Hello Larvae,
My name is Patrick S. Tomlinson. I'm an author and stand-up comedian here in Milwaukee, and I am currently hung over, something I'm sure many of us share. I also run a modestly successful blog, which is why your professor asked me to write a short introductory post about writing content for the internet.
And I can tell you with confidence that if you really want to drive traffic to your blog or website, your best bet is strong pornography. People really eat that stuff up. The stranger and more specific the better...
I'm being told that's a no go. Fine, we'll do it the hard way then.
Some basics to start. Your blog should be targeted to a particular market, topic, sub-culture, product, or service. Blogs that stay on target tend to build stronger, more loyal audiences over time because people come to know what to expect and come to recognize you as an authority on a given subject. This is not to say you can never color outside the lines. I certainly have, maybe more than I should. Just try to stay within spitting distance of the subject you started the blog to talk about. A couple of examples of very successful blogs I follow that fit this description are author Chuck Wendig's Terrible Minds, and political pundit Andrew Sullivan's The Dish.
Now, titles. The titles of your blog posts should be short, on target, and catchy. Short titles fit into tweets and other cross-platform promotion better and are more likely to get people to click on the link. And no puns, for God's sake. People hate puns. They're the death of comedy.
Posts should always include an image of some kind. This way, when people are sorting through their feeds, your post isn't just a dry title. Images draw the eye and draw interest, and drastically increase the odds someone will click on your link.
See? Caught your eye, didn't it? No, I don't have the first idea what's going on here. Not the point.
The length of your posts are actually less important than you might think. You'll find a lot of advice online that tells you to keep the posts themselves short, no more than 500 words or so, because people have such short attention spans these days. Ignore these twits. Personally, I think 500 words should be considered a minimum length. My most popular posts have all been in the 1,000-1,500 word range. If your writing is engaging, people will stick around to the end. And even if they don't finish and wander off somewhere in the middle, you still got the traffic. You lose nothing by writing a post long enough to complete your thought and tell the whole story. However, if your post starts looking like a Dickens novel, you might want to rein it back a little.
Next on your little checklist is the timing of your post. When your blog is updated, and how frequently, is of enormous importance to its reach. At a minimum, your blog should have new content weekly. Less than that, and there simply isn't enough on the buffet line to keep people coming back for seconds. You need to stay fresh in people's minds, and you do that through providing them with content to chew over.
To that end, there are specific days of the week, and even times of day to put up your posts to give them the best chance at the widest possible audience. Weekends are where blog traffic goes to die. Once Friday afternoon rolls around, don't bother putting anything up until noon on Monday. If you have a great idea for a post and pound it out on Saturday night, save the draft and publish it once the work week starts. People have better things to do on the weekend.
The same is true of evenings. After around 8:00 or 9:00pm, blog traffic collapses. People are at home, relaxing, drinking, watching Netflix, doing chores, what have you. The best time to put up your post is Monday-Friday, and Noon to just after dinner time. This is when your audience is captive to their office desks, busying themselves playing on their phones and avoiding work. They're looking for things to waste time on. Give them something.
Oh, and that's one last thing. Two thirds of your audience will be reading your blog on mobile devices. Probably in traffic while eating Arby's, but that's not your problem. Your blogging software MUST support mobile viewing, or you're giving up the majority of your audience before you've even started.
That about does it for me today. Good luck, and be nice to Professor Malone.
No comments:
Post a Comment