If you have decided that you are fit for business blogging and are committed to the success of your blog, you will probably be wondering what makes a good blog post. That’s a bit like asking, ‘how long is a piece of string?’, when you think about it. The style you in your posts use will depend on your audience and will definitely improve with time as you find your voice. Still, here are five simple things you can do that will definitely improve the quality of your blog posts and the returns you get from your blogging efforts.
1) Give your headline some serious thought
If there is one vital part of your blog post, it is the headline! Your headline has the tough job of catching the reader’s attention and getting your post read, so choose it carefully.
You may write the headline before starting on the actual blog post or leave it for later, but in any case make sure that it matches well with the content of your post and offers the reader a clear benefit that will be obtained by reading on. Make sure to avoid spilling the beans in the headline, however - if you give away the crux of the story, your readers won’t have much reason to read your blog post, will they?
If you’re stuck for a good headline, here are a few ideas:
- Promise information: “10 things you should know before pruning your roses”
- Pose a question: “Why do many blogs fail?”
- Offer advice how to solve a problem: “How to ask your boss for that raise you deserve”
2) Address your readers directly as much as possible
Take advantage of your blog to connect with your readers, using the ‘you’ form as much as possible. Say, ‘If you are planning to buy a new PC, you will have to think about…’ rather than the impersonal, ‘There are several things to think about when buying a new PC…’
If you are giving advice related to your field, you will probably want to go for a tone that sounds like an expert giving advice, or one friend speaking to another, depending on what is appropriate for your business.
3) Break up long posts with subheads and/or bullets
A screen full of text is downright scary to most. If you write a long blog post, use subheads to help your readers along by breaking it up into bite-sized sections that don’t seem so daunting to read.
Also, using subheads has the advantage that people can skip to the part of the post they are most interested in if they are already familiar with what you are writing about.
Another technique is to use bullets to express a lot of information in shorter, point form. Instruction steps, advantages, and other lists can all be made clearer with bullets.
4) Slip keywords unobtrusively into your posts
When you’re blogging, you must remember that you are writing primarily for your visitors, but those visitors won’t come unless you pander a little to the search engines as well. Aim to keep in mind a set of keywords as you blog, and use them repeatedly in your headline and post text. It’s not about stuffing your posts with keywords, but about inserting them when you can.
If you chose your subject and keywords to match each other, you will find that you won’t have much trouble fitting them in inconspicuously. Still, before you publish your post, read through it again to make sure that you have not missed any opportunities to reasonably include your keywords. For example, if you are writing about investing in the stock market, you could simple write ‘investors’ and ‘investing’, with the understanding that you are talking about stocks. Better would be to alternate that with ‘stock market investors’ and ‘investing in stock’, ‘investing in the stock market’ and so on, to cover your main keywords.
5) Blog about blogs
If your blog were an island, few people would read it. Follow other popular bloggers who blog about topics related to yours and comment on and link to their posts in your own blog. This will give your readers more value by offering them further information, and it will also potentially get you noticed by other bloggers who could blog about your posts in turn. What’s more, many blogs are set up to automatically create a trackback link to your blog when you link to one of their posts.
