PB104: 4 Of My Most Viewed Blog Posts This Month and Why They Worked - a podcast by Darren Rowse: Blogger, Speaker, Author and Online Entrepreneur

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A Walk-Through of Reasons Why My Recent Top Posts Have Done WellToday I'm going to talk about some posts that have worked for me in the last month on Digital Photography School, my main blog.



This episode comes about from a question received by one of our readers, Matthew. He asks if I could walk through a number of posts that have recently done well and why they have worked.We have done this before on the blog and it worked really well, so let's try it for the podcast.

In the last month, these four posts have all been in the top 20 on Digital Photography School. I checked Google Analytics for the most read posts, and I tried to pick ones that I haven't talked about in the past.
In Today’s Episode 4 of My Most Viewed Blog Posts This Month and Why They Worked21 Settings, Techniques and Rules All New Camera Owners Should Know

Written in 2010. It’s always been a strong performer. Over 100,000 views this month. It’s shareable.It’s a sneeze page - it links to 21 other posts
Topic - good big picture overviewGenerates a load of page views
Makes a bit claimGenerates curiosity
Gets a lot of shares - over a million, people recommend this post to beginners they knowFeature image - has been tested and honed, something our readers love about dials works great on social because it signals topic and builds reader anxiety/curiosity
This post promotes our course which solves a problemWhat we could do better - specific opt-in for the post
Better formatting - looks a bit tiredReplicate this format for specific niches of photography


11 Stages That Every Photographer Goes ThroughThis was written by James Maher a guest writer. I had reservations about this post. It wasn’t a tips post.
It was written tongue in cheek a humour storyIt didn’t have a “hero” image or hit the inspiration angle
It worked because it was relatable - I shared on facebook with a question of which stages do you relate to?Touches on a pain point, stage 6 everything sucks
Key lesson - you don’t have to always solve a problem, you can create content that shows the reader you know where they are at and can relate to thatEveryday Carry – Must-have Tools for Photographers

This one surprisedBulk of our articles are tips related
This is an accessory or gear articleWriter put all of these things in a small tin, which created a strong visual
The items were affordable and accessibleWe claimed must have tools - the word tools works well
The post has a hack/DIY perspectiveEveryDayCarry - is a movement that people are obsessive about, possible share on EveryDayCarry forums


How to Make Colors Pop in Your Portraits – Without Using PhotoshopI had a feeling this would work well
It connects with something people want to make their photos popIt has strong visuals - uses beautiful images with gorgeous kids and color which would be great for sharing
The topic - Photoshopped images can be a polarising topic to photographers, some think of using Photoshop as evil, a technique that makes a claim to not use Photoshop will attract readers in that segmentSimple but useful techniquesFull TranscriptExpand to view full transcript
Compress to smaller transcript viewHey there and welcome to Episode 104 of the ProBlogger Podcast. Today, I want to talk about some posts that have worked for me in the last month on Digital Photography School, my main blog. This episode really comes about from a question that I received via email from one of our readers, Matthew, who asked if I could walk you through a number of posts that have done well for us recently, and talk about why they have worked.We've done this in the past on ProBlogger on the blog.

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