Did you know that over 2 million blog posts are written every day? According to research conducted by advertising technology firm Technorati, there are more than 8 million blogs online, and a new blog is posted every 7.4 seconds. If you want to win people’s time in a vastly growing digital world, you must give them something of value, something of service or something that entertains.
If you feel overwhelmed by the numbers, the good news is that 64% of these blogs were reported as hobbies. The remaining 36% of blogs were run by self-employed business people, corporates and part-time bloggers who blogged for profit. So of the 8 million blogs online, if you’re writing for business, you’re only competing with somewhere in the vicinity of 2,880,000 others!
This statement is obviously a grandiose one. Of course, you’re not competing with every blog out there. But it does drive home a very valid point: there is an overload of information available on the internet. So you need to write blog posts that cut through and get read!
Here’s our step-by-step guide
1. Put your value proposition in the headline! If you’ve got valuable information to share, give your audience a sample straight away. You might lose them to a competing article with a great ‘grab’ if you don’t.
2. Put your key search terms in your headline. Don’t limit your potential audience to your fans, followers and email subscribers. Search engines love blogs, and headlines are given priority when it comes to determining relevance. Your content is important to search engines, too, so include key search terms in your headline and the body of your text.
3. Include pictures that relay your message. Photos draw the eye and create an immediate impression of your article. But it’s not just your lead image that’s important. According to BuzzSumo, posts that include an image every 70 – 100 words get twice the number of shares of posts with fewer images (pull out quotes work nicely too). Today’s internet users are pretty sophisticated, so there’s a high expectation when it comes to professional imagery. We recommend subscribing to a good image library. If you’re Photoshop savvy, you might also consider laying subtitles across your images.
4. Start your article with compelling statistics, creativity or humour. This is the time to leave your audience wanting more! Another way to do this may be by asking a question they want answered. Whatever you do, remember that your opening needs to cement the interest generated by your headline and lead picture.
5. Limit your article to one key theme. Online readers have limited attention spans, and you want to hold their attention for the duration of the post.
6. Write your key points in a way that is easy to read. This may include a step-by-step guide, such as this, or breaking the information down into bite-sized paragraphs using subheadings.
7. Highlight key messages throughout the article. A 2008 study by Jakob Nielsen revealed that visitors only read about 20% of the text on an average web page. People often skim-read online content. So make your key points stand out so skim readers can easily focus on the content that most interests them.
8. Use the conclusion of your article to further engage with your audience with a call to action. Remember to save some stellar information for your finale to maintain the attention of more readers.
Wrapping Up with a Bonus
Of the two million-plus blogs written each day, there are many blogs that never get read. But there is one more key thing you can do to ensure this doesn’t happen to yours. Use an inverted pyramid to organise your information. The bulk of your most important points should go at the top of your article, where you can assume you’ve engaged the most readers. This should filter down, saving at least one gem for the end!
You can write highly successful blogs. The question is ‘WILL YOU?’
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