So you put your sweat and blood to write a blog post. You are so excited about the blog post.
You’ve done all the editing to polish your post and it reads great! Now you are extremely proud to click that Publish button and you do so.
You look forward to comments, shares and all sorts of social media interactions. That’s quite reasonable isn’t? - given that you’ve spent so much time and effort on it.
But that doesn’t seem to happen. Why is that? Why are your blog posts avoided by readers, even though you write them with all your heart?
Why do the blog posts of your peers do very well among their audience but yours fail to perform well.
Let’s discuss six tips to help you write blog posts that will get your readers to read and share!
1. Choose a topic that is interesting and useful to your readers
This boils down to identifying your readers first. If you don’t know to whom you are addressing your blog posts, you won’t be able to make them useful to your readers.
Get to know your readers first. This is a crucial step in blogging - I would say, the very first step where you should start.
You could be tempted to write about a topic that you know best. Or a topic on which you are passionate about.
But remember people don’t care about what you had for breakfast, or what your interests are (I’m NOT saying that you should totally delete all personal details from your blog though - but, you get the idea).
All your content should be about your readers, even the About page on your website!
Everything should be focused on your readers!
2. Pack your blog post with ample information
OK this could be daunting for you. If you wanted to touch a topic just like that and get away with a 500 word blog post, you must first understand that it won’t work.
Shallow blog posts used to work a while ago. Not anymore.
And, let’s forget about SEO and people for a moment. Would you (just you and you alone) honestly think that such a shallow post will give anything useful to your readers?
You bet.
Now both from the perspective of search engines as well as people, blog posts with ample information rock.
At the same time, I don’t want you to mistake quality with the number of words on a blog post. You can deliver quality information and usefulness in as much words as needed.
This depends on your way of writing, and there is no strict rule. Let’s consider two examples.
Neil Patel is well known for writing long, in-depth content with lots of screenshots, illustrations, quotes etc. People LOVE his posts and they get lots of shares a comments!
Here’s a topic, where Neil directly addresses the “need” of his target audience!
And look at the number of shares on this post.
Here’s Adrienne Smith addressing a very pressing question of every blogger! Unlike Neil, she doesn’t use many screenshots in her posts. And her posts are much lesser in length.
And here’s the engagement stats of that blog post.
So ya, find your writing style and use as much words and images, screenshots, whatever to get your point across.
Make sure you post has elements of interest and usefulness! If you write a mere theory, no matter how powerful it is, people won’t be able to directly relate.
Rather you should include examples, practical tips and other additional resources so people can actually take value from your blog post!
3. Format your blog post so it is easy on the eyes
The internet is both an interesting and a boring place! You stumble upon awesome content from time to time. You also stumble upon crappy content meanwhile.
Apart from quality and the meat, what separates awesome content from crappy content is the formatting.
Remember I said, “the internet is a boring place”? Yes people get bored. Some are highly impatient. Many are in a hurry. And most of them are multi-tasking.
Even if you write a very long, in-depth blog post, only 40% of your readers will read it (according to Neil).
And those 40% of your audience will read only 28% of the words on your blog page!
In short, people don’t read web pages word by word. They scan through, for whatever reason. And when they get to the interesting bits, they stop for a moment to read that part alone.
And also most people don’t read your blog posts till the end. They don’t finish it.
Here’s where formatting comes into picture. You should create well formatted posts and assist people who just scan along!
- Use headings.
- Use bullet points (like this one).
- Use images/screenshots.
- Leave ample white space.
- Break down the paragraphs (people don’t like to see big blocks of text).
Make your blog post easy for scanning. Period.
4. Include elements of variety
Just in relation to what I said above, people get easily bored or annoyed and they leave your website for various reasons.
And if you make your content boring this will drive away the “already bored” readers.
Instead of having all text in your blog post, you could include variety so people don’t get bored.
So how can you include variety?
Images are great ways to do that. Other than that you could include videos, audios, downloadable pdfs etc.
You should also be including tweetables, quotes, and the like!
Include practical tips and examples in your blog post so people don’t just read all about the theory.
5. Write reader-friendly blog posts
We’ve talked about formatting and adding variety. But there’s still something that’s left out. That’s reader friendliness.
Not from the point of view of how easy it is to scan or read the post along, but in terms of how it sounds.
Does your blog post sound as if it is from a sales person? A PRO of a big company? Piece from a freelance writer who has no idea about your business?
Or does it sound like YOU who really empathises with them (your readers)?
This is what your readers prefer.
Here’s a checklist by Marya at GetResponse blog to make your blog posts sound friendly! The points I liked the most are:
- Talk less about yourself (makes your post interesting and empathising)
- Write in an active voice (so people can relate)
- Break rules of grammar (so you don’t sound too formal)
- Get rid of jargon and corporate speak (yup)
- Be vulnerable (read this post by Adrienne)
Things like these make your blog post very reader friendly.
6. Use your own blog post formula
As a blogger you will be writing blog posts regularly. And you want all your blog posts to be celebrated by your readers, don’t you?
So you need a formula. A pre-written set of instructions that work for you. So you can rinse and repeat the formula to write winning blog posts every time.
I love to do that. It saves a lot of time.
So if I find something - a strategy, or a method - to work, I document it and just rinse and repeat.
Of course you have to add variety; and you should try out new things. But having a working formula will simply guarantee you success.
Here’s a simple blog post formula to give you a head start!
Will publishing more posts help?
Remember, publishing “more” blog posts won’t necessarily get you the traffic and results you want; because “more” blog posts are not going to do anything useful to your readers unless each blog post is useful by itself.
Here’s a case study by CoSchedule where they’ve found that publishing more content won’t necessarily grow your blog traffic.
Or won’t necessarily make your readers interested in reading and sharing the content for that matter.
So merely publishing more blog posts won’t help as long as they are appealing to your readers; incorporating these 6 tips will help you create such a blog post.
It is all about understanding your readers and serving them what they what in a way that pleases them!
Now go, get to work and write those awesome blog posts.
Hi, Jane, how you doing? I haven’t been posting in a while but I’m still here…
You’re spot on about knowing what your readers will want. It’s so tempting to stray into areas that happen to catch your interest, and I know lots of bloggers totally interrupt the flow and write about their own lives for a post or two. It seems to work for them, if they’ve got like a ‘gang’ going with their readers. I suppose there’s a happy medium between letting your personality shine through and speaking like a salesman – not always easy to hit the sweet spot
I’ve been thinking a lot about content length – I tend to go for a long post with lots of details thrown in, that’s just the way I write. I know it makes sense in terms of SEO but I wonder if readers would appreciate the odd quick post? It would certainly make sense for readers on mobile.
I totally agree about the importance of formatting a post – it’s got to look ‘snackable’ because even the keenest reader is going to scan through it. When you’ve got a conversational tone it’s especially easy to read (I’m thinking of Adrienne here but there are other really good ones too).
Thanks for all these tips. Have a good week!
Hey Donald,
Thanks for stopping by - I feel so honoured
You are right finding the sweet spot is not so easy. But it is crucial and is totally worth it!
I prefer long posts as well - the details in such a post help readers truly. A short post can only tell you so much.
Oh yes snackable posts. The internet is a very busy place and making people to read your content is so challenging. Going their way will work for sure
Thanks once again for your valuable comment!
Cheers,
Jane.
Yeah exactly.. We should focus what our readers like not what we like.
Belal Khan recently posted..Wanna make money from blogging – Avoid these 6 Mistakes
Patricia says
Nice Post, Jane
I really liked how you’ve made the post entirely about the reader - their ease of reading, likability, relevance and frequency of the post. Thanks to you I also learned about GetResponse.
Have a great day week ahead.
Patricia recently posted..5 proven strategies that helped me get more freelancing work
Esteban says
I especially agree with the last point!
I used to blog daily and didn’t promote my posts as much as I do now.
Now I blog about once or twice a week and add tons of content, images and nice bullet points etc. and readers seem to be a lot more responsive!
Great guide thanks,
Esteban
Robert says
Hi Jane
Thanks for this guide , it really is come at an excellent time for me . I surely need to be much more practical about mapping out the audience journey from first engagement through to share/subscribe/sale .
Best regard
Robert
Manal says
Very informative post!I agree with your last point. I\’m part of a blogger group and when each of them writes 2-3 posts per week, it gets overwhelming and I loose interest in reading unless it\’s educational information.
Manal recently posted..Hug A Police Officer Today!
Areesha Noor says
Hi Jane,
First of all thanks for sharing such great information with us.
I visit your blog first time though Enstine Muki blog. and I am so happy to join this blog because in my first time I learnt a basic thing that every one should learn before starting blogging.
As you described, Choose best topic. You are right, We should write both for user and search engine because If user not like your content then you fail in your field.
valuable and unique posts are useful for search engine as well user. If you success in decreasing bounce rate and increase social share then you are pro blogger.
Any way thanks Jane for sharing your knowledge with us.
Regards:
Areesha Noor!
Areesha Noor recently posted..Happy New Year Poems
Hey Jane,
What a pleasant surprise to see you used my blog as an example.
You know I oftentimes worry about the layout of my posts because I don’t use images in my posts unless I’m using examples or something. I’m not as detailed as someone like Neil but I try to make my content more like “old home week”. Yeah, basically that means come on over to Adrienne’s place, sit down and let’s chat.
I think that every person has to find what works best for them because we can give certain advice and it might not work for that person. But overall though we do have to start somewhere which is why this post screams read…
As you know I’ve honed in more on my target audience mainly because I wasn’t really attracting in the past who I personally wanted to work with. So after going through that coaching with Don and understanding how I needed to change things up I can see a huge difference. Now it frustrates me when I visit some of my friend’s blogs and they’re basically all over the place. Having been there before myself I know it can’t be profitable for them.
If you want to blog and get readers you need to step up. I do hope that more people will read this awesome post Jane and you can bet I’ll be spreading it around too. Thanks for these great tips and again for the mention.
Hope you’re doing well and have a great week.
~Adrienne
Adrienne recently posted..How To Overcome Your Fear of Blogging
Thanks for this guide. It’s really amazing points you mentioned here. I’ve been here after a long gap. You are changed your theme too. I liked it. I’ve bookmarked this page. Thanks you for sharing!
Hey Join,
You are right on point and as a matter of fact I’ve been slowly changing the way I blog towards this way of thinking.
You want to write posts that interest your audience and where they can instantly implement for themselves. This is why I like to write simple, doable tips talking about different problems and solutions that I found. With this consistency this will grow your Return visitors.
I’ve also implement different types of content. I’ve done a fee videos and I’ve added a few infographics. There are times that your audience get board with the same text and for some they learn better when they see visual content.
A couple of years ago I was in the school of publishing content every other day. It was a tedious event and I had up to 6 months of scheduled content bit there were ptoblems. They lack a lot of quality, my readers didn’t relate well with it, it was boring, and on top of that I was stagnant in generating more traffic. When I cut down how many times I published content and focused more on quality, that’s when I started getting better results.
These are great tips that everyone should follow! Thanks for sharing and I hope you have a great day!
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Ravi Singh says
I am a new reader of your blog and love your content. Totally agree with you, writing a quality content is more important than writing more content. Thanks for sharing.
Tauseef Alam says
Hi Jane,
I usually write 3 kind of articles on my blog and believe me they work the best.
1. Articles that help readers save some money on popular/interesting products.
2. Articles that solve a real life problem i.e How to articles.
3. Articles that create a controversy or Gossip.
I personally believe these 3 kinds of articles people search the most on internet. Although it also depends upon on someone’s writing skill and presentation that how well he engage a reader.
Regards
Tauseef Alam
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Dipendra Kumar says
Great post indeed - simple, informative and well explained, Jane! In order of blog to get noticed depends on several things. But what you explained is really worth to use! Thank-You very much!
harsha says
Blogging is continuous process where at every step there needs to be perfection, so how does that perfection come, just reading healthy articles like these and needs great level of positive thinking without that nothing is possible.
two important words Passion and Patience really works.