Today, we are going to talk about contents again. You certainly can’t tell me that contents are not really important for a blog. Good articles like 10 Reasons You Are Not Getting Comments can become a blog’s pillar article, which is a evergreen and a popular post that the blogger can boast about.
Now, let’s get the ball rolling.
Prerequisite Skills and Attitude
- Observant. When you bloghop, don’t just visit for the sake of commenting or leaving your avatar in the MyBlogLog widget of others. Read what others are writing, especially blogs that have a huge reader base and try to understand why people are reading their posts but not yours.
You might also have not enough posting experience but other blogs might have a huge archive. Check their archive out and study the trend of traffic according to what they are posting. Observing the attractiveness of a certain post by looking at the number of comments will also helps you understand the behavior of the readers in your niche.
- Hardworking. If you want to be lazy, you can skip this article. A lazy way to produce a good article is always there but your articles will not be anyway near great! You will need to put in effort in order to complete the cycle that I will be outlining below. If laziness creeps in during the cycle, dream on that you will have something great produced.
- Persistence. The first attempt might be frustrating after you have put in all the hard work and nothing comes back in return. Review your written article and try to see what went wrong. Did you outline everything clearly? Have you confused your readers with the words you used? After this, you must be ready to give it another go. Don’t be disappointed, every one of us learns by failing.
- Humble. You must not be envious of those bloggers who have a large base of readers and don’t make your peer bloggers your competitors because you will need a lot of help and support from them. Even if you are successful then and bloggers with lower authority comes to you, you must be willing to help them out.
The best value blogger that I have seen in my niche will be Maki from Dosh Dosh. Every post of his will show you clearly the twists and turns of issues that he is trying to convey. The best part of his blog is that he is able to be consistent with the quality right from the launch of Dosh Dosh until now.
The Production Cycle of a Quality Post
- Inspiration seeking
Ideas don’t come instantly. You will need to do things like surfing around the Internet, either by hopping through links or using StumbleUpon. There are many ways for you to seek for contents to blog but you must remind yourself that you are going to produce a quality article, not just a typical news post or daily rant. You must also be firm so that you are being attracted to over-participating in forum discussions or get engrossed in digging and stumbling.
Inspiration seeking can be a continuous process. When you bloghop on a daily basis and come across quality articles that you can elaborate in your upcoming post, you should save it up so that you can draft your post even when you are offline.
Also, if you are really passionate about the topic that you are blogging about, you will sometimes find idea popping up when you are away from your computer. I would advise you to always take a small notepad with you any time so that any inspiration can be jotted down and to be processed back at your workstation.
- Drafting Out the Main Points
After you have had a theme in mind, take out notepad or a piece of paper to outline what are the main points. As Skelliewag phrase it in How to Write Like a Painter, writing an article is like drawing a piece of art. You will need a sketch before you can continue to produce a drawing that will have a value. One reason to outline your article offline is because a diagram that is able to trigger your thoughts better than words is easier to produce with a pencil and paper. - Research Commencement
Wait a minute, isn’t this supposed to have been done before you draft out the main points? No! Why I think it is much better to start researching after you have a skeleton of the post is because you will not go off-tangent. If you start researching even before you have a skeleton for the upcoming post, you might find everything is relevant and when you feel that there is too much to add in, frustration will come in and I am sure most of you give up when you are unsure of what to add or you are not sure what is more important than the other.
- Elaborate Your Main Points
A draft is out and you can now put it into your articles draft in a word processing software in your computer, listing out the main points is bold. Elaborate each and every one of the points. Paragraph by paragraph and point by point, an article will soon be built up (now you know why my paragraphs always have a bolded subtitle).
An article written this way will help readers understand what you are writing easier. One glance at it and they might know the main points and if they want to really read it, they can as well. Remember, don’t play with the words. Your aim is to make your readers understand what you write, not to show off your language skills.
- Add In Enhancements
Relevant images can let the eyes of your visitors rest after a large chunk of text. A chart or graph can help your readers understand statistical values that are hard to explain in words.One more enhancements can bloggers often leave out are links, both internal and outgoing. One thing I do notice is that the spread of links over the article must be even. Links normally have different colors from plain text and this is why a link can enhance a post. Giving a fair spread of links over an article will make it more attractive than a full post with just your text and background color.
- Proofread for Spelling and Grammar Errors
When you are so confident that the article you have just written will be getting good response and someone drop by, pointing out your spelling errors or incorrect sentence structure, what will you feel? All your hopes will not be there any more. Be sure to struts your stuffs out there only after you are prepared.Two to three times of proofreading is vital. Read it aloud if possible because your tongue will struggle to read an improper sentence structure. Remove the idle words. If you are not sure about which is the correct grammar rule, split the sentence into a simpler ones.
- Preview Before Publishing
A last preview will be needed and the preview must be done with your blog by using the “Preview” link on top of your Wordpress blog editor. This is because your visitors will be reading what is posted on your blog, not the one in you Wordpress or offline word editor.Previewing your article each time after you finish a paragraph will have its benefits as well. It can help you balance the length of each paragraphs and the neatness of the article structure. Merging or splitting of paragraphs can also be considered.
- Publish but Don’t Just Sit There!
You have just posted something great! Go out and market it! You can either ping all the aggregators out there, bait other bloggers to read and link it or start commenting on other blogs with the hope that the blogger will drop by and take a look at your masterpiece.
If everything fails to get the possible traffic, try something not recommended. Remember StumbleUpon? Although I am not stumbling my site any more after being tipped by Derek Cordeiro, I still think that the result of it is very appealing.
Something to Share With You
The whole thing seems that it will take up a lot of time and yes, it does take me at least three days to finish the whole thing after taking into account all the research and bloghop to find out the helpful information for me. I will take me so long but why I am still able to post everyday?
The reason is simple. I have to admit that not every post of mine is of sheer quality. Also, I do pre-write my posts. When I publish this, I have five more “Ready to Post” articles inside my laptop. Producing quality contents or above par contents will still be the way unless you are creative to come up with another Hack – John Cow style.
Feedback
Do you have at least one pillar article for your blog? I learnt it from Yaro with his Blog Profits Blueprint that I will need at least some pillar articles before I can market my blog. What do you think of writing a quality post? Will you put in effort to write something that will eventually pays off because of the quality?
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