Understanding these 9 steps will assist your blog post writing and ultimately allow you to reach and maintain more readers.
1. Firstly do you know your audience?
What is your target audience?, what makes them tick?, what are they interested in?
2. Make your content scannable
It’s been shown that it’s more tiring reading from a screen than paper, which is why most people tend to scan read when online. “How do I do that though?” I hear you ask. Well use things like lists, bullet points, formatting (bold, italics, capitals, and underlining to make points), headings and sub headings, borders or blockquotes, space, and don’t waffle!
3. Determine the length of your post
Generally online users have short attention spans, with the average blog reader spending approximately 96 seconds per post. For SEO reasons your post should be over 250 words but always try and keep it below 1000 otherwise you may well lose the readers.
4. Create a captivating introduction
Readers need to be grasped in the first few sentences so make it good. Try and use a variety of techniques here, use a gripping fact or statistic, tell a story or a joke.
5. Use Images
Most posts consist of more than just text. Images, graphics and photos can transform your post and increase reader numbers. The use of images can evoke emotion, cause surprise, create curiosity, and illustrate your points.
6. Curated or Original Content?
Much is talked about the lack of originality and perceived laziness of curated content. It does however serve a valuable purpose and in fact takes time to evaluate and create quality content. Curated content should become original depending on how you arrange your researched material and pull it all together.
7. Have You Done Your Research?
The difference between you and your competitors should be the quality of your article and that all stems from the research involved. Try and use a broad range of sources, the wider the net the more informed your post. A really useful point of reference is using your local library rather than just online sources.
8. How valuable is your content?
Valuable content is important, how easily is the content to find? Is it easy to read? Is it easy to understand? Is it going to create actions? Is it shareable? Ticking all these boxes will mean you have valuable content. Do you have H1 and H2 tags, keywords and descriptors, internal and external links, and images with alt tags?
9. Measuring the success of the article
This can be an intricate process. There are many assisting tools available to allow you to break down the data and see where you have gone right and where you have failed. Google Analytics allows you to see how many readers you’ve had along with the percentage of new visitors. Mail chimp gives you a variety of useful data and Feedburner lets you see the extent of your RSS feed reach.