Blog writing, or should I say effective blog writing, is about much more than rambling on for 500 words about whatever happens to be on your mind that day. Good blog writing is strategic and it’s scientific and it is an integral part of an overall marketing strategy.
Good blog writing is also focused, zeroing in on a topic and remaining in that zone until the final word has been typed. You may be able to get away with a lot of mistakes when writing your blogs, but if you make this one your readers are sure to abandon you.
One of the magic words in blog writing, or any writing for that matter, is engagement. You need to keep your readers engaged in what you are saying to get them to continue to the end and become a customer. Sounds easy enough, but it’s no secret that attention spans have shrunk to the size of a pinhead and keeping people engaged is more challenging than ever.
There are many different tactics that marketers and content writers use to keep readers engaged, but staying on topic is probably one of the most important. It’s bad enough that readers are easily distracted, but when you have ADD writing on top of that, the results will be just awful.
Sticking with one main thought in your blog posts begins with the title. The title should always be the starting point, and you should check back periodically to ensure you are still on topic. We always tell our writers to “write to the title” and that’s what every content creator should do to keep their readers interested. That also means you should take the time to create a title or headline that is engaging in itself and will cause your prospective customers to want to read it.
If you find that you want to branch off into other ideas and concepts that don’t match your title, file those ones away for another day. If you are following blog posting best practices, then you are producing regular content. And since finding new titles can be a challenge, take those extra tidbits and create new titles that are focused on those ideas and concepts.
Word count often becomes an issue when trying to stick to a singular thought or idea in a blog post. If you feel like you’ve exhausted all the info and you’re only 250 words in, just take a step back and try looking at it from a different perspective. Chances are, you can examine the subject from a different angle, add an opposing view, throw in some statistics or just go more in-depth to boost the word count. An extra section or two is all it takes.
And if you find that you just can’t stay on topic and your blogs are still all over the place, contact The Content Company and we’ll be happy to help.
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