The Science of Writing a Great Blog Post or Article

‘Content marketing’ is the big thing right now. By creating insightful, entertaining, or engaging content, you can effectively drive people to your website through search engines, social media, and referrals – to ultimately convert them into leads or sales.

In fact, take a look at the below chart that shows how website traffic dramatically increases after developing and publishing content on a regular basis!

As you can see, content development really pays off in the long run.

But the question is, how do you develop good content to begin with?

There’s some very simple guidelines you can use when writing any sort of article or blog post that will dramatically increase the chance of people reading it, sharing it, and referring others to it.

The Content Itself !

1. Keep it timely. Don’t write about something that happened two months ago – unless you’re writing about history.
2. Keep it relevant. If your blog or website is about certain subject matters, stay on the subject, because that’s what people expect when visiting your site.
3. Keep it interesting! Make sure there’s value in what you’re writing about, whether it’s informational, entertaining, interesting, or intriguing.
4. Keep it to the point. Peoples’ attention spans are typically very low on the web, so make your content (and the meat of it) easy to get to.
5. Keep it short. On average, a reader only spends about 96 seconds reading a given blog post. So it’s good to have mostly short posts which  you can supplement with occasional longer posts for those who want a bit more insights.
6. Use a captivating title. People will judge if they want to read something merely by the title. Spend some time thinking of a great, enticing title for each post that will draw users.

Readability !

1. Make it scannable. Use lots of headers and sub-headers throughout your article or post. A person should be able to scan the whole article and get the gist of it just by reading the headers alone! See how our post is broken down with different sub sections, all the way down to bolding the first word in a sentence?
2. Font type and size. Make sure your website or blog uses a nice font that is large and easily-understandable for ultimate readability. This also means line-height (space between lines).

Make it Easy to Find !

1. Blog posts are prominent. Makes sure people can easily find your posts from elsewhere on your website.
2. Keywords. Try to include keyword (key phrases) that you think people would use to find content like what you’re writing about. For example, if it’s a tutorial, using words like “How to” at the beginning of your post title are popular ways people search.

Make it Easy to Share !

1. Images. Always include at least one good image in your post. Many people use Pinterest nowadays, where the way they bookmark a page is by pinning an image from it.
2. Social buttons. Make sure you have easy to use and prominent social buttons so people can share your post to their favorite networks.
3. Share it yourself. Don’t wait for others to share it – get it rolling yourself by sharing your posts on whatever social networks you’re on.

Spark Engagement !

1. Ask questions. Ask a question at the end of your post that relates to the subject, encouraging people to engage and leave comments.
2. Present more than one side. In the body of your article or blog post, present different sides to a story that will spark people to provide their own opinions in the comments. Sometimes, this can even mean ‘controversial’. Depends on what you’re going for.

Does this change your perspective on how you write for the web? Or do you have any other tips you find work for you?

Remember, here at ABORG we offer blog and content writing services, so if you need a helping hand in building your content, we can help.