Mamas On The Web

10 Effective Ways To Keep Your Blog Posts From Stinking

July 25th, 2008

Do your blog posts stink? Are you not getting the results you’d hoped for from each post? It’s time to throw them a lifeline. I’ve got a checklist for you to help make them shine.

First, I want to ask you a question. What’s your standard procedure when you publish a blog post?

Chances are, you might write up your post, choose a title, do some proofreading or editing, and then hit publish.

I’d like for you to think about spending a bit more time going through each process when creating your next post - a blogging checklist if you will. For a lot of people (including myself), posting might be a “fly by the seat of your pants” process. But if you spend a bit more time on your post before you hit “Publish”, you might find that it yields better results.

Here are some things I’d like you to consider. I’ll go through each point with a bit of detail, and then I’ll provide you with a downloadable checklist that you can print out before you submit your next post.

Blog Post Title

When deciding on your headline, ask yourself these questions:

Is it click-worthy? For your RSS readers, the only thing they might see is the post title. You’ve got limited opportunity to get them to click the post title, so make sure it stands out above the rest and gets them to click.

Does it stir an emotion? Hitting a nerve with your readers is a great way to get them to click. Posing a problem and promising a solution is one way to do this. For example, “Tired of being rejected? Here are 5 proven steps to get her number.”

Does your title contain your keywords? Before I publish a post, I run it through a keyword research tool. I use and love NicheBot. I plug in my title and see what keywords and alternatives it comes up with. Many times I discover something better. I can also see what gets searched for more and how competitive it is. Keep in mind that you’re writing for your readers, not the search engines, but it certainly helps to have your keywords in the title if possible.

I go into more detail about writing headlines in lesson #2 of my traffic e-course. You can sign up for free here.

Purpose

Does your post have a purpose or “call to action”? Are you trying to increase readership? Don’t forget to include the link to your RSS feed. Are you promoting a product? Make sure you provide a link. Do you want more newsletter subscribers? Point them to your opt-in form. Are you looking for comments? Ask for them! Do you want more people to follow you on Twitter? Invite them.

Determine the purpose of your post and make sure you are clear about what you want out of the post and your readers. Essentially, what is the point you’re trying to get across? Make sure you succeed in achieving that.

Your Target

Who are you writing for? When you’ve determined who that is, imagine you are writing to that person as an individual. Write your post as if you’re addressing them personally in a letter. Picture them on the phone with you. However you do it, having a clear image of who you’re targeting will help you get your point across as mentioned above.

Benefits

Is your post entertaining, helpful, funny, thought-provoking, or controversial? In other words, is it interesting and does it provide some kind of benefit for your reader? If you’ve made your reader laugh, answered their question, or made them think about something they never thought about before, then you should be left with a good feeling.

Ultimately, it would be great if you could do this for every post. This is the kind of stuff that will keep your visitors coming back, and it will turn new visitors into loyal readers.

Evergreen

Is your post dated? If you removed the date on your post, would people be able to tell when it was written? It’s not usually possible to create evergreen posts every single time, but do your best to write something that will remain classic and timeless for years to come. This will also reduce how often you’ll need to go back and update older posts.

Having an evergreen post will also ensure that people will continue to link to it for months or years down the road, providing it’s of good quality. I have many articles I wrote years ago that are still being linked to. It’s nice to know that after spending all that time and hard work it’s still useful to your readers.

Images

Something I have to keep reminding myself to do is to find a relevant image to include with my posts. There are some blog posts that stick with me because of the image in them. The best ones are either humorous or trigger emotions. One blog that does this really well is Men with Pens.

It can be an icon, photo of a person, an animation, a photo you took yourself, etc., just try and choose something that will resonate with your readers. I use www.sxc.hu (free) for a lot of my images, but iStockPhoto and StockXpert have more variety and professional images for cheap. I downloaded my cute little skunk above at StockXpert.

Scannable

This one is usually a no-brainer, but sometimes it just slips your mind before you publish your post. I’ve done it many times myself - forgetting to include sub-headlines and bullets. Can you imagine what this blog post would look like without any kind of formatting? It would be extremely hard to read all the way through, especially since internet readers are typically “scanners”. Instead of digesting every word like they would in a book, they scan the content looking for the parts they want to read.

Breaking up long blocks of text is critical if you want your entire post to be read. If you don’t use images, bolding, sub-headlines and bullets to make your content scannable, you’ll notice that your post isn’t being read. I take one look at long, plain, boring looking posts and run far away.

RSS

Most blogs have an RSS (Real Simple Syndication) logo somewhere in the header or sidebar of their page. If you don’t already have one, you should definitely consider it. If you’re not sure of what RSS is, you can learn more about it here.

Giving your readers the option of subscribing to your RSS feed will increase your readership and returning traffic. But who says you only have to have your RSS logo in one spot? A lot of blogs include the logo at the end of each post. If you don’t want to clutter your post with too many graphics, consider linking to your feed URL. For example, “Did you like this post? Sign up for my RSS feed here and receive free updates.”

Another option to increase your RSS exposure is through this Wordpress plugin which you can display at the beginning or end of each post to new visitors which will encourage them to subscribe to your feed.

Related Links

Many times your post will be related to a lot of other posts you’ve written previously. Your new post is a great opportunity to increase their exposure. Because of a blog’s dynamic nature, older posts continue to be pushed down the page and eventually into the archives once newer posts are published. Don’t let those old posts die a slow and painful death. Link to them in newer posts to keep your blog bumpin’. Darren at Problogger does this in almost every post.

One way to showcase your older posts is by including a list of related posts at the end of your post. You can pick them out manually or use a plugin if you blog with Wordpress. While linking to related posts manually will yield you more accurate results, using a plugin will save you a lot of time.

You can also highlight previous posts by having a section for them in your sidebar. You can display your most popular posts, or your own personal favorites.

Something to keep in mind - don’t be afraid to link to other blogs. If someone else has written a great post that is related to yours, give them props and link to them. They’ll appreciate the link and may link to you in return, and your readers will appreciate it as well. This doesn’t mean they won’t come back to your blog as long as you’ve given them a great reason to come back (see all my previous points).

Social Media

Social bookmarking sites like Digg, Technorati, StumbleUpon, Reddit, etc. are great ways to get a surge of traffic to your post. (In fact, landing on the front page of these sites can sometimes result in the epic server crash.) However, unless you have a system in place, a lot of that traffic will not return. When I experienced my first wave of StumbleUpon traffic to one of my blogs, I wasn’t ready for it and I didn’t keep any of the thousands of people who visited my post.

If you use this guide, you’re sure to retain some visitors and turn them into loyal readers. Go through the checklist, and don’t forget to make it easy for your readers to share your post with others via these social networks. There are numerous plugins available to help you do this. I use the Share This plugin on this blog, but there are plenty to choose from.

If your post happens to do well and starts getting Diggs or Stumbles, add an extra button to your post displaying the number of votes to help your post get even more thumbs up.

Now, this post was a more in depth look at each point but I also have a summarized checklist you can download. I love me a good checklist so I’m hoping that this may be useful to you as well. It’s in PDF format, so you can print it out on one page and refer to it each time you publish a post. Once you’ve done it a few times, it will become habit and you should no longer need a checklist.

You can download the PDF here. No opt-in is required, just right-click the link and “save as”.

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Entry Filed under: Blogging