You’re a SaaS business owner. You’ve been blogging for a while, but you can’t seem to crack the “how do I make this popular?” code.
You’ve tried everything: repurposing old content, guest posting, even running ads. And yet, your blog is still as empty as a Friday night in an office park.
Don’t fret: round-up posts are here to save the day!
Round-up posts are a great way to generate organic traffic and backlinks to your website quickly and easily. They feature several contributors in one post, which is a great way to boost engagement and build your content marketing campaign online—without spending a lot of time on content creation.
Instead of writing a single post about how to fix the X problem, you can turn it into a round-up post by asking other experts in your industry for their advice on the subject.
Why should you care about round-up posts?
If you’re a SaaS decision-maker, you likely get pitched at least ten times a day by other SaaS companies.
Some are good, some are bad, and some fall somewhere in the middle. But all of them want you to know why their product is the best and what they can do for your company.
Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to make time to evaluate these pitches, especially if they come via email. So what happens? They get lost in the shuffle, or they sit in your inbox while you try to prioritize your time.
That’s where round-up posts come in.
Instead of pitching directly to executives, your company creates a list post that includes several different tools or software solutions (often including itself) to appeal to decision-makers looking for that comparison post.
Once the companies are on the list post, they can share it with their audience, which is what SaaS companies should be doing! So you’ll create an asset for yourselves that will help generate leads over time, and it’s an asset that others (your competitors) have.
How to create a roundup post for your saas website
At this point, we can agree on one thing: roundup posts are excellent. They help your readers get answers to their questions, and they also show off your expertise in a given area.
But writing a roundup post isn’t as easy as throwing together some links and calling it a day. You have to make sure you’re creating something that your audience will find helpful.
Here are five ways to create an effective roundup post:
1. Find the right topic
If you want your post to be successful, you need to find a topic that people care about. The easiest way to do this is to look for questions on Quora. Quora is an excellent platform for finding topics as it’s designed entirely around answering questions.
To get started, search for topics related to your industry. For example, if you’re a SaaS company that helps eCommerce businesses sell more online, you might search for “what are the best online stores?” or “how can I collect more email addresses?”
You’ll get a list of interesting questions like the ones shown in the screenshot. Choose the one with the most upvotes and answers.
Once done, start thinking about how you can format an answer into a roundup post. For example:
What are the best online stores?
This could become… The Top 25 Online Stores in 2022 shared by 25 Experts
How can I collect more email addresses?
This could become… 30 Conversion Experts Share Their Favorite Lead Generation Tactics.
2. Reach out to the leading saas experts
Roundup posts are a great way to highlight the expertise of your friends and industry leaders—and you may find that they share it on their social media, driving traffic back to your site.
It’s pretty simple: first, you reach out to many people who have done incredible work in the Saas industry. Then you ask them questions about what they’re up to. And finally, you compile their answers into an excellent post that draws everyone’s attention!
Here are some tips on how to get the most out of it:
- Get permission before you publish. If the influencers say no, don’t worry. Just move on to the next person and thank them for their time.
- Be friendly and personal in your approach—make sure they know why you’re reaching out and why you think they’d make an excellent fit for this post.
- Ask them how to spell their name and title to get it right when you write about them!
3. Ask questions that will elicit beneficial answers
Creating a round-up post is one of the best ways to gain links and shares from the web’s biggest influencers. You ask the experts; they give you their answer, publish it on your site, share it with their networks, and boom! You’re a link-building genius.
But for this to work, you have to be strategic in how you go about it. The questions you ask should elicit handy answers for your audience so that when readers see this great list of solutions by top industry experts all in one place, they’ll want to hang around.
Here are some tips on creating questions that will help you get real value out of your round-up posts:
- Don’t make them too short or too long
- Ask open-ended questions like “what is” instead of “how do I.”
- Use numbered lists or bullets
- Keep the number of questions pretty small so as not to overwhelm your expert contributors (2–5 questions is a good rule of thumb)
4. Decide on a format (interviews, list, analysis, etc).
There are many different ways to write round-up posts for your SaaS website. Essentially, a round-up post is a way of curating other people’s research and opinions or your own opinion on the ideas others have already explored.
It saves you time on your research and allows you to put together something that gets traffic without doing all the work yourself.
So how do you know which format to choose? Here’s some background on the most popular options:
- Interviews: Ask industry experts questions about your subject matter and put their answers in your post.
- Lists: Collect many resources related to your topics, like blogs, articles, or websites, and share them with your readers by linking in the post.
- Analysis: Look at a few different tools or programs, or resources related to your post topic (but not too many—don’t spread yourself too thin) and give an overview of each one’s pros and cons.
- Comparison: Pick two or three things related to your topic, whether tools, platforms, or websites, and compare them.
5. Design your saas roundup post like a pro
Roundup posts are a great way to get your best content in front of new readers, and they can help you build relationships with other bloggers in your industry. If you’re new to blogging, here’s how to design one so it looks professional:
Use Canva or Adobe Photoshop (or any other design program) to create an eye-catching cover image that will draw people in when they see it shared on social media platforms like Instagram or Facebook.
If possible, include relevant keywords in the headline so search engines will pick up your content online—this will help.
Ensure there is enough contrast between round color and text colors for readers with vision impairments or color blindness issues.
Use bullet points when listing out steps or ideas on how they can make their roundup post! This makes it easier for people with learning disabilities like dyslexia to read through your content without getting lost.
Bonus tip: Avoid using big blocks of text because no one wants another wall-of-text clogging up their screens! Try breaking things up into smaller paragraphs instead!
6. Promote your post to get maximum reach
The content of your round-up post is critical, but it’s not the only thing you need to think about.
Once the post is published, you’ll want to promote it as much as possible to get the biggest audience reach possible.
One way to do this is by reaching out to the experts you featured in your post and encouraging them to share the post on their social media accounts, email newsletters, etc.
Here’s how:
First, take 30 minutes and summarize why they were included in your post and what they can expect from the article. For example:
Hey (expert name ) thanks for contributing to our roundup post. You mentioned that we have an easy-to-use interface for sending emails and I wanted to let you know that our new drag and drop feature makes it even easier for users to create their own templates. I hope we can work together soon.
You can also do the following to promote the post :
- Post it on social media
Post the article on social media with a link to the post, and tag the companies and people you included. Make sure to encourage them to share the post on their pages.
- Reach out to influencers
Look for Saas influencers who would be interested in your round-up post and send them an email about it. Ask them to share it with their followers if they find it interesting.
- Include it in newsletters
If you have an email newsletter, include a link to your latest round-up articles so that subscribers will be aware of its existence.
What makes a great Saas round post?
A great round-up post will usually follow a very similar formula. It will have the following features:
Title
A great title is the most crucial part of any blog post because it’s what makes readers decide whether to click on your post or move on.
You need to include a number in the title so that people know exactly how many tools/apps you are recommending. The title also needs to be benefit-driven so that your reader knows what they will get from reading your post.
A catchy introduction
An Introduction – this can be brief and doesn’t have to go into too much detail. Just let the reader know what they will learn from reading your article and why it is relevant for them. You could also explain why you wrote the article and chose these particular SaaS solutions (e.g., you use them or have tested them or read good reviews).
Your top recommendations
This is the meat of your post, and where you will give a short description of each recommended SaaS solution (1-2 paragraphs).
In some cases, you may want to group similar products together and then give an overview of this group before diving into each specific product within that group.
The pros and cons of each product/service you review. You need to offer some balance here, so don’t be afraid to talk about any negatives and positives. Again, bullet points work well here because they’re quick to read through and easy on the eye.
The Takeaway
Round-up posts are an effortless way to create engaging, linkbait-y content that gives your readers a trustworthy source of information.
The best part? It’s so easy to write: all you need to do is find a list of great resources, compile them into a blog post, and write a few sentences on each one. And it can help you get backlinks from the sites you feature!
Have you ever written a round-up post? Let us know in the comments!