There are a lot of blogs in this world. It’s estimated that in 2012 there are over 164 million blogs. Technocrati, a blog directory, tracks 70 million blogs and estimates that the number of professional blogs doubles every year. On wordpress.com alone, people view 2.5 billion pages per month.
There’s no doubt about it. There is a tremendous amount of competition for readers. Blog owners want those readers’ eyeball on their blog posts and the only way they are going to get and maintain the attention of those consumers is by writing top notch blog posts.
What makes a great blog post?
There are many factors that go into an engaging post, but every post has to start with a basic foundation: Readability. The visitor has to be able to read the content. Readability includes good grammar, proper spelling, short snappy sentences, and accessible vocabulary. It’s also useful to use devices to facilitate reading like bulleted or numbered lists.
Next the reader has to understand the information. There should be a clear theme to the post. Each paragraph should be short and contain a distinct idea. And those paragraphs should be tied together in such a way to create logical flow of information that compels the reader to continue through the text until they reach a satisfying conclusion at the end of the post.
Many bloggers make the mistake of writing for search engines by using keywords excessively, but they forget that it’s ultimately the readers who are going to be buying their products and services. So the readers must be the primary focus when writing. If you don’t write for your human readers, your blog is destined to die.
The blog post should be shareable. It should be engaging or provoke an emotional response that compels the reader to tell others and share it through social media sites. It’s this kind of post that Google really loves.
Great post! Should have been made at the start of the 31 blogs in 31 days!
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Thanks Eric! Very insightful, forcing deeper thought into writing.
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