Blogging Best Practices 101:
10 New And Simple Ways To Make More People Read Your Content
Creating content is one thing, not very difficult, but… attracting people to read it, enjoy it and even share it? Wow, now that’s the real deal. You crafted your words, followed some of the Blogging Best Practices, and after you click the “publish” button, nothing happens, like a Splash attack from Magikarp… No comments, no tweets and no shares whatsoever, So, how to increase traffic to your blog?
So, being real here, the average time a person spends on a web is 1:12 (that is one minute, twelve seconds, dudes). So unless you are a wizard able to cast spells on your readers, you’re going to want to optimize everything in your strategy to keep the attention of those visiting your blog. Let’s see some tips and tricks into how to increase traffic to your blog, making people want to stay and read your whole work, let’s get it on!
1. Long paragraphs = boring paragraphs
Have you ever read the terms and conditions of any software you ever bought? No, because they are endless and full of lines that never break. You, on the other hand, will break your paragraphs every 4 or 5 sentences, this is definitely a huge part of Blogging Best practices.
If you do this, it will be considerably easier for the reader to stay tuned in and read the whole thing.
Writing a whole paragraph with a sentence is not bad so long as it’s justified.
Now, let me illustrate what I mean.
Wonderful way to do it:
The worst example I’ve found:
2. Subheads can make the difference between staying and leaving
Don’t get me wrong, headlines will attract people to your stuff but adding subheads is what will make them stay. Your content will be scannable, meaning that readers can look for the part they care and read it.
And chances are they’re going to stay to read it all, also it helps you organise your ideas and write a compelling story.
3. Caption those images
Amazing fun fact: Captions are read four times more than content (Source: Kissmetrics) so start captioning your images into leading people to read the rest of it, a “deep caption” sounds like a good idea, but I’d say I’d rather caption a picture accordingly.
Still don’t believe it? Do you remember picking up a newspaper, what’s the first thing you see on the page? The picture of course, and what do you read first? its Caption, you feel the need to understand more about what you see.
4. Links are a thing
As Blogging Best practices go, you need to support any claim that you have, so Links are there for you and you must use them, whether to give credit to someone or back your statements with some support, or even creating a link to another blog post of yours, links create interaction.
External links is how you show the world (or your readers) that you are a knowledgeable person who always does his/her homework and researches his/her stuff.
Internal links will help create inbound links that will help people navigate your website, and will make it more difficult to assholes to scrape your hard work (someone who cuts + pastes your post without asking for it and claims it as their own)
5. Bullet lists
Will make your readers rest a little after reading the longer paragraphs in your article and will also make everything look organized. That will attract them, because of the visual diversity it will create combined with the images, captions and well-cut paragraphs.
6. Grammar and wording are law.
- Keeping in mind the proper way to write will make people want to read more
- Run on sentences can crash the way a sentence is understood, let me give you an example: “Let’s eat grandma” “Let’s eat, grandma” spot a difference?
- When you’re writing content people will read, you’re not only giving information out, you are educating people, so, educate properly.
7. Highlight important stuff
Bolding important or relevant information can help the process of scanning that your readers will do before reading the whole thing, so check out how you first read this sentence before the beginning of the paragraph.
8. Go by the numbers
On my own experience, headlines that have numbers on them are more likely to be read.
Just the combination of numbers and letters makes it appealing to the eye and also gives a feeling of how long will it take to read the post. Just look at this article’s headline: it has both numbers and letters! (and if you’re reading this far it means it worked).
9. Adjust your SEO
SEO (search engine optimization) helps your prospects find your content, so roll up your sleeves and start optimizing those posts, it will generate more traffic, by putting you on the first page of google’s search! What? you’ve got no idea what I’m talking about? gee, these are the things you need to know buddy.
10. Proofread your stuff
Have you finished that awesome post? Well, give it a long read to find any typos, grammar mistakes and things that don’t add up, check your SEO to find out if you did it properly.
Aha, I did that already, and now?
Easy, go and show it to someone, a co-worker, family member, a friend on the internet. Pick your poison. Ask some questions to see if they understood and boom! You’ve got it.
So, these are the tips, tricks and techniques I am willing to share with you today, are there any other tips you’d like to share? Use the comment box below and ignite the conversation!
Originally published at blog.thesocialus.com.
