What Is Epic Blog Content? A Quick Beginner’s Guide

Getting your blog noticed is no easy task. One of the most common pieces of advice given to bloggers and by bloggers is to publish “quality content”.

But what if you’re publishing quality content and no one is seeing it? Your content needs exposure in order to be effective.

There a lot of different approaches that you can take to get exposure for your blog.

Regardless of which approach you take, whenever you do get a new visitor to your blog you’ll need to make a very strong impression in order for that visit to really matter. If the visitor arrives, skims a blog post, leaves the blog and never returns, the impact of the visit was minimal.

This is where “epic content” comes into play.

Publishing epic content can benefit your blog in many very specific ways, and several of them work together to allow you to get your blog noticed and to build an audience.

What is epic content?

Bloggers who want to make money with their blog need to make an effort to publish quality content, but epic content takes it to another level.

The goal with epic content is to wow the reader by publishing an extremely useful, detailed, helpful, and informative article. Epic posts are often long because of the need for depth, but length is less of a concern than the value of the information itself.

Note: Epic content has a few different names. You may find it referred to as “cornerstone” or “pillar” content.

There is a lot of good blog content out there, but epic content can stand out. The information found in a truly epic post is something that many readers would be willing to pay in order to receive. By providing information of this caliber for free you can make an impact in a lot of different ways, and I’ll cover them below.

An example of epic content is one of the initial posts published here at ProfitBlitz, a definitive guide to choosing a blog monetization strategy.

There are a lot of blog posts that cover topics related to making money with a blog, but this post goes above and beyond the typical blog post. It lists seven of the most common ways to make money from a blog, with pros and cons of each.

It provides some advice and guidance for choosing the right approach for your own blog, and it also lists the types of blogs that are often a good fit with each monetization method.

It took me a full day to write the 7,000+ word post,  but it opens up lots of possibilities to get ProfitBlitz noticed quickly.

Epic content works for new blogs because:

  1. It gives you an excuse to contact other bloggers in your niche or industry.
  2. It gives those bloggers a reason to share your content via social media or a link from their blog.
  3. It gives visitors a reason to subscribe to your list or to return to your blog in the future.

Getting connected to other bloggers and getting links is essential to get exposure for a new blog. With quality blog content you can reach out to other bloggers to ask for a link, but with so much quality content available yours might not stand out.

Truly epic will stand out, and when others see what you have to offer they will want to link to it or share it via social media.

Why does epic blog content work?

Now, let’s take a more detailed look at why epic content works and how it benefits your blog.

1. Because it’s valuable!

In order for epic content to be effective it has to be highly valuable for readers, and that value is what makes everything possible.

When you’re creating epic content for your own blog, think about what issues your target audience struggles with, and think about what information you can provide that will help them to solve their problems.

2. It’s great for getting attention to a new blog

It’s not easy to get exposure for a new blog. With epic content whenever someone in your target audience arrives at your site they will realize that you stand out from other blogs covering similar topics and you will have earned a lot of respect.

Building a popular blog is much easier when you’re viewed as an expert on the topic, and this is a great way to demonstrate your expertise.

3. It encourages social media shares

When people read your epic content they will often want to share it with others because of its incredible value. Your readers will know how much other people will appreciate the article, so they’re likely to share a link to it at Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Pinterest, or some other social media site.

That sharing is priceless for the growth of your blog. Each person that shares the link will lead to more visitors, and those visitors may wind up sharing a link also. This creates the viral effect that can have such a strong impact.

And if your blog is doing a good job of converting visitors to subscribers (more on that in a moment), you can quickly build a solid subscriber base.

Not only will you have a decent number of subscribers, but they’re also likely to be highly responsive subscribers because they will view you as an expert.

4. It provides a reason for you to reach out to other bloggers

One method that a lot of bloggers use to build links is to reach out to other bloggers and website owners by email or through a contact form to let them know about a recently published post and to ask for a link to that post.

This isn’t a strategy that I have really used myself over the years, because frankly I haven’t seen it to be very effective. Many bloggers get emails like this all the time, so it’s hard to stand out. Plus, there are countless good blog posts out there that they could be linking to, so they really don’t have that much incentive to link to my post.

When I started using the approach of publishing epic content I began to see more of a reason to reach out to other bloggers. If my epic content is as useful as I hope that it is, it should stand out from the typical requests that so many bloggers get on a daily basis.

If it truly is a highly valuable article for their audience they may be very likely to want to share it via social media or their own blog.

One of my goals whenever I start a new blog is to get to know some of the other bloggers in the industry and to start to build some strong connections to those bloggers. I’ve found epic content to give me a great reason to contact other bloggers, and a way to make a strong first impression.

If they take the time to look at the content and they think it is highly valuable for readers, I’ll stand out from most of the others who are sending links to their own posts.

5. It can result in a lot of links to your blog

If you’re reaching out to other bloggers and if your post is being shared at social media sites, it’s likely that some other blogs and websites will wind up linking to the post.

Getting backlinks is an essential task for any new website or blog, and it’s drastically easier to get links when you have awesome content on your site that people are happy to share.

One effective approach for getting links to your epic content is to find blogs in your industry or niche that regularly publish roundup posts with links to the biggest news or best articles.

You may already know of some blogs in your industry that publish weekly, monthly, or random roundup posts, and those are a great place to start. Contact them with a brief description of your epic content along with a link, and ask them to consider including it in their next roundup.

If you’re not familiar with any blogs in your industry that publish these types of roundup posts, it’s typically not that difficult to find a few. You can use Google to search for your keyword plus “roundup”. So, for example, if I were looking for internet marketing blogs I could search for “internet marketing roundup” (search without the quotes). Instead of “roundup”, you can also substitute words like “links” and “news”.

Building backlinks to your blog is essential not only for getting click-through visitors from those links but also for search engine optimization. Links to your epic content can serve as a solid foundation for the SEO of a new blog.

For more information, be sure to check out our article on creating great linkable assets to earn more backlinks.

6. It’s perfect for attracting email subscribers

As visitors arrive at your epic content through a link at a social media site or another blog they will hopefully be impressed by the quality of information provided.

One of the most important actions that a new visitor to your website can take is to opt-in to your email list or to subscribe to your blog. The visitor is far more likely to be interested in receiving updates from you if he or she is wowed by your content.

Your epic content can be highly effective at getting people to opt in to your list, but most people will still need some prompting. It’s important that your opt in forms are displayed prominently on your site so visitors can’t miss them.

It’s also usually effective to give them a little extra prompting in the form of a popup. Yes, popups can be annoying to some of your visitors, but they are also one of the most effective ways to increase the percentage of your visitors that opt in. You’ll need to weigh the pros and cons and decide if it’s a strategy that you want to try.

And there are ways to make them less annoying. For example, some WordPress plugins such as Thrive Leads allow you to display popups only as someone is about to leave (known as exit intent). And stop popups from displaying again within a particular time frame.

To learn more, be sure to check out our article on the best WordPress email subscription plugins.

7. You can link to it or promote it well into the future

Another great benefit to epic content is that it can continue to be useful well into the future. Unless your topic is highly time-sensitive you can continue to link to it and to promote it from your blog.

You may want to link to it in your sidebar to increase the chances that your new visitors will find your best content.

8. It serves an as excellent sample for your writing portfolio

If you’re looking to write for other blogs in your industry, which is a great way to increase exposure for yourself and your blog, some of those blogs will want to see samples of your writing. Your epic content is a great way to show off what you are capable of for anyone that may want to see some samples of your work.

The quality of your samples can influence whether another blog is willing to accept a guest post submission from you, so it can be a great help to have a sample that you know will represent your work very well.

And you may find that epic content can lead to job offers and new clients.

Conclusion

While epic content may take a significant amount of your time to write, it will be more valuable to your blog than cumulative impact of several typical blog posts.

With a new blog you’ll need to give your epic content a boost by reaching out to other bloggers and social media users to get some links and shares.

With a well-executed approach you can get links, get social media shares, make a strong impression on other bloggers in your niche, attract new visitors, and convert many of those first-time visitors into subscribers and repeat visitors.

Related Reading: 25 Types Of Blog Posts That Get Engagement