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Structure your blog posts for better results and trafic
November 25th, 2008Would you read the newspaper if there wasn’t any titles? Would you read the newspaper if there wasn’t any sections? would you read the newspaper if it was a single block of text? Would you read the newspaper if the presentation was different everyday? I don’t think so. Then, tell me why so many bloggers don’t structure their posts?
Too many “one block” articles
I see too many “one block” articles around the bloggosphere and I don’t think it is a good practice. What is a “one block article”? It is basically an article that is not spitted in different paragraphs, so it is a one paragraph 1200 words article. What’s wrong with that approach? I can tell you this will turn down a lot of readers because let’s admit it: there’s no way you’re going to catch the reader’s attention with such a post. As a reader, when you land on a post, you like to have a feeling of what the post is about and you might also want to read only certain sections of the article. This is perfectly normal because before spending 10 minutes reading an article, it is nice to have an overview of what the post is about and if you only have 2 minutes ahead of you, you might just want to read what interest you.
Structuring is branding
Structuring your posts the same way every time is part of your branding strategy. Branding doesn’t always mean to do awesome/out of the ordinary stuff, it can be as simple as being consistent. You know, people will get used to your writing style and will get used to the way you structure your posts. There has to be no doubt that it’s you who wrote the article and the only way to achieve this is by being consistent with your writing style. When I say having a t-shirt or business cards is important to brand your business I really mean it, but as bloggers the only thing we have is our content so why not brand it?
My approach
If you are a daily/weekly reader you’ve probably noticed how I structure my posts. I like to write short paragraphs with a very simple writing style. You know, I don’t blog to win a Nobel prize, I blog to share my knowledge and whatever is on my mind. I strongly believe that to share information in this fast Internet Business, that information has to be straight to the point and ready for immediate consumption. But you know, that’s my way of doing things: “Cut the crap”. Your way might be to go with very long and complex sentences and if it works for you then that’s perfect! But if you’re wondering why nobody leaves comments, it might be because nobody understands your articles!
Your approach
What’s your approach when it comes to structuring your posts? Do you always use the same format or are you constantly changing? Do you have a style? Tell me.
60 Responses to “Structure your blog posts for better results and trafic”
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I try to break text up into shorter paragraphs while highlighting either the first sentence of the new paragraph or leading with a title. I also try to add a photo to make it visually appealing. I try and stay away from long posts because I don’t particularly like reading long posts (I find myself skimming) so I figure that my readers wouldn’t like it either. If you do write longer posts, I think it becomes particularly important to have good visuals and play with the text so that it’s easy to read.
I also almost always close my posts with a question (or two or three). Earlier on I never did that. Once I started to, I started eliciting a greater response from readers.
Ricardo Buenos last blog post..Failure Makes Us Stronger!
I never thought about this. Thank you!
ivorys last blog post..Aluminum Can Ornaments
Chill! You sounded as if they have feed you explosive when you read their blogs. Me too, doesn't like to read a whole chunk of blog post which lots of blogger does it. There are some that is worse such as having small wordings whereby you have the squint your eyes to see.
I agree that the structures of a blog post is important.I hate those blogs that are cramped up with words and worst still not chop into paragraphs with font size 9.A great tip for those people that loves to increase our specs thickness
I defintely agree with having no one-block posts. Another little tidbit I like to do is, mention other articles similar to the one I'm writing, and have a link to my own post inside that article.
Contents are king of any websites, You can make popular your website by adding new contents in it. It really helpful for webmasters. And your tips for posting is really nice. Thanks for sharing
Nice discussion going. Very useful observations. Thanks
I saw this post several months back and have been trying to come up with a style that is easy for me to write in and easy on the eyes of the visitor.
I tend to ramble too much, but I have found that if I add a pic to my post and try to break my post into logical sections, I find that those posts usually rank better.
Still learning,
Stanley
Nice tips. so informative and useful for web marketers.
maybe it's just a style only writing in one paragraph