Make It Easy for Readers to Binge Watch Your Content

Think about how traditional media normally works. If you want to read a particular magazine, you have to wait until the next issue hits newstands. If you want to listen to the top 30 countdown on the radio station, you have to wait for that program to air on the weekend. If you want to watch the newest episode of Game of Thrones, you have to watch it at 6pm Sunday nights like everyone else.

But the Internet, among other innovations, has changed that for a lot of our favorite programming. Instead of waiting for individual episodes each week, a whole season of Orange Is the New Black or House of Cards gets released all at once on Netflix. As a result, some people may be inclined to “binge watch” all of those episodes all at once in one night.

You might want to think about your own online content in a similar kind of way, making it as easy as possible for readers and viewers to deep-dive into your expansive library of blog posts and videos with as little friction as possible.

Down the Blogging Rabbit Hole

There are several ways you can improve this process on your blog. One of the first and easiest steps you can take is to show related posts, as well as include some internal deep links in your posts.

related-reading

If someone is already reading your newest blog posts about the Tesla Model X, there’s a good chance they’re also interested in reading other posts you’ve already written about Tesla, electric cars or technology. Make that process as easy and as painless as possible, because it’s very unlikely they’ll perform an active search on their own to find your older relevant content.

johnchow-best

In addition to a “related posts” widget, you can also take advantage of the invaluable real estate in your sidebar(s) and footer areas. John has a section at the bottom of this blog, for example, that highlights some of his “best” posts. Someone who is new to this blog will find those links useful. Even someone who has been reading for a while may have missed some of that content.

The key here is to make it easy, make it visual, and make it relevant.

Binge Watch YouTube Videos

Do you have a YouTube channel? Did you know that YouTube is actually the world’s second largest search engine, bested only by Google itself? Leveraging that size of audience is certainly in your best interest. Getting someone to watch one of your videos is good. Getting that same person to fall down the rabbit hole and watch several of your videos? Much better.

youtube-description

An easy start is to take advantage of the video description area. Not everyone is going to read your description, especially if it’s particularly long, but it’s a good place to stash some links to your content that already exists, either on YouTube or on your own site. If you reference your video description in the video itself, telling people to “find the link” down there, your click-thru rate should also improve.

Two features that you’ll want to enable on your YouTube channel are featured content and branding. These insert clickable links on all your videos too, further helping people click on through to more of your content.

Try to take advantage of YouTube playlists where you can too. If someone likes watching one of our Dot Com Pho videos, they may want to binge watch several of our older episodes too. Make that experience and process as easy as possible for your viewers. Similarly, YouTube Cards are a good way to let people know where to go next for more information or to get at the content they really want.

Your content, whether they’re blog posts, YouTube videos, or anything else, should not exist in isolation. Encourage readers and viewers to deep dive into everything you’ve already published, because old content is new again in the eyes of someone who hasn’t read or seen it before.

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