Gospel Singer Bahati: I Forgot Protocol When I unseated the President

Freelance Blog Post Templates that Work

1.) Interview with an influencer: Back in my early days, one post that landed me a bunch of great clients looking for content marketing work was my interview with Brian Gardner of StudioPress. In the interview we discussed what role content marketing played in helping Brian sell the Genesis Framework and a ton of WordPress themes.
Everybody knows the whole interviewing game—you interview someone with an audience in hopes that they’ll send people your way. The thing is, most people mess up by firing off random interviews that add nothing of value and that don’t relate to the ideal audience they’d like to have. This interview with Brian works because it’s focused on a service I provide (content strategy) and it showcased how well content worked for him in growing his business; it produced all the validation I needed to convince several clients to sign up.
2.) A beginner’s round-up: Although ’round-ups’ can be akin to our freelance tools roundup here on Bidsketch, what I really mean is creating an amazing starting point for beginner’s on a singular topic. When you think about it, targeting beginners (the right way) is great because you’re getting people who will likely need help, and that is where your paid services can come in.
There is a right and wrong way to do this however, as you don’t want to target beginner’s who are just looking for freebies. Although Steve Kamb no longer seems to take on fitness clients, the ‘Beginner’s Guide to the Paleo Diet‘ is a perfect example of what I’m talking about here. It’s an article that every beginner looking for paleo information needs to bookmark, and as a result, it even sits on the 1st page of Google for terms like ‘paleo diet.’ (With 17k+ shares!)
3.) Detailed case studies: Everyone loves to read about a success story, and people just can’t resist the inside scoop—from a blog standpoint, this makes case studies amazing pieces of content, since they combine both. They also offer an ability to write about something that is highly related to your skills and that can’t be duplicated by competitors. It’s like combining an incredibly convincing client testimonial and a highly useful article!
You’ll see people who charge premium prices for their products (like Ramit Sethi) doing tons of case studies, but you should try to focus on a few here and there that really show prospective customers how you’ll be able to “WOW” them with your services. If you’re totally new to freelancing, you can do a few free projects to build you base, but remember to cut that out as soon as possible.
4.) A ‘Making Of…’ post: A bit different from a case study with a particular client, these posts will break down how you created an individual project, regardless of who was paying you. That means that you can include solo projects, individual pieces of a project (‘How I made this plugin’, ‘How I wrote this e-Book’) and other specific instances that may not apply to client work.
I like Rafal Tomal’s example in the Making Of Typspiration, a typography project he completed in his spare time. Sure, these sorts of posts will also attract other freelancers, but they serve as a detailed look at your skill and ability to see a project from start to finish. There’s a lot of unspoken persuasion in these types of posts, where clients will see how smoothly you tackled the behind the scenes efforts and how much time and effort you pour into the work you produce.
5.) The “Keyword How-to” post: You’ve likely recognized that “How-to” posts are effective, but if you want to maximize returns on your efforts, you should be targeting a keyword that can bring in potential clients. Back when I did a post called How to Speed Up WordPress in 15 Easy Steps, I made sure to include the phrase ‘speed up WordPress’ instead of something like ‘make WordPress faster,’ because the former was a far better search term than the latter.
It now ranks #1 for that term and even appears for a few others… all because I took the 5 minutes of extra effort to find a decent keyword! It’s not rocket science either—head over to the free Google Keyword Tool after you’ve completed a post and search for a vague term that matches your topic, I think I chose something like ‘WordPress speed’ when I initially wrote that post.
6.) This vs. That: I’ve discussed before how research from Wharton Business School has shown that when it comes to creating controversial content, the way to go is to avoid highly controversial issues (politics, religion, tragedies) and instead focus on heated debates within your own industry. A perfect way to do this is to simply put Something vs. Something Else into a heated match on your own blog.