A PDF Report v A Series of Blog Posts - Which is Better For Exposure and Traffic?

Hi Caroline,

Excellent article!
It is amazing, as I was thinking which of the two was better just
this morning.. You made some interesting points for me, thanks.

Cheers,
Alex.

Alex at Net-Entrepreneur.com’s last blog post..Best Example of Thinking Outside the Box

Caroline,

I was recently faced with the same decision and opted for a PDF report. I chose the PDF so it could be used as an incentive to subscribe to my RSS feed and it’s fulfilled it’s purpose.

I’d already pretty much decided that next time I’ll use a series of blog posts. Your post affirms that decision.

As always, an insightful and well written post.

Gary’s last blog post..eBay Tests New Listing Template

Great article. Very well written and informative. I am trying to decide between the two to get traffic to our blog. This will arm us with more knowledge to make our decision. Thanks again!

Caroline,

I wrote a series of posts (Experience Design 101) as the “launch series” for my blog and it did very well. The intro page continues to be my most read page, and still has a bounce rate of zero.

I’ve got a new series in the works and I had thought of making it an ebook, but with how well the series postings have worked for me I think I’ll probably go the same route again.

Regards,

Kelly

Kelly’s last blog post..Why Is a Cookbook Like a Blog?

Thank you so much for the insights..I’m planning between an e-book and a post series..Since mine is a relatively new blog, the series make more sense.

Great writing. Thanks :)

Black Zedd’s last blog post..I’m Offering $89.2b To Acquire Yahoo! Inc.

I like going for series of blog posts because they get more traffic, more linkbacks, more discussion and they get me to sit on my bum and do some posts.

TJ’s last blog post..Links for 2008-02-18 [del.icio.us]

Excellent post yet again Caroline :)

-Mike

Mike Huang’s last blog post..Are You Single On Valentine’s Day?

Hello Caroline,

nice post, as usual :)
I am still in the pre-process of content building on my blog, i have published 8 articles only, but i am looking forward to publish an ebook or a guide… i am brainstorming the topic….

Can i ask you how did you decide to public a Twitter guide and a WordPress tutorial? In other words, which brainstorming you did to decide your topics? Keywords searching vs your-favourite-niche writing?

Nicola Boschetti’s last blog post..Connessione Internet con abbonamento FLAT

I guess providing a free download with nothing to take from your downloaders is a “not-so-good” move for me. I might not know exactly what is your real motive behind this move but as far as I am concern, since I am sure that you had a large amount of download for that e-book, you can easily build a nice and long e-mail list (the Internet marketers way) with the e-book.

With the list, you can notify those who have downloaded regarding updates that you have performed to the e-book so that they come back to the download page for the updates (increase traffic). Also, you will be able to make some money via affiliate marketing with the list you have created.

Anyway, just my opinions. Maybe you wanted to reach a larger audience or build your brand by cutting down the e-mail collecting procedure which might chase away some Internet users.

Another good “versus” article here. Keep it up, Caroline. ;-)

Wayne Liew’s last blog post..12 Sponsored Reviews Blog Monetization Tips

@Nicola, for the Twitter guide there wasn’t really any keyword research to do as the keywords I’m targetting are really just “twitter Guide” and the rest took care of itself. For the ebook, I did some thinking about the title but it wasn’t really about the keywords. I blogged about my thoughts on that in some of the earlier posts - check the ebook project page from the link at the top of the blog.

@Wayne, this is something I have discussed many times. Basically capturing an email address adds a block to the number of people who would download the book and I wanted to spread it as far and wide as possible because of the affiliate links inside. I was more concerned with the number of copies bing distributed than with capturing an email address - that is something I will do with the newsletter I plan to add to the blog in the near future.

Wow, another great post (I thought you were on holiday?)

As you know, I have been working on my Niche Site case study. When I am done, I will have more than 20 posts in all. When I am done, I am thinking about repackaging all of the content into an eBook for distribution from the site. The eBook would have lots of deep links back into the original posts and some additional affiliate links as well as plugs for my RSS feed. I was thinking that readers of the eBook would see that if they wanted more content like what they found int he eBook, they could read my blog….

It seems like a good way to reuse content.

Thoughts about that specific case? It is an interesting one for you because I use your eBook as a starting point for my study and link heavily back into your site…

Mark’s last blog post..Niche Super-Site: Adding a Favicon

Diane, great post!

I think the reason many people decide to release a free ebook is to capture email addresses for long-term followup. If you develop a set of autoresponder messages to send to your growing list, you’ll be developing a relationship with these people, and have further opportunities to sell them via affiliate links.

don’s last blog post..Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty Speaks to All Women

Hey I like the tips you have here. I have been trying to gain exposure for my blog and have been trying to use Social Media and I also released a free eBook on my blog which I hope will bring traffic. I still need to get involved with Twitter as it seems every blog I read is talking about this.

-Scott

Scott’s last blog post..DotRebates

Great analysis! I have to admit that I’m a little surprised at how much more traffic and links were generated by the posts compared to the ebook. Of course, the variable that isn’t taken into account here is the differences in content. I’ve read both and found the Twitter posts to be the more interesting and informative, in my case. Don’t know what others think.

Anyway, thanks again for posting your research and helping the rest of us trying to replicate your success!

Jim | BloggingStartup’s last blog post..New Changes Coming to Blogging Startup

Caroline, great timing on this post - appreciate you putting it out there.

I’d been going around with this debate for some time trying to decide, and had sort of settled on the side of doing the series of posts, but still wasn’t sure.

What I was most focused on was the traffic on one of my sites, but was also trying to get an ebook of my own out as well.

But you confirmed the place to spend time is on the posts - at least initially - thanks again!

j2watches’s last blog post..Movado Two-Tone Luno Mens Watch

@Jim — good point. I wonder if the fact that many people know how to set up WP is part of the issue here. My impression is that many of CM’s readers are tech savvy (but we are all just learning about Web 2.0). Hmmmm…

Mark’s last blog post..Niche Super-Site: Adding a Favicon

@Mark, hehe yes I was but I managed to squeeze in a couple of hours work in the morning and got this post done :) I think it would be an excellent idea to package up your case study but you could do it either way - leaving as a pillar series on the blog or doing it as an ebook. Of course there’s nothing stopping you from doing both.

@Don, my ex’s grandmother used to call me Geraldine, but Diane is a new one lol :p

@Jim, yeah I think that’s right - as far as I know, my Twitter guide is still the most comprehensive out there and the only one at the time that really looked at it from a marketing angle.

@Mark, yeah that’s interesting. I really don’t know the “profile” of my average reader, I can only guess.

Thanks for this article - I’ve been thinking about working on an ebook to try and build traffic at my site. I think the good thing about an ebook is that people can print it and read it away from their pc - as I’m thinking about a book with information people could use on holiday then a PDF works better. I was considering writing the articles on site then giving people the option to download as a pdf - but hadn’t thought of the *updating* conundrum…

Mrs S | A pocketful of pixie dust’s last blog post..New York Times brings us a sneak peek at Toy Story Mania