Tell a story: how to add depth to your blog posts
When I was blogging about small business marketing, one of my favorite ways to add depth and value to my instructional posts was to tell a story and then relate it back to marketing principles in some way. Although that blog no longer exists, here’s an example from one of the posts:
I was making the point that a business owner shouldn’t hurry through the steps of planning a marketing effort, and related this concept to my efforts at home to grow marigolds from bedding plants vs. sowing directly from seeds. I told the story this way:
I struggled for a long time to get marigolds to grow in my garden. They should have been easy: they are not a picky plant, and they bloom all season long. But for sixteen years, I spent untold dollars on lovely little bedding plants that simply refused to grow.
Then one year, I received a solicitation from my Alumni Association which included a packet of marigold seeds. Long about the end of May, I threw these seeds rather haphazardly into a sunny spot - mostly as an after thought, because I didn’t want them to go to waste.
What happened was that the seeds took root and flourished where no marigolds had done so before.
The anecdote is only part of the overall post, of course. The trick is to tie the story back into the general topic of the blog, which was small business marketing. I wrapped it up this way:
What’s this got to do with marketing? Simple: it’s the difference between throwing money and time at something in anticipation of instant results, versus taking time to work through the natural cycle of things and find value in the process as much as the result.
(It) seems likely that if you make the choice to do things well, completely, and right, you’ll flourish in a way you never have before.
Here’s why this is valuable:
Anecdotes help personalize the blog, making the reader feel that they are connecting with a person rather than a faceless “teacher entity.”
Anecdotes help you make your point without being preachy. Use a story to illustrate your point, and the post becomes more about a lesson you learned and are sharing, rather than a lesson you are trying to teach.
Fiction writers are admonished to “show, don’t tell.” By sharing an anecdote that makes your point, you’re showing readers why something is true rather than just asking them to take your word for it.
Story-telling fosters the kind of lively back-and-forth exchange that makes for great conversation.
A relevant story not only illustrates your point but also illustrates the universality of the problem being addressed.
Each of these benefits is bound makes readers a little more likely to interact with you, to share their own experiences via your comment section, and to contribute to the greater conversation around your central theme.
photo from the Flickr stream of Adwriter.
Never run out of ideas for blog posts
Sometimes I really struggle for ideas to write about. Other times, the ideas flow faster than I can log them. One of the biggest challenges I still face as a blogger is making sure my posting frequency doesn’t fluctuate along with the natural flow of ideas.
Here are some strategies I’ve used:
I regularly brainstorm ideas for posts and keep the ideas in a notebook. When it’s time to write, I can select an idea from the list. Hopefully I’ve also jotted down some of the key points to make in the post.
Another idea-generator is called “mind-mapping.” For me, this works best when I start with a post I’ve already written. I draw a circle in the middle of a sheet of paper and write the name of the existing post in the circle. From there I just start brainstorming ideas for follow-up posts, posts on a similar topic but from a different angle, “antonymnic” posts where I write about the opposite of the idea, and other twists on the existing topic. This usually generates at least 5-10 new ideas.
If I’m ”in the zone,” I’ll write several posts in one sitting and use my WordPress software to schedule them to post automatically on assigned days and times in the future. I’ve gotten as far as three weeks ahead using this method, which gives me time to work through any dry spells.
I’ll sometimes experiment with assigning certain types of posts to various days of the week, for example: opinion posts on Mondays, list posts on Wednesdays, problem-solving posts on Fridays. This at least gives me a guideline for what type of post my readers are expecting, and that makes it even easier to select something from my notebook of ideas.
I will also sometimes just select a type of post, and try to brainstorm a title based on that type. Some common types I’ve used include list posts (“Ten Ways…” “Five Things…” etc.), Q-and-A posts, link posts (link round-ups), and opinion posts (on a controversial topic).
Failing all of this, of course, you could just try snagging one of Chris Brogan’s 100 post ideas.
photo by Microsoft Clips Online
The value of linking out to other blogs
Q. I read frequently that I should “link out” to the posts of other bloggers writing about similar topics. Why should I do that, when I want to keep readers on my blog?
A. This question speaks to the very heart of what makes blogging collaborative rather than competitive. It was the biggest hurdle I had to overcome when I began niche blogging.
My first niche blog was about small business marketing. I was eager to share my knowledge of the topic, but I was also very protective. Why should I put my wisdom out there free of charge, I wondered, and why on earth would I send my readers off to read someone else’s blog?
It took me a long time to digest the notion that my blog was a bit about me, but not just about me. I finally understood that there was tremendous value in becoming not just an authority for my readers, but also a resource – their link to more voices speaking on the same topic - because becoming a resource helped make me an authority.
Linking out is also a good traffic-building strategy. When you link out to another blogger writing about your topic, you begin to build a relationship with them. They will not only come to your blog to check out who is linking to them, they will also most likely link back to you on a future post. This will bring new traffic to your blog, and links coming in also tell the search engines that others find your blog worth linking to. This means better search engine results.
One of my all-time favorite bloggers – no, make that all-time favorite people – is Mike Sansone of Converstations. Mike believes that blogs are “conversation stations,” and that it’s essential to include one link out in almost every post. I believe him.
Are your blog post comments scattered?
As bloggers, we try to make use of all the cross-promotional tools we can to try to drive traffic to our blog posts. Particularly with venues like Facebook and Twitter, where people can also comment on what you’ve written, it’s easy for comments about a post to end up scattered across several different places.
So the question becomes: Is it important to try to gather all the comments into one place for the most complete discussion?
When I first noticed this occurring with some of my posts I had shared on Facebook, I worried that the comments there would not become part of the “record” of the original post.
But I soon realized that it’s beneficial to have a trail back to the original post from several different venues because it gives you more “lines in the water” for reeling in new readers.
That said, I do think you can further manage your scattered comments for the benefit of your blog. Here’s a strategy that will help bring the conversation back to the blog, but still acknowledge and promote the responses on other venues. It will also help you get more “mileage” out of the original post, while contributing something new.
Take a quick look back at the responses you got on Twitter, or Facebook, or wherever, and write a follow-up post about them.
- If any of them asked a particularly good question, answer it in a new post inter-linked back to the original.
- If they were all just “nice post”-type comments, think of something you personally can add to the post and lead into it by saying, “My post on (x) received some very positive feedback over on Twitter, so I wanted to follow up with (xx).”
- Be sure to include your user ID on the other relevant service(s) within your post so blog readers can find/follow you there.
Use this strategy to showcase all the conversations taking place around your blog post.
photo from the Flickr stream of Jungle_boy
Good blog posts: the bare necessities
It’s highly likely that not every post on your niche blog will be a run-away winner in terms of reader reaction, community enhancement, or pulling its weight with the search engines. That said, there are still several things you can do to ensure that every post works hard, even if you ultimately find that it misses the mark for some reason.
A successful blog post:
1. Helps the reader in some way to think more clearly about an issue, solve a problem, or provide food for thought.
2. Evokes emotion, strong agreement, or even strong disagreement.
3. Communicates a central idea clearly and effectively.
4. Invites reader commentary in a direct manner.
5. Supports the overall theme of the blog and feels “relevant” to the reader.
Narrowing this down even further to a bare minimum, I would say that two of the criteria above are essential for each and every post, at least on a niche blog:
- Communicating a central idea clearly; and
- Supporting the overall theme of the blog
Posts that do at least these two things are carrying their weight, if only in terms of contributing to the overall worth of the blog in a positive way. If a post can’t do at least those two things, it probably should be scrapped.
Which two criteria from the list above strike you as being most important? Do you have other criteria I didn’t list that you think makes a successful post? Let’s talk about them in the comments!
Attracting and keeping blog readers
Q. How can I get more readers to my blog?
A. Basically, you get more readers by promoting your blog, reaching out directly to potential readers, and writing compelling posts that make them want to visit. Here are some strategies you can use:
1. Find out what search phrases people are using to get to your blog, and, assuming that those phrases are relevant to your blog’s focus, write more about those topics.
2. Comment on other peoples’ blogs, being sure to include your blog URL when filling in the comment submission form.
3. Link out to other peoples’ blogs from your posts. You’ll attract the other blogger, and your blog will probably indicate in that blogger’s comments that your blog has linked to them – attracting people who read that blogger’s comments to see what you’ve written.
4. Find a discussion forum related to one of your primary topics, and begin participating in it. Set up a “signature” on your forum profile that links out to your blog. This ensures you link to your blog in an unobtrusive way.
5. Learn what kinds of pages/posts do well on social bookmarking sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, etc. and write to those audiences. (Hint: Don’t always Digg or Stumble your own pages if you can help it – find a friend to occasionally do it for you.)
Basic blog traffic and metrics, and the impact on search engine results
When I first began journal blogging in 2002, I wasn’t really thinking about an audience other than myself. Still, the first time I put up a really good piece of writing, I did have the fleeting thought that it would be nice if someone else would read it. I soon became very curious about how many people were finding my site, and that curiosity quickly became a bit of an obsession.
There are several free methods you can use to gather site metrics. Sitemeter can give you some basics; if you blog using WordPress, the WP Stats plugin is a good option. If you are far enough along that you have an account through a web hosting provider and you run WordPress in this environment, you can install Google Analytics for a thorough look at your stats. My web host has a decent traffic reporting system, so I mostly use that plus Feedburner (mentioned below). I also use a blog tracking community called MyBlogLog - it’s basic service is free, and there’s a paid enhanced version that might be worthwhile if your traffic-counting needs become serious.
Here are some key items to look at when reviewing your stats:
1. Number of visits per month (not “hits”) – if one person comes to the blog, that’s one visit no matter how many posts they read. While some folks make a distinction between “unique visitors” (uniques) and returning visitors, I don’t see where it makes much difference whether they’ve been there before. If somebody’s reading on Monday morning and they come back Monday night, to me that’s just as good as if it was two different people.
2. Number of page-views per month – If 100 people come to the site, that’s 100 visits. If they each read 5 pages while they’re there, that 500 page views. Visits, then, tell you the number of people coming to the site; page views tell you something about how much of your content they’re reading while they’re there.
3. Whether visits and page-views are going up or down each month. Even a small tick upward each month is an indication that your posts are being indexed by the search engines and that people are searching for the topics you’re writing about.
4. What search phrases people are using to reach your blog. Knowing what phrases people are using when they find your blog can be not only a boon if you want to plan ways to get more traffic around those phrases; it can also help you generate ideas for future posts. On my ”biker chick” blog, one of the phrases I see with some frequency is “sportster ape hangers,” which refers to “ape hanger” handlebars on a Sportster motorcycle. I happen to have ape hangers on my Sportster, and mentioned them in one of my posts. I could certainly write a detailed follow-up post about how and why I put those handlebars on my bike, and get some traffic from people who obviously want to know something about it.
5. What percentage of readers are “bouncing”? If your site has a high bounce rate, people are coming in but leaving right away. This wouldn’t concern you if you’re only writing for yourself, but it’s critical knowledge if you are trying to attract an audience around a particular search phrase because it suggests that although they are finding your site, they aren’t seeing what they want once they get there.
6. Which are your most- and least-popular posts? Even from a purely personal standpoint, it’s nice to know which posts are getting the most traffic. If you’re trying to build an audience, you can get an idea for which topics people are most interested in and write more about them, thereby improving your search engine rankings for those topics.
7. How many subscribers you have to your RSS Feed or via email. Chances are, your blog automatically publishes an RSS feed. Visitors to your site can subscribe to your feed through a feed reader such as Bloglines or Google Reader, or they can subscribe to updates via email. In either case, this delivers your latest blog content directly to them without them having to return time and again to your site. (More on this in a future post.) Enhance your feed by running it through Google’s FeedBurner service, and you can tell not only how many people subscribe to your feed but you can employ a variety of ways to promote your feed. (“Subscribers” is one of those addictive measurements that many bloggers check daily – or multiple times daily, especially if they know they have a current popular post.)
Understanding your blog’s basic metrics is not only interesting (and addictive), it’s critical if you want to use the information to develop new and better content, deliver advertising messages to your audience, or understand how people are finding your site.
Write an effective About page for your blog
Q. I’m pretty sure my ‘About’ pages needs beefing up. What should I include?
A. Your instinct to craft a hard-working ‘About’ page is a good one. While your blog design and layout should provide opportunities to communicate the scope and purpose of your blog, you can also maximize the ‘About’ page opportunity for better search engine results and reader clarification.
Here are some important elements:
1. Include a statement about your blog’s key purpose. This is your chance to provide the full explanation of who your blog is for and what it will cover. This description should build on the title and tagline found elsewhere on the blog. Use appropriate keywords and search terms in a natural (not stilted) way, and search engines will pick up the page and bring readers to you.
2. Give a little background about how you got started - what was the impetus for launching the blog? Again, use keywords and search phrases common to your topic in a natural, conversational way.
3. Give a little background about yourself personally. You don’t have to give away more personal details than you’re comfortable sharing, but you can probably include your home city and any notes about your professional experience or education that are relevant to your blog topic. Resist the urge to write in third person (“Dan Smith is a writer and blogger living in…”) – write in the first person so your readers can get to know you.
4. Invite people to contact you via email. You’d be surprised how many bloggers fail to provide a way to contact them outside of the comments or an impersonal form. This is one of the reasons why I love free email addresses like those provided by Yahoo! or Hotmail - you can set one up just for your blogging and social media site registrations, separate from your regular home email account, so any spam that comes as a result doesn’t clutter your “official” in-box.
5. Include a photo of you if at all possible – it’s far more personal and lends credibility to the blog if readers can put a face with the name.
The value of the journal blog
I’m not a big fan of reading in the “war stories” genre, but the books in that category I have read that I really appreciated were not the chronologies of dates and battles, but the detailed accounts of life in the trenches – those written from the personal perspective of those who were there.
Such is the value of the journal blog. Although I’m mostly focused these days on niche blogging, I freely admit to having a soft spot in my heart for the journal blog, my first blogging love. Maybe it’s because this form gave me some of my all-time favorite personal writing. Maybe it’s just that I know I don’t always need to write for an audience to be happy.
Whatever the case, journal blogs are no less meaningful to their authors than the very best of the niche blogs. Here are some of the reasons why:
1. Journal blogs can be a “brain dump” for the author – a place to record reactions to the days’ events, think through sticky problems, or store links to websites they wish to revisit.
2. Journal blogs can be a training ground for testing blogging strategies and community-building tactics. While this suggests that perhaps the blogger is working toward something like a niche blog, that certainly doesn’t have to be the case.
3. Journal blogs help writers hone their writing style and find their personal voice. We become more proficient at a task if we practice it regularly. Journal blogging can lead to the development of a distinct, personal writing style that defines who you are and sets you apart from other writers.
4. Journal blogs communicate the “human experience” by giving you a place to plant your personal flag and tell the world, “I am here.”
Do you have a journal blog? What keeps you motivated to continue writing? What purpose does it serve in your life?
Increasing reader comments on your blog
Q. How do I get more comments on my blog?
A. Good for you! You’ve decided that comments should be welcome on your blog, to build community and encourage reader participation. That’s one of the things that makes a blog a blog, in my view. Here are some ways you can encourage readers to comment often:
1. Make sure you aren’t putting up barriers such as arduous log-in/registration requirements. While it provides a bit of commenter accountability to ask for the minimum name, email address and optional website URL, requiring readers to solve CAPTCHA riddles or even pass through moderation can be seen as significant barriers. Of course, these tools also help ensure that commenters on your site are human and not automated link-depositing “bots,” so do try them if you feel they are warranted, and see what works.
2. Comment on and link out frequently to other blogs – authors and readers there are likely to come check you out and leave their own comments.
3. Take a risk and be more controversial – or at least opinionated. Strong opinions generate responses. Even disagreement is healthy if it’s constructive, and can push your blog into the limelight.
4. Promote a controversial or opinionated post using Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Or StumbleUpon. Don’t post your masterpiece and then sit back, waiting for traffic to find it. Get out there and actively promote it using other social media sites and tools.
5. Email people who have commented on your blog in the past and invite them to comment on a particularly high-quality post. Sometimes people are shy about being the first to comment. Your proven commenters can help you get the conversation rolling.
6. End a post with a question. If someone’s going to answer, I’ve noticed they’re just as likely to answer a yes or no question as they are an open-ended one.
Michelle Rafter has more thoughts about getting more comments on her WordCount blog. Which of the above seems most do-able to you? Any other ideas to add to the mix?
