How to Create Effective Blog Post

I seem to be on a roll the last few days with post for this blog. And it might have something to do with the topic we have been covering lately, posting and now content. Previously in this series we had these two post:

One of the reasons I have been spending so much time and a number of post on this subject is the very fact I think it is one of the most important steps in building a successful blog. If you are not posting to your blog, why in the same hell are you blogging in the first place. You have to post as that is really the only way to provide good, quality, relevant, consistent content to your readers. Content, there is that word so many have been talking about lately. But it really is key to a successful blog. You have to push out consistent content.

What is one of your goals as a blogger? Is it fair to say you want to get traffic to your site? I hope it is. And if you want traffic and if you want to get noticed by the search engines, visitors and other bloggers, you have to provide content. When I look at traffic I tend to break it down into two basic categories.

Traffic = Visitors who we hope become regular Readers

And we want those regular readers to become subscribers. We want them to come back to our blog time and time again. And we want them to eventually become customers and/or clients. Content is what we need to keep them coming back. As a blogger, you need to provide content which is useful to your readers. Position yourself as the go- to place for your readers to go for answers to their questions and solutions to their problems. You need to become their information source.

You need to build a relationship with these readers and one of the ways you do this is with your content. To get this content, we need to spend more time talking about posting and how we can create effective post for our blog.

Creating Effective Post on Your Blog

Keep post simple and clear

If there is one mistake I see a lot of bloggers do, especially business bloggers or professional service firms, they don’t stop and think about who their audience is. If you are writing to the general public, don’t write like you are writing to a technical journal or a law or medical journal. You need to write to your audience, not over them and darn sure not below them.

Write your post in a clear and concise fashion so your readers can easily follow what you are trying to provide to them. And don’t show off your huge vocabulary either. Your readers don’t give a care if you can use words they have to look up in the dictionary.

And in your process of writing your post remember that web readers tend to scan when they read. You need to use:

bullet points

numbered paragraphs

sub-headings

and bold text

Make your post easy to scan and if you use the items above, your readers are going to stop and see what is up with those points in your post. And make your post easy to read. Don’t muck up the water by how you write.

Effectively use links in your blog post

In order to attract and keep your readers, you need to be a huge information source. Not only of your own content, but that of other’s which you should be linking to in your blog post. I am not talking about those blog rolls so many put in their side bars. I am not a fan of blog rolls, period.

The type of linking I am talking about is “organic linking”. Where you link to another blog post from another blog that is relevant to what you are writing about. Linking to someone else’s blog post who is writing about the same thing and you feel it adds to your own post and your readers would benefit from it too.

And, god forbid, linking out to one of your own competitors. There is nothing wrong with linking out to a competitor. In fact, it actually shows your readers you are what you say you are. You are a source of information, even if it is on another site.

By putting a link to a competitor in a post you have written you are going to accomplish at least 3 things:

You are going to get noticed by this competitor

You are going to be providing information to your readers

You are going to show your readers you are serious about providing them with information they can use and understand.

Additionally, don’t forget to use internal links in your post too. In fact, if you have noticed, in this section of this post, I have used five internal links back to some of my own blog post.

Doing this one practice accomplishes three benefits for you and your blog.

You are providing more information to your readers and giving them more reasons to come back to your blog.

You are keeping your readers on your blog, reading your content.

Internal links count in SEO

One word of caution or perhaps warning. Because if I see you doing this after you read this post, I am gong to hunt you down. Don’t use these words in your out going and internal links, CLICK HERE.

Remember that linking is one of the activities you can do to help your SEO. And if you want it to help your SEO, you should put keywords and relevant words in your hyperlink. Click here does nothing for SEO. You should also try to make the hyperlinks a different color than your normal text. You want your links to stand out for your readers so they actually click on them.

Create good titles for your blog post

If there is one area I struggle with the most it would be this part of writing a post. The one blog I read daily and where I get the most help on writing is copyblogger. In fact, if you are a blogger, this is a must read blog in my opinion.

Copyblogger had a post sometime back called, Writing Headlines for Regular Readers, Search Engines, and Social Media. While I love this post, I don’t want to go any further for the purpose of my post then creating good titles for regular readers.

First of all, your titles should “pique interest” without baiting them into reading your content. If you have regular readers, you should have already developed some form of rapport with them. They are coming back to you because they like what you are offering them. However, you need to remember your regular readers are just like the first time visitor. They are going to scan the titles to see if there might be something there they want to stop and read.

If there is one thing I would like to point out, write for your readers and not the search engines, Google especially. If your readers like what they see, so will Google. My point is this, you should be more worried about writing for your readers then you ever worry about what the search engines think of your content and titles.

How often should you post to your blog?

I wish I had a dollar for every time someone has asked me that. And I know some of you struggle with coming up with an answer yourself. If I had my wish, you would post a minimum of 3 times a week. And if you use the methods and tools we discussed in the previous posts in this series, this should not be a problem for you.

Keep in mind, the more you post the more you will be noticed by visitors, who become readers, who may become customers and/or clients. The more you post to your blog, the more the search engines are going to notice you too. And getting noticed is one of the reasons you are publishing a blog in the first place.

In the end, you are going to have to decide how often you are going to post to your blog.

Your homework

I know, summer vacation season is upon us and I am giving you homework. However, one of my goals for this series, Building a Successful Blog is to get you to that point. I want your blog to be successful. I want you to take the key points of this post and apply them to your own blogging.