Attention
Grab the attention of readers by crafting a thoughtful (and even witty) title for your posts. The best titles are those written after the post has already been written.
Break Out
As long as you continue looking within the blogosphere for ideas and creativity, you’re limiting yourself. The best posts are inspired from real life. Read magazines, talk to friends, see a movie, get out in the real world and live. You’ll be surprised by what sparks your best ideas.
Creativity
Find creative ways to reinforce your point, whether its through the use of analogies, metaphors, imagery, or supplemented with images or infographics.
Do
Show, don’t tell. People are attracted to posts that show you’ve done something or that you can provide testimonials and first-hand experience on something. They can’t, however, relate to a person who’s never been sky-diving to tell you why you should go sky-diving.
Encourage Participation
You know you’ve been successful in reaching your audience when readers are interacting with the content and starting conversations in the comments with each other.
Frequency
Post often! Even if it’s a short, simple post – share it! However, posting too often could cause the quality of your writing to suffer and your readers to burnout.
Grammar
Yes, put on your grammar police uniform.
Headline
Every post has a title and yours better be phenomenal and captivating. Attract clicks from interested prospects.
Interview
Interviews with people who have a particular job you’re interested in or share a similar interest will always spark a great feature story. Branch out! It’s inspiring to see and share what others have to say. Expert testimonials will supplement your piece fantastically and add the credibility every author is looking for.
Joke
Everyone can appreciate a good sense of humor. Let your personality shine through your writing as a refined stream-of-conscience. A personable tone is easy to relate to and giggle WITH, not laugh AT.
Know your audience
What many bloggers fail to do is focus on the people instead of the technical aspects of blogging. The people who read, share, link, comment and interact with your content are doing so because the blogger listens to their audience and understands their needs and drives. The successful blogger works to answer their questions, comment back and help them solve their problems.
Lists
People love lists (just like the one you’re reading right now). It makes for flowing readability and switches the topic multiple times while staying on the same subject so you’re never bored. Plus, people like when you take the time to find the “Top” or “Best” things in a category (for example, the Ten Best Christmas Apps) so they don’t have to.
Metaphors
An entire post that is a metaphor for something bigger attracts some of the best hits when used in a craftful way. Metaphors and analogies also allow for fun, attractive titles that make your post “click-worthy.”
Natural Voice
Be natural! Stephen King would tell you that the best writing mimics the spoken word. We’re not writing Encyclopedias over here, we’re writing blog posts. Write the content like you speak it so your readers aren’t robotically laboring through the text.
Overloading
Avoid overwhelming the readers with too many new ideas. Overloading your audience with too much information at once will have them confused and missing your point.
Points
Get to them! Don’t bury your message. Be succinct. Short, sweet and to the point posts are highly shareable, while longer ones may be overlooked.
Quotes
If you’re feeling particularly uninspired, try browsing some quotes from a favorite author, celebrity, or ones that fall under a certain category (i.e. sports quotes, redhead quotes, etc).
Relevance
Strive for quality and relevant content. How useful and unique is your post?
Scannability
Make your posts scannable. This is achieved through different kinds of formatting: lists, bold, italics, underlines, blockquotes, tags, categories, headers and the use of white space.
Tweet
Twitter is a great tool to share and attract hits to your posts. Use it.
Unknown Facts
People are tired of reading the same ol’ stuff regurgitated. Their interests are piqued when they read something surprising about something familiar.
Verify your facts
Link to other credible sources so you remain credible. There’s nothing worse than posting on something and not having your facts straight.
Work together
Blogging isn’t a competition. Blogging is about sharing information, stories, ideas, inspiration and hopefully giving your readers food for thought while educating them. Recommend other blogs to your readers that are of relevance, or a place they can go for more information specific to that particular blog post. Sharing is caring! People can see through all that self promotion. You should care less about hits and more about giving readers all of the resources and tools they need to be most informed.
X-Rated
Who says you can’t get a little risqué? Ruffle some feathers, take a stand and remember that you’re an adult with adult thoughts. If your readers aren’t mature enough to handle hot button discussions or taboo topics, that’s their problem.
YouTube
Create a YouTube account for yourself and try your hand at a video blog post! Videos are a fun, interactive way for your readers to become engaged with not only your blog’s content, but you as the author/blogger. Let that personality shine while being informative. Through time you’ll gain confidence and experience you need to become more and more creative and affluent in video production. Embed the videos in your post for easy sharing!
Zig-zag
Keep the readers on their toes just when they least expect it. Mix it up by stepping out of your comfort zone and change it up.
By Kayla Bibeau, writer at Fueled, a mobile app design firm in London that builds the webs most elegant and beautiful apps.
Image Credit: www.justjenniferblog.com
