How to Write Irresistible Blog Intros
This guest post is by Andrea Wren from Butterflyist.com,
Did you know that I like to have sex on roller coasters? Yes, there’s nothing that does it for me more than wondering if my partner will puke at the point of, um, no return. Okay I’m fibbing. I can’t even imagine how difficult big dipper hanky panky would be, but I got you listening, didn’t I?
While I was being a little devious, and you’re now going to be a tiny bit disappointed that I’m not going to talk about my fetish for fairground frolics, I’ve demonstrated two things:
- A strong hook in the introductory paragraph of your post is crucial to grab the reader’s interest.
- Your hook should be linked to what you’re actually writing about, otherwise the reader will feel like they’ve been duped once they continue.
But then, seeing as the title already told you what this post was going to be about, I can be excused. You knew I wasn’t going to be talking about my fictional amusement park passions, so I haven’t hoodwinked you after all!
But I did gain attention.
First impressions…
They count, don’t they? Unlike networking events or dinner parties, where we may be forced to stay making small-talk with a person we’ve decided we don’t like, when we’re reading blogs, we have a choice. And we don’t have to stick around. Once you’ve got your title, you have to think carefully about the all-important first impression that will follow.
So how do you write a winning intro that will make your reader read on?
Find a relevant hook
This is key. A “hook” has that name for a reason—it’s designed to capture the reader as an angler would a fish. You lay the bait with your title, and then your hook (the first sentence or two of the opening paragraph) should snatch hard enough that even the wriggliest of wrigglers won’t get loose.
How outlandish you can afford to be (a la the tabloid press) depends on the context of the writing, and how confident a writer you are. But even the most conservative of business blog posts can be strongly hooked.
Whether you begin with humor or with a serious quote, a good hook will intrigue the reader, or challenge them, and draw them into finding out where your opening gambit leads.
Therefore, it’s useful to start with a curious or unusual fact connected to the post, a question, or something that tests the reader’s beliefs. You could even try all three. For instance:
“In a new report, small businesses say they cannot afford to employ women of child-bearing age who may require maternity pay-outs. Should financially struggling SMEs be entitled to refuse to recruit women in certain age groups?”
Controversy, of course, often works well. And juicy revelations can do the trick too. Here are three other tips to make note of:
1. Set the scene
Your hook could potentially be the first paragraph in itself, depending on how succinct you are. But within the introduction, the reader should know what the post will be about.
Setting the scene is about defining reader expectations—he or she needs to assess whether the time they are about to invest in reading your post will be worth it.
In the above example of a hook, the writer might go on to say which report their information comes from, what their own position is (you will generally be shown which way the writer leans from the start, but a clever writer will make it seem that they could have their mind changed), and which arguments they are going to tackle in the rest of the piece.
You give the reader the gist, without giving it all away in the first few sentences.
2. Cut the waffle
So you’ve got the hook, and you’ve set the scene. Now read over your introduction aloud.
If it trails off around the houses and then does a few thousand miles across the world and back before it makes its point, your reader will be away with the fairies before you know it.
Like with the continuing blog post, all writing in the intro should serve some purpose. It should make the reader laugh, offer a fact, provide an opinion, make a challenge, concisely explain something, or ask a question. If it does none of these things, get rid of it.
No reader wants to wade through the ramblings of your mind if they aren’t going to lead somewhere, or if you’ve already said it. You need to convince the reader you have a good story. Waffling will not do this.
Don’t say anything that doesn’t need saying.
3. After a strong beginning…
With a good hook and a pithy opening to your article, your reader should, we hope, commit to finding out what else you have to talk about.
Writing compelling introductions takes practice, but it goes without saying that this is only the beginning. You then have to keep your audience enraptured throughout.
However, that’s another blog post waiting to be written.
Andrea Wren is an experienced freelance journalist, travel writer and blogger based in the UK. She blogs at Butterflyist.com, a site which inspires people to have the confidence to push their comfort zones and see the world. Here you can also get her free eBook ‘Travel More, Work Less and Live Life’. Find Andrea on Twitter via @thebutterflyist
Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger
How to Write Irresistible Blog Intros
How to Get People to Pay You to Write
The internet is booming with opportunities for people with the right skills, and one set of people that can really enjoy this opportunity are writers.
If you think you’re good at writing then there are thousands of individuals and companies willing to pay you for your skills. In this article I will be giving you a few tips to help you get people to pay you to write.
It is important that you know that some of the tips in this article take time to deliver results, and some can give you results almost instantly. Either ways, one thing remains for sure, the more effort you put in, the more results you are likely to get.
Focus on Building an Audience
The first step you should take when it comes to getting people to pay you for your writing is to build an audience. Without an audience, you will hardly be able to make enough money to sustain yourself, and it will be difficult to build a long term business.
By having an audience you will have cultivated a user base that love your work and making money from your efforts will be extremely easy as a result. One of the best ways to build a base and cultivate an audience is by having a blog. People will be able to find you and reference your content through your blog, and over time you will also be ranked in the search engines thereby leading to more traffic to your content.
You should know that building a blog is only one part of the equation, and that after building a blog you still have to focus on marketing yourself. I can easily list a few blog marketing techniques below, but nothing can beat the years of experience of numerous successful writers and bloggers, so make sure you check the marketing section of this blog for some tips to help you out.
Once you’ve been able to build an audience, the tips below will help you get great results.
Offer Your Services as a Freelance Writer
If you’re very confident about your writing skills you can also get people to hire you for basic writing jobs, or for more advanced copywriting jobs. Since you already have a blog and a reader base that loves your content, all you need to do is advertise your writing services, and you will get enough people to hire you.
The key to being successful as a freelance writer is to market yourself a lot, and to also work on constantly improving on your current skills and learning new skills.
Create an eBook Guide
Another step you should take once you’ve been able to cultivate an audience that loves your work is to create an eBook guide that solves a problem, and then sell the guide to your readers. If you lookout carefully, your readers have a lot of problems that needs a solution, and you can get paid for your skills by creating a guide that helps them solve these problems.
You need to realize that launching a guide alone won’t do the trick; you also have to constantly work on marketing yourself.
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Borrowing Plot Structure to Write an Entertaining Blog
One of the reasons that a good work of fiction captures our hearts and minds is that it has found a winning formula — one that, despite various tinkering and experiments, is fairly straightforward in its format. Understanding and borrowing from this format can help you generate good, interesting blog content.
Fiction Plot Structure
Nearly all fiction, except the occasional experimental types, follows the same basic pattern:
1 – Status Quo
This is how things are, the basic explanation of the current state of things that sets the stage. Whether implied by the narration and dialog or spelled out clearly in an info dump, this part is important because it provides the context for all that will follow.
2 – Conflict!
This is the starting element of the story, the thing that introduces the departure from the status quo. Something has changed, and for whatever reason someone in the story is opposed to this change, and has to fight it.
3 – Complication/Rising Action
A conflict isn’t much entertainment by itself, particularly if the conflict is as simple as: I wanted to go to the movie, but my tire went flat (the conflict), so I changed it (resolved). Much more entertaining would be: I wanted to go to the movie, but my tire went flat and as I was changing it I realized a dust storm was approaching (complication).
Complications that make the conflict more interesting are the spice of a story, and drive what is called the “rising action,” or the gradual increase of tension as the story moves toward resolution.
4 – Climax
Everything has come to a head. The facts are all laid out, the conflict can get no more complicated and a big definitive choice must be made. This is the most satisfying part of the story, and also the part that is easiest to mess up and let everyone down.
5 – Resolution
Wrapping things up, explaining the new status quo. This part is simple enough, and should follow on naturally from the climax.
Now, how can you borrow from this structure in order to make your blog more interesting? After all, a blog isn’t a fictional piece, it’s driven by facts, right?
Well, just because a story is nonfictional doesn’t mean that it cannot have a narrative. Many of the best true stories are just that, STORIES. Take the story of Woodward and Bernstein as they unraveled the mystery surrounding the Watergate break in. You had death threats, attacks, a top-secret source named after a recent pornographic movie — it was practically a thriller film in its own right, and indeed became the basis of one called All the President’s Men.
Each of these elements can be readily worked into a blog post. Virtually every post out there that deals with a narrative of events has to go into a little bit of information about how things have begun, or how they have led up to the events described in the story. Conflict and complication often play out in such posts by going into the details of who said what, and what other people said against the initial quote or in support of it. If a story has ended, you have the resolution option to work with.
Of course, there is nothing that says you have to include all of these elements in a single post, either. Perhaps the best way is to actually follow a particular story for several posts, be it a few days or a months-long odyssey.
This is best done with news-style developing stories, such as following a court case, or an investigation into something dramatic and revealing. Or it might follow a blogger’s personal journey through a difficult struggle such as returning to school or undergoing therapy of a sort following an accident. The point is, with the narrative spread over a number of posts, you can create that sense of rising action, and highlight the individual elements of a good plot much more effectively and easily than if you try to cram the elements into a single post.
So the next time you have a blog post that you think makes a compelling story, treat it like it IS a story. Identify the arc of the rising action, the conflict and complications and present the narrative in a way that makes the readers want to read it — even makes them feel a bit naughty for trying to read ahead to see what happens next.
Dawn Walnoha is the VP of Production at Brandsplat. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles and social media in the “voice” of our client’s brand. For the free Brandsplat Report go to Brandsplat.com or visit our blog.
Want to start making some money with your website? Join my OnlineProfits.com training program today, it's free!
Original Post: Borrowing Plot Structure to Write an Entertaining Blog
How to Write With Your Reader in Mind: Three Crucial Points to Consider
Without readers, your blog is nothing more than a personal journal. That’s fine if you’re blogging in order to establish a writing practice or to create a body of work – but it’s not so great if you’re hoping to make money or build up a reputation in your field.
Whenever you plan, write or edit a post, you need to have your readers firmly in mind. Here are four crucial points to think about:
#1: Are Your Readers Beginners, Intermediate or Advanced?
You need to know whether your readers are totally new to your niche or whether they’ve been involved with it for years. This will affect everything from the topics you choose to your writing style.
In any given field, most people will be beginners. That doesn’t mean you need to aim all your posts at people just starting out – but you do need to keep in mind that some readers may be very inexperienced.
Tip: Unsure how much your readers already know? Read their comments carefully and see what questions they’re asking. Consider running a survey to find out their current level of expertise.
#2: Choose Your Words Carefully
You wouldn’t talk to your grandma in Church in the same way that you’d talk to your close buddies in a bar: different language is appropriate for different people and situations.
When you consider your word choices, think about:
- Will you use bad language? (And where will you draw the line?) Some bloggers have an “edgy” reputation for swearing on their blogs, but this can be extremely off-putting to some readers.
- Will your readers understand technical terms or jargon? Someone totally new to blogging may have no idea what “WordPress” is or what “RSS” means.
- Do you have an international audience? If you’re in the US, your local idioms might not make much sense to a reader in the UK or Australia.
- How many of your readers are native speakers of your chosen language? If you blog in English, you may have a sizeable audience who have a different first language – and you might want to keep your word choices as simple as possible.
- What level of formality will your audience expect? Your blog isn’t an academic essay, and you can generally get away with using the first person (“I”) and contractions (“isn’t” for “is not”) – but it might not be appropriate to use slangy terms like “bucks” instead of “dollars”.
Tip: Not sure whether you’re hitting the mark? Ask a fellow blogger (ideally someone who’s representative of your target audience) to read a draft post and give you some feedback.
#3: Make Your Post Easy to Read
However advanced your readers are, you need to make your post easy for them to read. That means giving it a clear structure, editing carefully, and using formatting to help break up blocks of text.
Structure: Your post shouldn’t just be a collection of thoughts, meandering down the page. It should have a clear beginning, middle, and end. At the very least, it should be split into paragraphs; you may also want to use subheadings to mark the start of each new section.
Editing: Typos and spelling mistakes are distracting for your reader. They also make your post look less authoritative – even if the content is very strong. Make sure you use spell-check, and that you re-read your post to catch missing words or other mistakes that your spell-checker won’t pick up on.
Formatting: Bold text, bullet-pointed lists, subheadings, images … all of these help make your post easy to read. Once you’ve drafted your post, go back through and see whether you need to add in any formatting to help emphasise key points or to make the structure clearer.
Tip: Try using a particular post structure – like a “how to” or a numbered list. This not only makes your post easier to read, it also makes it easier to write!
What techniques do you use to write posts that really hit the mark for your readers? Let us know your thoughts in the comments…
Bio: Ali Luke is a writing coach and blogger, and writes a weekly column for DailyBlogTips. If you’re struggling to find time for your writing, she has a free ebook that can help (plus a bunch of extra goodies).
Original Post: How to Write With Your Reader in Mind: Three Crucial Points to Consider
How to Write Faster Blog Posts (Every Time)
Last week, we looked at why great content is so important. But one of the biggest problems that bloggers face is finding enough time to write.
If you’re spending hours on every blog post, then read on! These tips will all help you improve your writing speed … without sacrificing quality.
#1: Keep a List of Ideas
Do you ever sit down and stare at a blank document on the screen, wondering what to write about? Lots of bloggers do, but there’s an easy way to fix this.
Create a list of ideas (this can be on paper, in an online tool, or on your computer – whatever’s quick and easy to access). Every time an idea occurs to you, jot it down. To begin with, you might want to set aside 10 minutes each day to stock up your idea list. Pretty soon, you’ll never be short of ideas again.
#2: Plan Before You Write
If you find yourself deleting paragraphs or starting your whole post over again, then the problem isn’t with your writing – it’s with your planning.
Before you begin any post, write down:
- Your topic (or title)
- “Introduction”
- Several key points that you want to cover: these could be list items (this post started off as 5 bullet points) or individual paragraphs in your post.
- “Conclusion” and “Call to action”
It’s much easier to stay on track when you’ve got this framework in place.
#3: Close Down Distractions
Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Skype, Gmail … they’re all great tools, but also great distractions. Close them down when you’re writing.
If you’re spending several hours working on every post, be honest with yourself: are you writing for the whole time, or are you mostly checking emails or hanging out on Twitter? (If you’re genuinely unsure, try Rescue Time to find out where your time is really going.)
#4: Write, Don’t Edit
Many writers try to combine two separate steps: writing and editing. They’ll type a sentence or two, then immediately delete and rewrite them.
Writing is a creative process, and your focus should be on getting the raw material onto the page. Editing while you’re writing can kill your creativity and your flow. While you write the first draft of your post, focus on getting from the start to the end of your plan. You can fix small grammatical errors, or tweak sentences, later.
#5: Leave a Gap if Necessary
Sometimes, you’ll be mid-way through writing a post and you’ll realize that you need to look up a fact or a link. It’s tempting to just go ahead and do that … but this can break your concentration.
When you don’t have a particular piece of information to hand, just leave a gap. Put “XXX” or similar in the text and highlight it yellow (so it’s easy to come back to when you edit). That way, you can do all your fact-checking or link-finding in one batch – much more efficient.
If you implemented every tip on this list, you could easily double your writing speed. Even following just one or two of them will help. Which could you try today?
And if you’re already a speedy writer – let us know how you do it in the comments!
Ali Luke is a freelance writer and coach, offering a wide range of courses and services on Aliventures.com. She writers a weekly column about online content creation for DailyBlogTips.
Original Post: How to Write Faster Blog Posts (Every Time)
Write First, Ask Questions Later
"Writing" by jjpacres
Have you ever heard the argument that you should think what your blog will be about before you dive in?
This is one of the first things I say to new bloggers, but it’s not always the full story.
Sometimes, it’s actually a good thing to write a post or two – even just a few words, a sentence, or a few paragraphs – before you decide to do anything else.
Don’t Live and Die By Your Plan
You can plan a blog to death. Planning is great once you’ve started your blog and you want to keep it going. But you could waste a lot of time planning a blog if you find that while the theory excites you, the act of writing posts bores you. Or that there simply isn’t enough to write about on your topic of choice.
Is It Worth It? How to Find Out
Here are a couple of quick tips to help you decide if blogging is for you, and find out if your idea for a new blog is worth pursuing – whether it’s your first, or the latest in a long line.
- List 10 titles of posts you’d like to write for the new blog.
- Plan up to 3 of those posts. Don’t go all out by writing the entire post – start with the headers, then fill in the blanks.
- From this, you should be able to determine if it’s a blog you want to carry on with.
Over to You
What do you think? How would you reduce the risk of a new blog not working out? Have you ever abandoned a blog due to poor planning? What would you do differently in future?
How to Write Amazing Product Reviews
This guest post is by Ray Maker of DCRainmaker.com.
Product review posts are in many ways the core of what blogging is about—the ability for all of us regular folks to express an opinion about a product, be it good or bad. Every day, tens of thousands of product reviews are written on blogs across the world, and often, on just one product alone, hundreds of new opinion/review posts are written each week.
The goal of most folks when they write a review post is to share their opinion with the world about the product. But how do you differentiate writing a review post that only sees a handful of eyeballs, from ones that see thousands of readers every day—and in some cases ranks even higher than the manufacturer’s own product page?
Know the product like nobody else
The single biggest difference between writing a product review that’s just so-so, and writing one that kicks butt is demonstrating an in-depth knowledge of the product. A product review that is written by someone who understands the product inside-out will organically attract more attention than one written by someone who’s just stumbling around.
If you understand the product inside and out, show off that knowledge. If you don’t, then learn it quick! When people search the Internet for a review of a specific product, they’re looking for detail and coverage of the product. What they aren’t looking for is a short blurb with a few “Four out of Five Stars!” icons tossed in. If they were looking for that, they’d just check the ratings on their favorite online retailer’s site instead.
No, when they look for a product review, they’re looking for unbiased feedback from knowledgeable experts in that field. The most popular product review sites for any niche are written by folks that understand the product and every little detail about it. While short “I just opened up the box”-type reviews have their place, one has to realistically understand that place won’t be at the top of search engine results.
Speak from the perspective of someone new to the product…
If you review products often, you can easily get into the rut of thinking “my readers already know what I’m talking about.” And while this may actually be true, you have to step back and look at what your end-state target audience is.
In many cases, it’s not only your regular readers, but also everyday people searching the wild blue yonder trying to find information about that specific product. And in many cases, they know nothing about that product or its genre. If I were to go out and buy a new camcorder today, I’d likely be starting from scratch to find out what’s a normal feature, and what’s a totally cool unique feature.
In thinking about it from that angle, you should always introduce functionality within a product as if the person never knew it existed. The benefit to doing this is that you not only explain that piece of functionality, but also teach your reader something new. This is critical. Users who find blogs educational will almost always stay around for more. If they don’t learn anything new, they’ll simply wander elsewhere and not come back.
…And from the perspective of a longtime user
In addition to approaching a product from the newbies’ standpoint, it’s also important to delve into subjects that long-time users of the product or product series will find useful or educational. You can do this in a number of ways, but I find the easiest way is to simply talk about the evolution of a given feature from product to product. By doing so you illustrate not only your understanding of the product, but also your understanding of past products within the same line/genre/niche.
Longtime users often come to product reviews looking for a fix for “their issue.” This is generally an issue that’s caused them deep annoyance for a period of time. It tends to be the one and only thing they’re hoping to hear has been fixed or solved. By covering these key desires of previous generations of products or competitor products, you’re no longer just another reviewer, but someone who truly understands the product they’re reviewing.
In short: know the product pains, and address them.
Don’t use PR marketing material
There is no quicker way to turn off readers than regurgitating canned PR pieces from a manufacturer. Not only can the average human detect it, but search engines do as well. People immediately gloss over anything that looks like either PR text, or PR images. I always shoot all of my own images. While my photographic skill varies between barely functional and decent, readers know they’re real images that show off how the product works in the real world—not carefully crafted pictures photo-shopped in the best light.
Speaking of PR, be careful with what you keep of products. In my case, I have a pretty clear policy that anything I test goes back to the company. I generally poke at it for about 30-45 days, and then once I publish my review, I send it back. Often I’ll end up purchasing another copy of the product to be able to answer questions about it over the long-term. Just remember, most readers can quickly see whether or not you’re praising a product simply because you got it for free. Using those PR snippets never helps that case, either.
Research the living daylights out of it, and don’t make mistakes
If there’s one thing that folks know about my reviews, it’s that they’re both complete and accurate.
I spend inordinate amounts of time ensuring that every detail is correct. When I proof my reviews, I often sit back and read them from the perspective of a nit-picker. As such, I ponder every little detail. Is that 100% accurate? Should there be a caveat noted? Are there fringe cases where someone might disagree? If so, address those issues. By addressing edge cases and tiny details up front, you address concern within the reader’s mind about review accuracy. It also helps to drive the key tenant of product reviews that I touched on earlier: showing in-depth knowledge of the product.
And while I try to avoid making mistakes, it’s certainly possible that in my 60-80 page reviews, they occur. I always include a little snippet that simply says “If I’ve written something that doesn’t quite jive, just let me know and I’ll research it and get it fixed”. We’re all human, and reminding readers of that puts everyone at ease.
Show off what the product can do with examples from your other posts
I’m told one of the biggest draws of my blog is that when folks find a given product review, they’re given information not only about that product, but about how to use that product to its fullest potential. I do this of course within the product review itself, but also by providing comprehensive links to relevant content throughout my site.
I have numerous other articles and posts that explain what a given feature does, even if it’s not product specific. If I’m talking about how to use that feature, I’ll give a brief introduction within the review, but then I’ll direct folks to another post for an equally in-depth post on that specific feature. This has the added benefit of increasing page views and reducing bounce rates. And remember one of the other key pillars of a good review—educating? Well, by introduce readers to other educational content, and they’ll find your blog even more beneficial.
Do communicate with the company
This is one step many folks overlook, which is puzzling to me. I usually make a point of circling back to the company that made the product, and having a brief conference call or email exchange to discuss both the pros and cons that I found while reviewing the product. Why would I do this? A whole bunch of reasons!
First, doing this creates a bridge between my readers and the company—a great way to funnel future feedback to them … or from them.
Second, in some cases issues I found aren’t really issues, but things that can be solved a different way. This is information I can then pass onto readers, helping them out should they encounter the same problem, and increasing your value as an educator.
Third, people just want answers. While complaining and making a racket about a problem is fun for a while, it’s not what makes for a good long-term readership draw to your site. By talking to the company you can often understand the “Why” of an issue, and get realistic answers on how that decision was made. Even if the issue can’t be fixed, at least folks can understand the reasoning—and then independently decide for themselves the validity of it.
Reply to post comments with answers
I spend a fair bit of time not only immediately after I post an in-depth product review—but also for months and years—answering peoples questions about the product. This shows that I’m still involved with the post and niche, and that I care about helping them out.
Do this, and readers are far more likely stick around with you and see what else you have to say. In addition, this back-and-forth discussion tends to answer questions that others are searching for, once again helping to drive up PageRank on your product review posts.
Search out forums with questions
As you’ve read countless times on ProBlogger, the easiest way to build support for your blog is to invest in your niche’s community. But “investing” doesn’t mean that you partake in seagull-style forum link dropping. It means that you look for questions on forums that you spend time in and answer the question there. Once you’ve fully answered the question there, then include a link to relevant off-site content if and only if it’s relevant.
Folks can easily see through link-dropping, but by answering the question fully and then mentioning that additional reading is just a click away, you truly contribute to the community, instead of just bettering your own blog.
Communicate to relevant media outlets
Last but not least, if you’re reviewing a product that’s new on the scene, sending a quick note to relevant media outlets and popular sources of information in that niche can be a great way to spread the word. I generally send a quick note letting them know I’ve published something new and that it may be of use to their readers. And then I leave it at that.
In the same way that you on your own blog have a vision for what would be published, they do as well. So respect the fact that every review you post may not be exactly what they’re looking for, and don’t pester them continually—that’s not good for you long term.
Wrap up
Last but not least, with any product review it’s important to write a summary or wrap-up. That’s what readers skim for. While I write 60-80 pages of stuff on most of my in-depth reviews, I understand that at the end of the day people skim to the end of the post. Be sure to outline the pro’s and con’s there. Summaries also help to gel together longer reviews into concise opinions—after all, that’s why the reader came to your site in the first place.
Do you write product reviews on your blog? What tips can you add to this list?
Ray Maker is the author of DCRainmaker.com—a blog dedicated to extremely in depth product reviews of sports technology products (have you ever seen a 61-page product review?). In addition, he writes about his running/triathlon training as well any other interesting things that float his way. You can also follow him on Twitter at @dcrainmakerblog.
Post from: ProBlogger Blog Tips
How to Write Amazing Product Reviews
The Better Blogging Formula: Think, Do, Write
This is a guest post by Tyler Tervooren of Advanced Riskology.
Have you ever gotten an amazing idea for a blog post, spent hours putting it together, and then released your work of art to the world … only for it to fall flat on its face? No comments, no re-tweets, no interest whatsoever—just crickets chirping.
*Chirp… chirp*
No worries if the answer is “yes.” It’s happened to me dozens of times. Maybe more. It’s so darn frustrating because you pour your heart and soul into your work, and get seemingly nothing in return for it.
I still suffer form this phenomenon occasionally, but it doesn’t happen often any more, because I’ve learned over the last two years (from some incredible bloggers like Darren, Jonathan Mead, Adam Baker, and Tammy Strobel) a blogging formula that practically guarantees success for any blogger who puts it to use.
It’s simple to understand, but actually using it proves challenging for writers working on deadlines and trying to balance life, work, blogging, and a million other things. But it pays off big for those who adopt it.
The think/do/write formula for blogging success
A big mistake that a lot of bloggers make, and I made for a long time, is that their whole writing process consists of only two steps:
- Think of a great topic.
- Write it, and hope for the best.
What’s missing from that process?
An authentic experience, that’s what—a story that, as a reader, makes me care that you were the one who wrote it. In this approach, there’s no story telling me why I shouldn’t just read one of the million other bloggers who could have written the same thing from the same information that you gathered.
By actually doing the things you want to write about, and reporting on the results, you add a whole new level of proprietary information that brings your blog post to life.
When you do this, all the humdrum theory is replaced by a real experience that shows people you have the authority to write on your topic. All of a sudden, people want to listen to you.
- Think of a great topic.
- Actually do something related to the topic.
- Write about the results from your own experience.
Last night, I went through all the articles of my nine-month-old blog and separated them into ones that were simple “think/write” posts, and the ones where I actually used the “think/do/write” formula. Then I compared the number of comments each one received. Look at the results:
I expected the think/do/write articles to fare better, but I didn’t realize that they’d average almost 100% better. That’s pretty telling, isn’t it?
If you blog about business or money, quit writing about how to make a million dollars online until you’ve actually done it. If you want to make a million dollars online, but haven’t yet, go make and then report back on how you did it. Build up from there.
If you’re a travel blogger, write about the unique experiences you’ve actually had, rather than about the places you want to go but haven’t gotten to yet.
When Darren writes, he doesn’t publish posts about how he’d like to grow ProBlogger, or how he’d like to try an experiment on Digital Photography School. He goes and actually does it. Then, he comes back and shows you how he did it—and talks about why it did or didn’t work.
Think, do, write.
Doing the do
So, how do you actually do this process, when life is filled with so many balls to juggle? Here’s the process I use to make sure I’m not just doing stuff and writing about it, but doing important stuff that people will want to read about.
Create a personal goal
Why do you blog? It probably has to do with a lot more than just getting attention, right? You set out on a journey to inform the world about something, didn’t you?
In my case, I want to show the world all the benefits of risk taking. That means I set out on a regular basis to do things that most people think are too risky. The challenges are what keep me going, and keep things interesting on the blog.
You probably have some big goals for your blog, like getting to a certain number of subscribers or a particular amount of page views per month, but those are arbitrary goals. Unless you write specifically about blogging, no one really wants to read about those.
What challenges are you taking on that are related to your niche and would inspire your readers to do something similar?
Set a deadline
We lead busy lives, and the famous Parkinson’s Law says that however much time you allow yourself for a task—that’s how much time it will take to do it.
Let’s face it: if there’s no deadline, I’m probably not going to do it at all. If I give myself plenty of time, I’ll eventually get bored and probably give up. Or, the deadline will be so far away that the goal isn’t really compelling.
But what if I give myself a really short deadline that I’ll have to work my tail off to meet? Not only do I stay engaged, it’s a much better story for readers as well. Even if I fail, the story is fun to follow and people learn something.
Document the process
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve done something I thought would be worth writing about only to realize that I never recorded any of the details. I end up struggling to make any sense out of it when I sit down at the keyboard.
Nowadays, I carry a small video camera almost everywhere I go, because who knows when the opportunity to capture something compelling will come along?
Don’t just write about what you’re doing. Find ways to incorporate video, audio, pictures, or other media into your story. Not everyone learns or makes connections by reading even though most of us, as bloggers, probably do.
Using mixed media in your blog posts gives readers a more complete picture and creates a deeper connection between you and them.
Edit the useless details
The age of reality TV and airing your life unedited is an interesting concept, and if every second of your life is like a soap opera, maybe that’s the best way to present yourself. But, for most of us, we’re just not that interesting 24 hours a day.
Focus on the most important aspects of your goal and what people really need to see/hear in order to:
- learn something, and
- make a connection with you.
Be useful and tell a good story, but don’t bore people with every little detail. Do your audience a favor and edit out all but the essential points.
Hype the important
If all that’s left is the most important pieces of the story, don’t hesitate to add dramatic effect. That’s part of being a good storyteller.
Sometimes, I have a hard time doing this myself because, when I look back on a story I’m telling, I’m seeing it from a new perspective—one of experience—that my readers don’t have access to yet. That makes me want to downplay interesting parts of the story because I now see it as routine. But, to someone living the experience for the first time through your words, they’re seeing it from a whole different angle.
Play it up, make it fun and don’t cheat them of the experience.
That’s my think/do/write formula for blogging success, but I’m just one person. How do you accomplish this with your own blog? Even more importantly, what you doing?
Tyler Tervooren is a thinker, doer, and writer for a team of highly skilled risk takers at his blog, Advanced Riskology. Get his newsletter for more tips on how to be interesting.
Post from: ProBlogger Blog Tips
The Better Blogging Formula: Think, Do, Write
How to Write a Press Release that Gets Attention
This guest post is by Frank Strong of PRWeb.
Writing good content for a blog is only half of the equation: promoting your blog to drive traffic is the other half.
Previously we offered five reasons to promote your blog with press releases as part of an overall content marketing strategy. This post provides a few tips on how to write a press release for maximum media exposure.
1. Create compelling headlines.
Should you use a sexy headline that attracts eyeballs or a headline stuffed with keywords for search? We’ve always found that people read content, not search engines, so while it’s important to include keywords in your headline where possible, only use them when they make sense in context.
Just like the subject line of an email invites a recipient to open a message, headlines should compel a reader to consume your content.
2. Draw the reader in with the lead.
The first sentence of the body—the lead—should compel the viewer to keep reading (think: time-on-page). Traditional PR pros will tell you to write using an inverted pyramid, where the content flows top down and the first paragraph explains the five Ws: the who, what, when, where and why.
There’s nothing wrong with that, however, we think the use of press releases has evolved, where they once were primarily used to provide a news hook to the media in order to reach an audience, they now can also reach that audience directly.
As such, in some cases, the press release is the story and the better performing releases (in terms of page reads) we’ve seen read like the story—complete with a powerful lead.
3. Use anchor text links.
It’s a fundamental, but often overlooked, point: anchor text links are pivotal! Be sure to hyperlink your keywords to pages on your blog that are optimized for the same key words.
This ensures that when press release syndication network distributes the content, your keywords are still hyperlinked to the content you’re promoting. Once again, people read content, so ensure that the keywords make sense in the structure and flow of your copy.
4. Include a powerful call to action.
You’ve written a release with compelling headlines and copy that drew the reader in. Now, what action would you like people to take? Invite them to take that action. For many blogs, this would be to visit the blog, subscribe via RSS, or sign up for email alerts on new posts.
5. Choose a strong press release topic.
Stuck for press release ideas? We have a list of hot topics for press releases. When you’re coming up with an idea, the trick is to think like a PR pro—what about your blog, personal life, or business could you see being picked up by the mainstream media? What is the “remarkable” story you have to share?
While those are big-ticket themes, a more tactical approach would be to publish a release about your most popular posts—the top ten of the year, or the five most read every quarter (or month if you’re a prolific blogger). Your release content should focus on the trend. For example, why are readers consuming those specific posts?
For further reading on creating great press releases, try:
- PRWeb Picks: Five Releases we Love this Month
- Use News Releases for More Than PR
- 5 Tips to Optimize Your News Release for New Media
- News Flash! Press Releases Aren’t Just for the Media Anymore
- PR pros should write for search engines
Have you used a press release to promote your post? What tips can you add to this list?
Frank Strong is director of public relations for PRWeb.
Post from: ProBlogger Blog Tips
How to Write a Press Release that Gets Attention
How to Suck at Writing, and then Write for the Biggest Blogs in the World
This is a guest post by Danny Wong. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guidelines here.
Writing hasn’t always been a skill of mine. I rarely ever read when I was younger, and still had my father read me books for years after I had learned how to read for myself.
So how did I go from a forced writer (I only wrote things when I had to for school and never for recreation) to an influential blogger?
I started writing for our business blog just because we needed content creators. I was new to this whole Social Media thing, and I could hardly write coherent content, nevertheless quality content. I dreaded it.
We quickly killed my future contributions to the blog because I wasn’t enjoying it, the content wasn’t incredibly beneficial or engaging, and instead I focused more efforts on things I could do to really impact the business.
So I turned to learning how to manage Public Relations because I thought, “If I can’t inbound any visitors to the site and business blog by writing quality content, then let me go out and get traffic from other people’s sites and blogs.”
So I spent a lot of time schmoozing bloggers and writers and then I closed a feature article with a writer on a site called Examiner.com. I thought it was the neatest thing to have such a high traffic site featuring me since it had millions of unique visitors a month. After reading and reveling in the feature article, I saw a Call-To-Action saying, “Write for us” and I thought, “Hm. This seems like an interesting opportunity to build brand awareness through links in my byline and increase my personal brand by just being a (sort of) professional writer.”
The CTA called to me and I answered. Using a referral from the writer that featured me, I ended up becoming the Boston Startup Examiner, and then things just snowballed from there. I starting reading blogs like DailyBlogTips, reading more content on Examiner and other news-oriented blogs, and then starting doing guest posts any blogs that would take my work!
Then I just kept stumbling upon opportunities, and quickly built relationships with lots of editors through my formal PR work and then reached out to them with a guest post ready for their review.
Finally, I started publishing on some of the biggest sites in their niche, like SearchEngineJournal and a local NY Times blog, and then I started publishing on some of the biggest blogs in the world like TheNextWeb and ReadWriteWeb.
Now, I have a blogger account with the world’s #1 blog, HuffingtonPost, and I have a pretty strong portfolio of writings published in an even stronger set of blogs, which gives me leverage when trying to publish articles on other sites when I can say, “My name is Danny Wong and I have contributed writings to NY Times (blog), HuffingtonPost, ReadWriteWeb, TheNextWeb and Examiner.”
Just to break down how I went from sucking at writing to writing for some of the world’s biggest blogs:
1. I had a relationship with a writer at a media outlet that had open invitations for writers to join, and spent way too many hours crafting my application writings as well as my first few posts.
2. I was reading more blogs and books, and spent more time writing blog posts that I would never publish just for the sake of practicing writing.
3. I started publishing anywhere and everywhere that would talk to a small-time writer like me, especially one that had some interesting thoughts and experience in startups and entrepreneurship.
4. Some of the bigger blogs I read had published guest posts on their site, so I contacted the first person I knew who was a writer (a relationship I built through my PR work) and asked how I might become a contributor. Sometimes, I was directed to the editor who would then request I submit a post to them directly, or I would have already had contact with an editor who was anxious to see how I could contribute to their business.
5. The bigger sites bit. Admittedly, I did spend several hours writing my first post for each outlet, but it was well worth the time investment because I started the relationship off on the right foot, and then became a semi-frequent contributor.
6. I name-dropped all the different media outlets I had contributed to when pitching myself to publish with a new media outlet, so things just snowballed as I built up my credibility. As I became more credible after publishing posts with more and more influential blogs, the bigger blogs started to pay attention to me and were more than happy to take my contributions.
It took quite a bit of hard work, networking and determination to build up my writing skills and my writing portfolio so now I can proudly say I am a blogger with the #1 blog in the world and write for several of the biggest blogs out there.
What tactics did you use to publish with big blogs and sites?
About the author: Danny Wong is a writer at HuffingtonPost (you can see his column here), the #1 blog in the world, and the co-founder of co-created dress shirts startup, Blank Label.
Original Post: How to Suck at Writing, and then Write for the Biggest Blogs in the World
