27 Useful Blog Writer Tips That Keep Blog Readers Reading
A fundamental requirement that comes with owning a blog is to constantly—insatiably—create fresh content. And frankly, it’s a steady challenge for a writer to keep the process moving—and to keep readers engaged and reading. Your audience deserves and expects it, so here are a few helpful blog writer tips you can use:
- Know what your reader doesn’t know. Focus on presenting new information that people want and need to know; stuff that is attention getting and helpful to the target audience.
- Always be accurate and authoritative. This establishes and maintains credibility and trust.
- Ask challenging questions; invite answers and comments. Open the door to conversations, discussions and interactions.
- Ask provocative questions. It’s OK to confront ideas and issues from a different angle.
- Be a little irreverent and/or mildly shocking (occasionally). It stimulates audience reactions.
- Create a cliffhanger. Leave them up in the air until next time.
- Create a connected series of posts. A given topic might require several articles to present.
- Have a debate. Open the door to a lively give-and-take.
- Have a likable personality and friendly tone of voice. Be conversational. Your blog is an extension of yourself.
- Inspire a discussion. Take a position and invite other points of view.
- Invite a guest post or interview with a recognized expert. Expertise is informative and reflects positively on your blog. Exchange ideas.
- Make it useful and shareable. The best material inspires the audience to send to others.
- Offer things for free. Point to useful resources where there is little or no cost to the reader.
- Participate in the bigger picture. Be a guest contributor for other blogs; be a voice in important discussions.
- Post video commentary or presentations. Provide information in a variety of formats.
- Present a solution or answer a need. The most useful information explains or resolves an issue.
- Provide an alphabetical or numbered list. This is a list; people enjoy catalogs and directories.
- Provide attribution; bigger is better. Give proper credit wherever possible.
- Record an audio podcast. This is another way to vary the delivery format.
- Respond, reply and engage. Pickup on reader comments and topics; interact quickly and often.
- Survey experts and opinion leaders. Pick a helpful topic and share the results and perspectives.
- Tie your idea to a timely topic or headline. Hitchhike your content with ideas that are in the news or are top-of-mind.
- Transcribe audio tracks. Provide the written text for audio content.
- Use short sentences and short paragraphs. Make your content quick and easy to read.
- Use visual content; pictures, graphs, charts, diagrams. Keep visual interest high.
- Wrap a big idea in a storytelling format. People resonate with a story format; beginning, middle and ending.
- Conclude with a challenge question, big idea and/or call-to-action.
Always bring ‘em back for more…
Begin with a clear understanding of the objective of your content-driven blog. Be a problem-solver--attract readers, create a relationship, inform and inspire the audience to interact with you and other members of the audience. In short, you want good content that brings readers back for more.
The key for blog writers is in knowing your audience and providing interesting, useful and helpful ideas and information. Subscribe to our free marketing advisory newsletter, and call us if we can help you win the online battle for new patients.
And for future reference, what would you add to this list?
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