Posts Tagged ‘Building anticipation for future blog posts’

How to get your market to look forward to your posts

You know you’re blog content is succeeding when–after you miss a day because of travel or illness– you get e-mails asking Are you all right? or What happened to your blog post this week?

Anticipation is the highest stage of level of marketing effectiveness. Here are four ways to encourage your market to look forward to your upcoming blog posts.

1. Consistency. First, you have to commit to consistency, making a personal commitment to blog a minimum number of days a week. This doesn’t mean you can’t add additional blog posts each week, when appropriate, but it does mean you have to consistently post new content at regular intervals.
2. Predictable. Not only do you have to commit to consistent posting, your posts have to appear on the same days. Predictability requires more than posting on a Monday one week, Wednesday the next week, and Thursday the next week. Pick a day, or days, and always have new content ready to appear on the same day.
3. Momentum. Anticipation involves providing information that not only stands on its own, as a helpful, relevant post, but that the posts are moving your prospects and clients towards a changed state, or conclusion. A numbered series of blog post, like this series, engages and builds anticipation because readers want to know how the “story” is going to play out. (Perhaps momentum is the blogging equivalent of daytime televised soap operas?)
4. Links. Inserting links to previous posts in a series project an image of professionalism and attention to detail. Links to previous posts in a series are especially important posts on different topics between related posts. True, interested readers could locate previous posts by searching, or using WordPress’s Categories feature, but active links make it easier for your readers to locate previous posts.

Hint: If you’re compiling an incentive or an e-book based on a series of blog posts, after you have finished the last post and created a landing page for your incentive or e-book, go back and add links from each post to the completed project.

Conclusion

Commit to consistency. Commit to a minimum number of blog posts each week, and make each post as helpful and relevant. Posting new material on the same day each week cultivates your habits of consistent writing and encourages your clients and prospect to build your blog into their weekly routine. Consistency is a win-win situation for all.

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

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

Roger, the author of 30 best-selling books and an experienced writing coach, helps clients around the world organize and publish their ideas. Contact him via e-mail with your writing or blog questions.

NOTE: Did you catch it? I made 2 subtle changes between the time I created the original 7 Pillars of Blog Content mind map, and tonight, when I wrote the post. One change involved changing context to consistency, which I had originally mean, but typed context by mistake. The other change was from anticipated to anticipation. The reason I bring this up is that a blog content plan isn’t written in stone; you should always feel free to make improvements as you move forward, creating new blog content weeks after your original blog content planning session.