What makes a blog post perfect? If we look at popular blog posts that receive many comments and get shared a lot, it’s hard to point the finger at one thing in particular. Rather, it’s the sum of their elements, including the title, opening lines, photo(s), tone, voice, value of the content to your audience, SEO, and web design. Since all of these contribute to creating a great blog post, it’s crucial not to leave any of them to chance. So, how do you actually create the perfect blog post?
1. Understand your audience
What you post and how you post it depends on your audience. An audience that consists mostly of graphic designers would of course have different expectations from an audience made up of marketers. More than the interests of your audience, you have to consider their age, location, education level, and the time of day when they are most likely to access your blog.
Knowing these helps determine the content, language, tone, and voice of your post. To better understand your audience, you can use analytics and insights built into the Fedica platform.
2. Write a compelling title
Titles make a powerful first impression. Many readers won’t even bother to read the intro if the title isn’t engaging. Great titles are short and clear, make a promise that is hard to refuse, arouse curiosity, or promise to deliver useful information. For most audiences, list-based titles such as “X Things That…” and guides like “How to…” tend to perform better than other titles. If you’re out of ideas, a title generator can save you.
3. Make the introduction engaging
A great introduction is a powerful incentive for the reader to keep on reading. Empathizing with the reader, offering to answer a question or solve a problem they may have, or introducing a striking fact, are some of the ways in which you can grab attention and persuade the reader to continue reading.
What you should avoid are impersonal or abstract introductions to which readers cannot relate. Essentially, the introduction has to communicate to the reader this: “Hey there, this post is for you.”
4. Add at least one image to your post
Posts with pictures get 94% more views than those without. The blogosphere is so visual that readers have come to take images and other visuals for granted; any post without looks decidedly odd.
But it isn’t enough to add just any image. The perfect blog post features a high-quality photo optimized for the web that scales down well on mobile devices. You can find images on Pixabay or Shutterstock.
5. Format your content
Your content becomes even better when it’s formatted well. Use headings and subheadings to break down the text at least every 300-350 words to make it easier to digest, and use bullet points or numbered lists where appropriate. You can also combine text with images, graphs, or charts to create a more engaging reading experience.
A legible font, plenty of white space on the page, and a clean layout free from distracting graphics can further improve the formatting and make even longer posts easy to skim, which is how many readers consume content.
6. Lengthen it out
Longer blogs over 1,000 words tend to get more shares and generate more comments. They give you more space to explore your subject in depth. What’s more, they contain more keywords and are better for search engine optimization purposes. This doesn’t mean that all your posts have to be that long, only that it’s good to have long posts on your blog.
7. Post it at the right time
Your title is great, your images are great, your content is terrific, but if your post gets published while your audience is busy working or having dinner, it may go unnoticed. For your posts to have a maximum impact, it’s crucial to use the power of analytics to understand when the best time to post is. Check out the Fedica Intelligent Calendar that analyzes your followers and posts at the Best Times to Tweet for them.
Last but not least, it’s important to optimize your posts for search engines, and this doesn’t mean stuffing them with keywords. Rather, it’s about sprinkling carefully chosen keywords through your post, including relevant links, and encouraging backlinks through sharing and reblogging.