You might have a lot of ideas for your blog postsand you might know many tricks on how to successfully promote your blog.However, the content on a blog is as important as your marketing tools. Thereason is simple: you want readers to come back. If you get readers to come toyour page, but they don’t enjoy reading your blog posts, they won’t be back.
You might have a great interesting idea for ablog post. But if the blog post you come up with is not readable, your ideajust goes to waste. Writing good blogposts takes practice and there are a few things which you can do to make yourarticles more readable and enjoyable to your audience.
1. Structure your blog posts.When you write an article, make sure you have an introduction, a body and aconclusion. Your introduction should state the main idea that you’re going todiscuss. The body will develop your argument, in one or several paragraphs, andcan contain lists and bullet points if applicable. The conclusion should be ashort summary of the whole article and a restatement of the idea from theintroduction. A structured text is easy to go through, and your readers will beable to get your points only by skimming it.
2. Use sub-headers. Onlinereaders are not very patient. A long block of text will bore them and they’llbe gone in seconds. Sub-headers are a great way to make blog posts more readable. Theyallow readers to get a quick idea on what issues you’re tackling in yourarticle and to skip to the topics they’re interested in.
3. Make your blog posts coherent.Organize your ideas into paragraphs and don’t suddenly skip from one topic toanother. All the arguments and ideas in your blog posts should flow in alogical manner. You might know what your point is, but if you jump around fromone idea to another, your readers will get tired and confused and will simplyquit trying to understand.
4. Use pictures. Not all blogposts can be illustrated with pictures, but many of them can. Depending on thelength of your blog post, you can use one or multiple pictures. Images attractreader’s attention and make texts look friendlier.
5. Avoid using numbers and technicaldetails. Unless you’re writing for a limited number of highlyspecialized readers, avoid using a lot of numbers, technical names andspecifications. Scatter them through the article, and try to use a conversationallanguage.
6. Don’t overestimate or underestimateyour readers. You probably shouldn’t explain what Facebook is, but doexplain things that your readers might not understand. If your not sure how tomake the difference between what you should detail and what you shouldn’t,think whether your friends would understand it. If they would, it’s probablycommon knowledge. If they wouldn’t, explain it or provide a link where yourreaders can get some information.
7. Don’t use too many keywords and don’tinclude irrelevant links. It’s understandable why you want to fillyour blog posts with keywords and why you want to link both to your blog and to other websites. Butremember that blog readers can easily make the difference between a textwritten with the audience in mind, and a text written only for SEO purposes.Place keywords strategically, only where they fit naturally into the text, andonly include relevant links. Your readers will get mad if they click on a linkand get to an irrelevant page.
In time, you will be able to write excellent blogposts without thinking to much about it. But, in the beginning, you have toestablish a step by step routine and follow it every time you want to publishsomething. And checking if your blog posts are readable should definitely bepart of that routine if you want to build a solid returning audience.
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