Chapter 3
Creating Content
In This Chapter
• Finding inspiration for post ideas
• Developing the right style for you and your audience
• The elements of a blog post
• Tips for blog-writing success
There are no real rules for writing blog posts, but before you start typing anything and everything on your blog, some tips might be helpful before you get started—especially if you want to grow your blog’s audience over time. Your WordPress blog is your own to write as you wish, but depending on your goals, you might want to put more thought into what you write, how you write it, and why you write it before you hit the publish button.
This chapter introduces you to the world of blog writing. You learn about the specific elements of blog posts you can use to make your posts even better, and the specific techniques you can use to format and write your posts to make them more enjoyable for your readers. We also look at some tricks to blog-writing success you might want to apply to your own blog.
Coming Up with Blog Post Ideas
Popular blogs are updated frequently, and that means they always include fresh content. Your posts should be current, and your content should be unique—no one wants to read a stale blog. That doesn’t mean you have to be the only person who writes a blog post about a specific topic, but it does mean your take on that topic should be uniquely yours. In other words, you need to add value to the existing online conversation about that subject. This applies to writing your blog overall as well as writing individual blog posts.
WordPress gives you the tools you need to become a web publisher, but it’s up to you to create the content that attracts and retains readers.
Getting Ideas from Other Blogs and Sources
The best bloggers read a lot. To keep a fresh list of blog post ideas coming, you should have a go-to list of blogs and sources you check periodically for new ideas to resolve an occasional bout of “blogger’s block.”
Following are several ideas to get your source list started:
Blog searches: Use Google Blog Search or
IceRocket.com (discussed in Chapter 1) to find other blogs related to your own blog topic. Visit these blogs to see what bloggers are writing about. However,
never copy and republish another person’s content. Always write your own blog post, adding your own thoughts on a topic, and attribute the original story source with a link. (Learn more about attributing sources in Chapter 4.)
Blog feeds: Subscribe to the feeds of blogs you like and blogs related to your own blog topic. Check your feed reader to get post ideas.
News sites: Keep on top of daily news by visiting popular news sites to see what journalists are talking about.
Twitter streams: Follow people on Twitter who tweet about topics related to your blog, and check your Twitter stream to learn what people find interesting enough to tweet about each day.
DEFINITION
A feed is syndicated blog content. The most common format for blog feeds is RSS (Really Simple Syndication). Feed readers gather and display blog feeds for quick and easy viewing in one place, such as Google Reader. (See Chapter 19 for more on feeds.) Twitter is a popular microblogging application where users can publish short (140 characters or fewer) updates to their personal profiles. A tweet is an update published by a Twitter user.
Social bookmarking sites: Check out the latest content shared on sites like Digg (digg. com), StumbleUpon (
www.stumbleupon.com), and Yahoo! Buzz (
buzz.yahoo.com) to see what people are sharing related to your blog topic.
For example, if you blog about baseball, you can select the Baseball category on Digg to view popular shared content, as shown in Figure 3-1. Just follow the links to view the content listed to help you get ideas for blog posts of your own.
Figure 3-1 You can view popular shared content by category on Digg. (Courtesy of Digg)
The more time you spend reading content online, the more sources you’ll find. In time, you’ll find favorite sources you check daily and others you only check on occasion.
Never stop looking for new sources, and always take the time to reach out to the people behind your favorite online sources in an effort to develop relationships with them. Leave comments on their blog posts, retweet their Twitter updates, send them an e-mail to introduce yourself, and so on. These are the types of relationships that can help you over your lifetime as a blogger.
Looking for “Link Bait”
An important part of building your WordPress blog is attracting incoming links, which help boost your search engine rankings. Search engines like Google build their algorithms around a variety of criteria, but one factor that can boost a page’s ranking in keyword search results is incoming links. The theory is that no one will link to content that stinks. Therefore, a page that has a lot of incoming links, especially from popular sites, must have great content and should be rewarded with higher search rankings than substandard pages.
With that theory in mind, many bloggers try to publish posts for the sole purpose of attracting incoming links. These posts are called link bait posts.
PROCEED WITH CAUTION
Link bait posts can boost incoming links and drive short-term traffic spikes, but they do little in terms of creating loyal, long-term readers.
The trick to using link bait posts to grow your blog is to write about link bait topics your core audience is likely to be interested in. Then, people who find your blog through a link bait post that’s directly related to your blog’s topic are more likely to find even more content on your blog they’ll be interested in. That means they’ll linger, click around, and return later.
Here are some suggestions for places to find link bait post ideas:
Google Trends: Google Trends (
google.com/trends/hottrends) is a great place to find link bait ideas because it enables you to find the most searched keyword phrases on any given day. Google Trends updates frequently each day. If you can catch the “lightning in a bottle” from one of these hot search topics, your blog could see a big spike in traffic. Figure 3-2 shows a list of hot searches on Google Trends.
Figure 3-2 Google Trends provides a list of hot searches updated throughout the day.
(Courtesy of Google)
Twitter trending topics: Visit Twitter and view the scrolling bar near the top half of the page, shown in Figure 3-3, to see what topics people are talking about a lot at that moment. You can also view trending Twitter topics in the right sidebar of your Twitter profile when you’re logged in to Twitter.
Figure 3-3 Find hot Twitter topics on the Twitter home page.
(Courtesy of Twitter)
Writing Posts
Once you determine the voice you want to write with, you need to consider the various elements that make up a blog post and decide which to include in your own posts based on your goals for your blog. A number of characteristics and techniques separate great bloggers from the rest of the pack, beginning with establishing a unique voice and adding value to the online conversation. However, the various pieces you include in your posts also make a difference. Let’s take a look at some of the most important elements:
Voice The best blogs are written by people who aren’t afraid to let their personalities shine through in their posts. And because WordPress allows you to interact with your readers through the commenting feature, you can further express your personality as you engage in conversations with your readers. If you hope to build a successful blog, you need to let your audience know who you are and what they can expect from you and your blog by choosing and sticking with a distinct voice to use in your writing that your audience can rely on over the long term.
Length Your posts should be long enough to get your point across and add some kind of value to the online conversation. Try to publish posts at least 250 characters long if you want to get any kind of search engine traffic. However, keep your blog posts under 800 words (I prefer under 600 words) to appeal to the majority of blog readers who want information quickly and succinctly.
INSIDER SECRET
Your blog posts can be however long you want them to be, but if you have bigger goals for your blog than simply having a personal creative outlet, you should think about the length of your posts as you write them.
Links If your blogging goals are limited, using links isn’t as important as it is if you want your blog to grow into a popular online destination. Links serve multiple purposes:
• Links from your posts to other blogs can send traffic their way and, therefore, put your blog on their radars, which could mean more traffic from their blogs to yours.
• Links within your own blog can help with search engine optimization (as discussed in Chapter 19), boost page views, and keep people on your blog longer.
• Strategic links can offer valuable information to your readers, who will appreciate when you point them in the right direction to learn more.
Don’t stuff your blog posts full of links. Search engine optimization experts suggest including no more than one link for every 125 words.
Images Taking a few minutes to find and add images to your blog posts is definitely worth it if you want to build a successful blog. Images serve a few purposes in your blog posts:
• Images add visual appeal and break up text-heavy pages.
• Images allow you to add supporting information such as charts, graphs, photos, and so on, which can clarify the points you make in your blog posts.
• Images can boost search engine traffic if you name the images you include in your blog posts with keywords and use those keywords in the HTML Alt-tag when you upload them to your WordPress account.
DEFINITION
The Alt-tag is a piece of HTML code used to identify the text that displays on-screen when a web browser cannot load the image that’s supposed to display on a page. The Alt-tag name is short for Alternate Tag.
Before you publish images in a blog post, always resize, crop, and save them to a web-friendly resolution (72 dpi is usually adequate) and file format (.png, .jpg, and .gif are the most commonly used) to create the smallest file sizes possible. Larger images take up more storage space in your hosting account and take longer to load on-screen. Depending on your WordPress account and hosting limits, as discussed in Chapter 2, the amount of space available to you to store images can vary. Furthermore, visitors don’t like to wait for large images to load on their screens. You can learn about several image editing tools in Chapter 10.
Only use images on your blog you have permission to publish. Otherwise, you run the risk of violating copyright laws. (Learn about copyright laws in Chapter 4.)
Frequency If you’re a casual blogger, you can publish new content whenever you want, as often or as infrequently as you like. If you want to develop a successful blog with a big audience, you need to publish new content frequently. If you want …
• Maximum growth potential, publish new content multiple times per day.
• Moderate growth potential, publish new content at least once per day.
• Slow growth potential, publish new content at least three times per week.
PROCEED WITH CAUTION
Growing your blog audience depends on more than just publishing new content. Be sure to read Part 5 to learn more about driving traffic to your blog.
Writing Tips
The ideas discussed throughout this chapter can help you write a better blog people will actually want to read. Here are additional quick tips that can make you a better blogger:
• Proofread your blog posts.
• Publish original content.
• Use keywords in your link text to increase search engine traffic.
• Write post titles that encourage or tease people to read more.
• Use keywords in your post titles to boost search traffic.
• Write in short paragraphs that are easier to read on-screen.
• Use bulleted lists and headings to break up text.
• Link to sources.
• Be consistent in voice and style.
Take some time to read a lot of blogs and analyze what other bloggers are doing that you like. Blogging isn’t about reinventing the wheel; it’s about bringing something new, different, or extra to the party. You can do that by writing great blog posts in your own unique voice.
The Least You Need to Know
• Finding ideas to keep your blog post writing flowing requires a lot of reading.
• The best blogs are written by bloggers with distinct and consistent styles and voices.
• Successful bloggers write posts that are easy to read in terms of length, tone, visual appeal, and format.
• To grow your blog’s audience, you need to publish new content at least once a day.
