What is your blog post?
I will give you two options:
An essay or a novel.
Which one do you want your blog post to be compared to?
To make things easier for you, I will describe it a little more:
An Informative Essay and an Interesting Novel.
Key: Take a close look at the words: Informative and Interesting.
Would you want your blog post to be informative like an essay or interesting like a novel?
You know, I have written many blog posts. Some of them got more success than I expected. Some of them didn't. Some of them – I spent a little time writing it – but still brought me lots of traffic. Some of them, I spent a lot of time writing, didn't get me any traffic at all.
In this blog post, I will share you what I have found about writing interesting or informative post and help you decide whether you should write an informative or interesting blog post.
Your Blog Post – An Essay?
How do you describe an informative essay?
Think about what an essay is supposed to do.
An Informative Essay is supposed to:
- Teach you,
- Teach you, so that you can teach others,
- Try to change your perspective on an issue or help you to look from another perspective,
- Get you thinking about the issue, and,
- Provide More Information than you already know
Well, that's basically how I would describe an informative essay. Now, let's talk about the pros of writing a blog post like an Essay:
- Teach Your Readers,
- Get You More Readers,
- Help You Readers to Do Better at Blogging – If you blogging about blogging, and,
- Get Your readers think about it.
The cons of writing an informative post is that if you don't have traffic already (or if you don't do effective marketing), the chances of your blog post going viral is very very small.
For Bloggers who blog about blogging:
Information is rather small nowadays (especially in blogging). We can't really give any new information (unless you talk about a new strategy, method or whatever). Otherwise, it is all the same content. What we have to do is to write it in a different perspective, a perspective that is interesting (this is where the Interesting part comes in).
Your Blog Post – A Novel?
What does a Novel do to you? An Interesting novel?
As far as I understand, an interesting novel is one that gives me fresh experience (what is a novel anyways? A “big” short story right? kind of, right?).
Well, here is how I would describe a Interesting Novel: An Interesting Novel is supposed to
- Entertain you :D,
- Entertain you once again,
- Have a plot (a story),
- Be Interesting to read (of course)
- and blah blah…
Let's see how that relates back to a blog post:
An Interesting Blog post is supposed to have
- A story,
- Be interesting and entertaining,
- Get your readers to continue reading,
- Get your readers to be loyal,
- Get your readers to comment (better chance here – than at informative side),
- Get your readers to share (again better chance here), and,
- so on…
So, What Does That Mean To You?
Well, nothing.
And, possibly everything.
About writing a blog post 😀
Your Blog Post – Be Interesting and Informative
Your Blog post must be interesting and informative at the same time – if you want it to go beyond your expectations.
It should be informative because:
Your Blog is supposed to teach your readers – to blog better. And your blog is supposed to reflect your blog's goal to teach others. So, it has to be informative.
Well, information is good. But, don't you want your readers to read your blog post?
That's why we should let our blog posts be interesting.
I don't have any tips for making your blog post informative. You just have to work on that on your own. But, I can tell you how you could make it interesting 😀
Make your Blog Post Interesting
- Include a story in your blog post – How about your experience? Did you know that your experience is the best blogging tip that you can provide? Blend your experience into your blog post.
- Write in an interesting format – Don't be like other bloggers. Write in a different format. Write as you like 😀
- Be Creative – Change things up a while. Do things in different ways. For instance: Instead of starting with a whole new paragraph, start your blog post with a question 😀
- Write from your heart – You have read a lot of stories (I bet, you have!). What were your favorites? Why? What did those authors include in their stories? Incorporate that into your blog post.
From my 2+ years of blogging experience, I can surely tell you that I got the most traffic for blog posts that were interesting and informative at the same time.
Try to make your blog posts informative and interesting.
Inform.
Entertain.
And do the writing.
Just write 😉