If you run a blog, it’s important that you’re constantly improving and learning to write better blog posts.
While you don’t have to be a spectacular writer to run a successful blog, you do have to write posts that are valuable and interesting to your readers. And if you’re not sure how to do that or are interested in improving your reader engagement, this is the perfect post for you.
Whether you want to become a full-time blogger or are using blogging as a content marketing strategy for your business, writing better content is essential for growth.
In this post, we’ll go over some of our top tips to write better blog posts to keep your readers interested, increase your blog traffic, and help you become a successful blogger.
Let’s dive in!
1. Solve A “Searchable” Problem For Your Reader
Blogging has changed quite a lot over the past several years.
For instance, bloggers used to treat their blogs like online journals–sharing whatever thoughts or opinions popped into their heads.
Now and since the dawn of social media, people generally don’t care as much about the details of a blogger’s daily life. Rather, they care more about their own problems and how you and your blog can help them solve those problems.
Therefore, if you want to write better blog posts, everything you write should be geared toward solving a specific problem for your reader.
Whether you’re answering a certain question or providing a list of valuable resources or ideas, each post should solve a problem someone would type into Google.
Think of it this way, if you want people to discover your blog, reverse engineer their journey to discovering you.
What questions are they asking related to your blog topic?
What do they desperately want to know more about?
As you think of content ideas, be intentional about putting your reader first, and focus on serving them with your content, not yourself.
The more value you provide for your readers, and the better you get at solving their problems, the bigger and faster your blog will grow.
Interested in blogging? Check out some of our other helpful guides:
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2. Provide Original Information
When you search for information about a certain topic on Google, you’re instantly met with pages upon pages of search results. Many of these search results are blog posts about the same topics that you write about on your own blog.
So, with such a saturated information marketplace, how can you stand out?
The best way to differentiate yourself from competing blogs is to provide information that’s unique and original.
Don’t just pump out the same kind of content every other blogger in your niche is creating.
Sure, you may want to write about some of the same popular topics, but don’t be a parrot.
In other words, how can you provide content that’s original?
Do you have personal experience that you can use to provide your reader’s with insider information?
Can you compile data on a subject by surveying your email list?
Or, can you call local experts on a subject to provide your readers with professional insight?
Anything you can do to be original, and level-up your content will ultimately make your blog posts stand out from the rest of the noise.
If you can’t provide any new information, at least try to present the information in a way that’s new or different.
The more unique, valuable information you can provide for your audience, the easier it will be to grow your blog traffic.
Seriously, this is one of the best tips I can give you if you’re wondering how to write better blog posts.
3. Use An Editing Program To Clean Up Your Writing
There’s nothing worse than clicking through to a blog post on a topic you’re dying to know more about, only to find yourself struggling to decipher the writing through tons of typos.
While you don’t have to be the best writer to be a successful blogger, it’s important that your writing both makes sense and is easy for the average person to understand.
The best way to clean up your writing and make it typo-free is to use an editing program.
We recommend Grammarly because it helps catch practically every spelling, grammar, and punctuation error as you type.
Truthfully, this is one of the easiest (and fastest) ways to write better blog posts.
And trust me, your readers will thank you!
4. Keep Your Sentences (And Paragraphs) Short
Another way to improve your blog posts is to shorten your sentences and paragraphs.
This will drastically help improve the readability of your writing.
For example, if you find yourself writing a sentence that’s longer than 25 to 30 words, consider breaking it into two sentences.
Long-winded thoughts and run-on sentences are difficult to follow.
Keep sentences concise to help your readers better understand your thought process.
The same concept applies to paragraphs. Especially on mobile devices, huge paragraphs of text can be intimidating and difficult to scroll through.
That’s why we recommend breaking your paragraphs into three sentences or less to make them easier for readers to digest.
In fact, when it comes to blogging, it’s perfectly acceptable to break your writing into one-word paragraphs.
Seriously, short paragraphs will make your blog look much more polished and professional on a mobile device.
5. Break Your Blog Posts Into Skimmable Sections
These days, people have shorter attention spans than ever before.
With that in mind, when a reader arrives on your blog post, they’re most likely looking for quick answers or solutions, and they may not want to read every single word of your blog post.
One of the easiest ways to make your blog posts more valuable to your readers is to make them skimmable.
To do so, break your posts into subsections, and make sure each section doesn’t exceed 300 words.
Additionally, give each subsection its own heading, so readers can easily skim through your writing and understand what the post is about.
This simple tip will help to drastically improve the readability of your posts.
6. Write Compelling Titles And Headlines
One of the most difficult parts of blogging is getting people to click on and read your posts.
No matter how great your blog post is, people may never read it if you don’t provide a compelling title.
After all, a blog post’s title is its first impression on potential readers.
And, at the risk of sounding blunt, if you don’t give people a reason to click through to your post, they won’t!
Spend some time brainstorming compelling titles and headlines for your blog posts – don’t just give your post the first title you think of.
Consider incorporating the benefit that your post promises to readers into your titles. For example, which of these titles do you think is more click-worthy?:
- 6 Dog Training Tips
- 6 Dog Training Tips to Make Your Pup Instantly More Obedient
The second title option includes a benefit to the reader – the promise that these tips will make their dog more obedient. Whenever you write a post title, think of how it will most benefit the people who read it.
7. Be Yourself
Your mom may have told you this when you were in high school, but it’s great advice when it comes to helping you write better blog posts – be yourself.
Without exception, if you want to write better blog posts, you need to connect with your readers.
In fact, your main focus for every article should be to foster a connection with your audience every time you write.
And that’s exactly why it’s so important to let your personality shine through.
If you do this right, your readers will begin to feel like they have a personal relationship with you. And when that happens, you are well on your way to building a successful blog.
While there may be lots of other blogs out there related to the same topics you write about, there’s only one you.
Your unique style and personality will differentiate your writing and might just be the reason someone chooses to follow your blog over someone else’s.
8. Speak Directly To Your Reader
Another way to connect with readers through your writing is to speak directly to them.
In fact, I highly encourage you to use words like “you” and “I” to make your blog posts feel more conversational.
When you address your readers directly, they’ll be able to see themselves more easily in the context of the subject you’re writing about. They’ll feel like you actually see, know, and understand them.
This is one of the best ways to improve your writing, because it’s much easier to read content that is written in the same way we actually speak.
Unless you’re writing about a technical subject like medicine, law, or engineering, a conversational tone is the way to go.
As a general rule, try to write as if you’re speaking to a new friend.
This will help prevent your posts from coming across as stuffy or boring.
9. Narrow Your Focus
You’ve probably heard about the importance of blogging for a specific niche. But honestly, niche-specificity is WAY under-emphasized in the blogging world.
Seriously, focusing each article on a specific topic will help you write better blog posts and increase the chances of your content being read.
More importantly, when you write about a wide range of topics, you face stiff search engine competition.
This is because search engines crawl your website to get a sense of what it’s about and what authority your site has about certain topics.
So basically, if you’re writing about every subject under the sun, search engines will have a difficult time making connections between your posts. As a result, it will be more difficult for you to gain authority. And when it comes to your search ranking, authority matters.
The more authority your blog has on a specific topic, the more likely your posts will be to show up in search results.
To put it in simpler terms, if you narrow your focus, each of your blog posts will stand a much better chance of ranking on Google.
10. Level-up Your Content
The actual words you write in your blog posts are the star of the show, but they’re not the only important aspect of your posts. There are plenty of ways you can level-up your content to better engage your readers and help facilitate understanding of certain concepts.
Here are a few elements you can add to your blog posts to improve them:
- Images – A picture is worth a thousand words! Break up your paragraphs with images that help illustrate the ideas you write about.
- Tables – Especially useful for comparison posts and reviews, tables can help break down and simplify information in a way that’s easy to digest. Even more importantly, providing your readers with a table of useful information makes your content more shareable; which is huge for your blogging success.
- Lists – Take the list you’re currently reading, for example. It’s much easier to skim and understand long lists of information when you organize them with numbers or bullets.
- Infographics – These are a great way to simplify and summarize the information in your post. They also make great shareable (and link-able) graphics for social media and other authoritative websites!
- Graphs and Charts – Illustrate numerical data or trends with a graph or a chart. These are almost always more impactful than plain old text content.
Adding elements like these to your blog posts will make them much more valuable to readers.
These additions can also make your posts much easier to read, and they help cement information in your readers’ minds.
Whenever you write a post that’s particularly data-heavy, help your readers out by structuring that data in a way that’s easy for them to comprehend.
Not only will it improve readability, but it will also give people more opportunities to share your content with their own audience.
11. Don’t Ride The Fence
If you’re writing a blog post that compares two competing products, pick the product you like the best.
In other words, don’t spend the entire length of the post discussing the pros and cons of each product and end by stating that they’re both great. (Nothing frustrates me more than that!!!)
Have an opinion, and back it up with reasoning.
Seriously, your readers aren’t looking for you to be agreeable, they’re looking for your honest advice. So give it to them straight!
Who really cares if you get a little backlash? That’s what you signed up for when you started blogging.
Readers don’t want to read through an entire lengthy blog post just to end up wondering the same question they had when they started reading: “Ok, so which one should I buy?”
Your reader is looking for your help with a particular decision, so give them a clear answer to their dilemma. While it may be true that both products are wonderful, think about which one you would buy if you were in your readers’ shoes.
On a related note, it’s a good idea to only compare products you’ve tried yourself so you can give an honest opinion about your preference.
If you haven’t tried the products you’re writing about, you’ll need to do a lot more work to research the reviews, pros, and cons of each product.
It’s always better to speak from your own personal experience.
Having a clear preference that’s informed by your experience will help you build trust and authority in your niche.
People will come back to your blog for more advice about future decisions if you can help them land on the best option for them.
Bottom Line
To sum things up, if you want to write better blog posts, do everything you possibly can to bring value to your potential readers.
Whether that means doing an insane amount of research, writing an in-depth post about a specific subject, or just relating to your readers in a way that other bloggers don’t, the more value you provide, the faster your blog will grow.
So, what are you going to do to write better blog posts? Be sure to comment below!
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