One of the most timeless posts on writing great content comes from an experiment done in 1997, which examined how internet users actually read content on the web. The conclusion: People don’t read, they scan.
Must-Read Posts:
- Jakob Nielsen’s How Users Read on the Web
- 10 Articles All Bloggers Should Read (at least once)
- How to Write Magnetic Headlines
1. Topic Selection and Format
While earth-shattering news stories tend to garner more attention from the major traffic drivers like social media, we don’t want to encourage sensationalism, and we do want to develop and diverse set of stories and useful information for our readers.
Basically, there are 3 types of stories you can write:
- The “Turn & Burn” News Story – You got it first, you wrote 3 solid paragraphs, and now it’s on the way to the front page of digg.com.
- The “Resource Post” – Top 10 Lists, Best of, 6 Ways to do this or that, anything that provides the reader with lasting value. These are also called “evergreen posts” since they stick around and attract search traffic over time.
- The “Original News” Story – This is all you, you made it happen. These can be interviews, a story about a project you were involved with or something you attended, or the event that changed your life.
All 3 types of stories are completely valid, and here are some tips on each:
- Turn & Burn News Stories -The secret here is, if you choose the right topic or get a story first, traffic will come naturally. For example, I happened to find this story before it was covered widely. The writeup took less than 40 minutes, and the post got 50,000 pageviews in the next 24 hours. (Learning how to get stories first is covered under Finding Great Content.) If you really want to maximize pageviews with breaking news, your topics should be extraordinary (98,000 pageviews), controversial (60,682 pageviews), extremely funny, or shocking (63,010 pageviews). Try to choose stories that stop you in your tracks.
- Resource Posts – You could probably write several hundred of these and not run out of ideas. Just take you topic of choice and make a list. To see how far you can stretch this, just look at this post. The great thing about resource posts is that you can get both social media traffic and significant search traffic. If you write a good resource, people will want to bookmark the post and share it with their friends. Here are some extremely well-done resource posts:
- Top 5 Green Technologies Still Missing from the USA
- Biodiesel Mythbuster 2.0: Twenty-Two Biodiesel Myths Dispelled
- Ten Ways to Eat Local, Seasonal Food All Year
- 10-Step Guide to Buying a Used Laptop That Works
- Original News Stories – These are really up to you, and depend a lot on personal time constraints. While things like interviews don’t necessarily have the pageview punch that other types of stories do, they can be a big credibility boost for the blog. In fact, original content may be the credibility driver that has given some of our sites the opportunity to be picked up by news organizations like the Guardian. They also may be key to IM’s growing recognition as a legitimate media organization.
Don’t be afraid to try out each of these types of stories.
2. Title: This must be the best thing you write.
Using relevant keywords in your titles is vital to proper Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and makes a huge difference in the amount of traffic your post will get. What’s a relevant keyword? Simply try to think about what you would search for if you were googling this topic.
Here’s a trick of the trade: Use one of these tools when writing titles (and headings) for your posts: http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/ or Google AdWords
Word choice is extremely important here if you want search traffic (which you do). For example, using the word “car” vs “cars” seems arbitrary, but (from a small sample size of search traffic), the word “car” gets approximately 10,890 searches per day, while the word “cars” gets 4 times that: 39,962 searches daily. So if you have the option of using either word, go with “cars”!
3. Formatting: Making Things Look Good
A good way to think about formatting: magazine copy.
Use the largest possible, highest-quality and flashiest image you can at the top. All images should take up the width of the column. It’s the first thing readers will see and it should sparkle.
Put the most intriguing part of the story at the top in an <h3> heading format. Remember, most internet readers aren’t going to read an entire post unless it just about comes out of the screen and reads it for them. If you’ve hit the reader hard with a good title, the first sentence is where the final decision to read the post is made.
Some call this the hook, but I think the title should already have done that. Your opening sentence should override the reader’s final instinct to skip reading the entire post and s/he should be thinking it’s imperative that I read this!
Use <h3> subheadings whenever possible to break up the post, and always use them for lists. Don’t write paragraphs that are longer than a few sentences. Highlight major points in bold font.
4. Style
Make your writing as unobtrusive as possible. Don’t write 1-paragraph intros about how this topic makes you feel. Get right to the point or none of your readers will make it there.
Strunk & White Rule #1 (ok, actually #13, but it should be #1): Omit needless words.
Make posts clear, simple, and powerful:
Heading: Make the reader understand immediately why this story is important.
Body: Explain details simply and clearly.
Conclusion: Add your opinion here.
5. Adding Value
Readers look to blogs for added value that mainstream media does not or cannot provide. Whatever type of post you’re writing, take a moment to reflect at the end of your post about contextual relevance of your post. How does this story relate to other posts you’ve written or your experience? Develop your voice on a topic and you will become one of the voices on a topic.