonderful Thing, and that the very next post will prepare them for success with the tutorial. If they subscribe to your blog via email, they’ll be sure not to miss it. Link back to #1.
Installment #2: Educate with a simple, relevant background lesson
Prepare your readers to follow your advice. Link to the how-to post #1 and write more background info. Tell them that the tutorial comes next.
Installment #3: Share your tutorial
Now post a tutorial, a nuts-and-bolts “here is now to do it.”
It should be a standalone — it shouldn’t require the first 2 posts to do — but link back anyway because once again, it builds authority and useful background.
Stick the links to the first two blogs with an “Additional Reading” subtitle, and a CTA to subscribe to your blog to get the next piece of content via email.
Oh, and don’t be boring.
Installment #4: Add extra value and advanced tips
Now you encourage your readers to experiment with your tutorial and share their questions and results. If you’re adding more tutorials, then tell them so and encourage them to subscribe via email. Link to all the other posts in the series, and add forward links to all of the remaining series posts.
Like I said, good stuff.