Posts Tagged ‘blog content tips’

Blog content must be constantly tracked so it can be improved

Tracking the popularity of individual blog posts reinforces one of the major themes in this series on the 7 Pillars of Successful Blog Content; it’s not about you and what you want to write.

Instead, success is all about your market, and providing content that your market wants to read.

Accordingly, you should cultivate the habit of  tracking the popularity of your blog posts. This will help you provide:

• More of the type of content that your market wants to read
• Less of the content that only receives a lukewarm reception

Here are 4 ways you can track the popularity of your blog posts:

1. Comments. The most obvious way of tracking blog post popularity is to track the comments posted by blog visitors. Develop a way to track the number of comments added to your posts, noting whether they are positive, negative, or “just intrigued.” One of the easiest ways to do this is to create a simple spreadsheet, or mind map, and rate comments 1 (for a very negative comment), 3 (for a neutral comment), and 5 (for a highly favorable comment).
2. Ratings and Tweets. Another approach is to add plug-ins that permit readers to rate the relevance and quality of individual blog posts, or plug-ins that make it easy for your blog visitors to recommend your blog posts to their followers on Twitter, or other social media sites, i.e., Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. Once set-up, these can provide continuing feedback while driving new traffic to your blog.
   
3. Downloads. Another easy approach is to create a landing pages and downloadable electronic content, such as PDF’s, audio MP-3 recordings, or streaming video that can be linked to specific blog posts. This approach can provide a lot of information, especially when used in combination with Google Analytics. Instead of just knowing how many files were downloaded, and when, you can find out how long the visitors stayed on your landing page, and additional pages of your web site they visited before returning to your blog.
4. Incentives & mailing list sign-ups. The best approach, however, involves converting a casual blog visitor into a prospect by providing them with an incentive to sign-up for your newsletter’s by providing their e-mail address and permission for you to recontact them in the future. The combination of helpful and relevant blog pots coupled with helpful and relevant e-mails can jumpstart even the most tired business, introducing a continuing influx of new prospects.

Intention and commitment

None of the above 4 suggestions for tracking the success of your blog content is particularly difficult. Like the 24 suggestions in the previous 6 Pillars of Successful Blog Content posts, few of the ideas I’ve discussed are impossibly difficult or prohibitively time-consuming or expensive. Like keeping track of comments and Retweets, most of the Pillars don’t need to be studied, they merely need to be implemented on a consistent basis. As discussed in Part 1, and as Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, and Les Hewitt wrote in The Power of Focus, “your habits determine your success.” The habit of tracking the success of your blog content is as important as commiting to consistent blogging schedule and content plan. Let me know how these ideas work for you, as comments, below.

Roger C. Parker invites you to visit Published & Profitable’s Sample Content Area and his daily writing tips blog to learn more about creating effective blog content and making your blog posts as easy to read as possible.

You can also download a PDF copy of the mind map I used to plan this series, plus links to additional writing resources, like a free report introducing mind mapping.

Roger is the author of 30 best-selling books and an experienced writing and marketing coach. His latest book is #Book Title Tweet: 140 Bite-Sized Ideas for Compelling Titles for Articles, Books, and Events.

Your blog must attract & maintain your market’s attention

Engagement is the third pillar of successful blog content; your blog posts must engage your readers attention and keep them reading.

Resonance

Each blog post must resonate with your readers; they must be able to immediately recognize the relevance of the post and think to themselves, “That’s me!” or “I have that problem, too!”

Blog posts that resonate originate with personas that describe the characteristics and goals of your ideal blog readers. Once you understand who you’re writing for, and what their “hot buttons” are, it will be easy for you to choose an appropriate, and desired, topic:

• Who should read the post
• Why they should read it
• What they will learn
• How they will benefit
• When should they read it, i.e., “Right now!”
  

After that, all that remains is to review what you’ve written and distill the relevance of the post down to a concise, magnetic, SEO-friendly title for the post.

Perspective

Successful blog content is written from a helpful, as opposed to a judgmental, or theoretical, point of view. Forget what you were taught about writing critical, or analytical, point of views. Forget about entertaining your readers with a penetrating  analysis of current events.

In most cases, as a subject area expert or a self-employed business owner writing to promote their book or their products and services, your goal is not international acclaim for your penetrating views or razor-sharp wit.

Instead, you want to attract results-oriented readers who share the problems and goals of your most profitable clients. These are typically clients who are looking for quick fixes and help solving their problems or achieving their goals.

Write to your best market! Help them the same way you help your best and most profitable clients. This will help your blog posts attract more “ideal clients.”

Context

Information without context is useless. Always describe the context of the problem you’re helping your readers solve or the goal you’re helping readers achieve. Context refers to descriptions of the symptoms your blog readers should be on the look-out for or the costs associated with not achieving a goal.

Context sells the value of the information you’re providing in your blog post and establishes the urgency of reading the post and taking action.

Solution

Successful blogs offer content that doesn’t disappoint the readers. The promised information must outline how you, or your book, can help blog readers solve a problem or achieve a goal. If you don’t provide the benefit promised in the blog post title, you’re shooting yourself in the foot, reducing the chances of attracting new prospects and repeat business.

Some business owners worry about “giving too much information away for free.” That’s yesterday’s thinking! Authors and businesses who share helpful, relevant, and valued information far outshines the results of others who hide their expertise under a basket, or just hint at it.

There’s a big difference between describing a solution and implementing a solution!

In addition, no matter how long your blog post turns out, you’re unlikely to have enough space to tell everything you know about your topic. At best, a bulleted list of steps just hints at the assistance you’re able to offer on a 1-to-1 coaching or consulting basis.

Other engagement ideas

Other ways to create successful blog content by engaging your readers involve classic techniques like:

• Curiosity. One of the best ways to create “magnetic” blog post titles is to arouse the reader’s curiosity by making an unexpected statement. One of my favorite book titles, for example, is David Chilton’s The Wealthy Barber. Why? Because the title begs the question, “How can a barber become wealthy?”
• Story. Story is a classic communications technique, best-described in Anne Lamont’s Bird-by-Bird. Readers are voyeurs, interested in how others solve their problems or achieve their goals. Make your writing more interesting by including anecdotes, case studies, and specific incidents.
• Specificity. Include details in your blog posts. Notice how much more interesting the previous two bullet points were, because they included the names of specific authors and book titles.

Good information, by itself, is no guarantee that your blog content will attract, engage, and maintain the attention of your blog readers. Good information, after all, can be presented in a boring and non-compelling way. It’s up to you to not just share information in your blog posts, but “package” your information as engagingly as possible. What do you think? What’s your favorite engagement tool for your blog posts? Do you notice more comments and ReTweets when your blog posts have engaging titles?

Roger C. Parker helps clients succeed by asking the right questions and focusing on the right issues before they write.

The  Sample Contents area of his Published & Profitable subscription website contains examples of the hundreds of articles, interviews, and worksheets available to members.

You can download a PDF of the mind plan I used to plan this series, plus links to additional resources you can explore without registration.