Elements of a Successful Blog
So you’ve penned the ultimate guide on your topic of choice, uploaded your fact-filled and conversational post to your blog, and because you’ve carefully selected your keywords and followed the current year’s best SEO practices, your article is getting the clicks it deserves! Great job, but wait a sec, why isn’t anyone commenting or sharing it via social media? If that’s the long and short of your problem, it may be because your blog post isn’t as “readable” as it should be.
Don’t be discouraged! You’ve likely got most of the core elements for making a successful blog at this point, but you must also remember that blogging is an art, not a science, and as comprehensive as your research may be, sometimes you have to reorganize your work for readability purposes to avoid the one comment that every blogger dreads: “TL:DR” (“too long; didn’t read”).
Visual Tips
As much as I would love to tell you that simply writing a clever, entertaining, and informative blog post is enough to get people to take the time to actually read what you’re writing, sadly it’s won’t keep many from reading the headline and the first paragraph before giving up to see what’s new on YouTube. If they’ve clicked on your blog, you’ve got their attention, but if a curious would-be reader is staring down a giant “Wall of Text,” you’re going to lose them fast.
Try making the font size for your blog a bit bigger. Tiny text will quickly turn people away, especially on mobile platforms!
If everything you have to say is vital for your five-star article, hold a reader’s attention with the crafty use of image-breaks. Not only will placing relevant eye-catching pictures in the middle of your blog keep a reader invested in your piece, it’s a natural way to emphasize the end of one section and the start of another within a particularly text-heavy piece.
Writing Tips
While your writing itself may be excellent, articles with a slimmer word count that retain all of the vital information your readers need are just as valuable as a 4,000-word juggernaut of a blog post. Try slimming down unneeded sentences where you can, while placing a tighter focus on the core goal of your blog post, and aiming for a smaller word count from the beginning, to see if you notice a spike in comments, likes, and shares with future uploads.
If your writing or blog’s inherent style doesn’t permit you to break up the text with interesting images, aim for writing smaller paragraphs to get your readers to feel like they’ve cruised through four or five mini-paragraphs, as opposed to one solid mountain of text. Also consider breaking up the text with titles, especially SEO-friendly ones. It’s all about perception!
Think Readability
To reiterate, you may have done everything right to rise to the top of the search engines and collect plenty of clicks, but if your information isn’t organized for readability and the average human attention span, you may get far less feedback and likes than your awesome work deserves.