How to Increase Your Blog Post Quality
This post was guest blogged by Jamie Harrop, a blogger of five years who at Jamie Harrop Dot Com writes about blogging, life as a young entrepreneur, self improvement and travel.
How can I make this blog post better? You need to ask yourself that question before pressing the publish button.
Quite often as bloggers, we get in to a routine of firing through posts and becoming more author than blogger.
As bloggers, we need to be socially aware of the people, writing and research around us. Rather than just writing what’s on our mind or what is useful, we must, through our writing, extend outwards to the community. Modern blogging isn’t a one dimensional, enclosed space. It’s an open, engaging communication method where it’s good practice and common courtesy to extend a hand to other bloggers and media.
With this in mind, I want to share five things that go through my mind when I ask myself, how can I make this blog post better?
Photos
The Internet marketing and personal development niches of the blogosphere went through a phase of finding a related photo to attach to the top of each post. Using services such as Flickr’s Creative Commons photos, it became very easy for bloggers to find good quality photos.
Photos are, of course, a very easy way to break up and brighten long passages of text. Time and time again I feel more compelled to read a long blog post if there are photos spread within.
Screenshots
Are you talking about a product? Or relaying Web site stats? Then screenshots will prove to be an excellent way to get your point across easily and quickly. Almost all of my most popular posts include some form of screenshot that is as useful as the content.
Internal and External Linking
Linking to your own previous posts and posts from other bloggers is the absolute blogging classic. Once you’ve wrote your post, go back through it and look for phrases that may be relevant to a past post or something another blogger may have spoken about. Looking through this post, I see phrases that will make for interesting links (The phrase “Web site stats” for example).
Of course, as well as providing more information for your readers, linking out to other blogs is a very easy way to build new relationships and bring in new readers, both from the blogger you’re linking to and the trackback that results from your link.
Over the last six months I’ve started to make more of a conscious effort to link back to my previous blog posts. Combing this strategy with “Related Posts” at the bottom of each article, I’ve seen my average page views per visit rise by over 250%. (By the way, that last sentence would be the ideal place for a screenshot of my Google Analytics showing the 250% page view per visit increase. However, when writing guest posts, it’s much easier for both parties to keep to basic text)
Include Facts
Quite often we write about trends and events that have facts attached. But quite often we neglect these facts. Take the time to research your topic and find facts and figures. Your opinion is good, but readers also like to see hard figures from respected sources.
Read What Others Have Said
It’s time to face the music. In many areas of blogging, including Internet marketing, what you’re saying has probably been said many times before. By different people with a different opinion, for sure, but never the less it has already been said. It’s the nature of the beast, and the nature of overcrowded niches. But repeating ourselves is just fine, because new bloggers are always coming through the door and they haven’t heard what you and others have already said ten times.
With that in mind, take the time to do some research to find similar blog posts. Research what others have published and see if you can take away any of those thoughts to include in your own post. Even if you just link back to a few of those posts you found that discuss the same topic, you’ve instantly built new relationships with the blogs you’ve linked to and you’ve given your readers further food for thought.
If I have an idea for a post but I’m struggling to flesh it out in to a full article or I’m struggling to find the right way to start it, I’ll often Google for similar blog posts to give me ideas and inspiration.
Of course, if you Google your topic and you find nothing, you’re about to become a trendsetter and walk the first steps to becoming an authority blogger.
Don’t settle for yet another average article. Before you publish your next blog post, ask yourself how you can make it better.
How do you take your blog posts past the writing? How do you increase their quality and reach out to the community?
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- Posted in Blogging, Make Money Online, The Net
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Great tips there, a few different tips than you usually see in blog posts about improving the quality of your blog writing. Good stuff.
- Carl
Thank you for the tips Jamie, and thank you for sharing John.
One question though, why isn’t any video post as one of the tips?
Good question, some times a single video can be used instead of 400 words article, but there are some issues.
Images are comparatively can cope up with small bandwidth but vidoes need more bandwidth. Even in west still many people don’t have broadband. thatz one of the reasons.
You bring up a good point about this and it may depend on your demographic. I am a wedding photographer so photos work a whole lot better than video. Since most brides will look for photographers at work I have to accommodate business that limit personal usage. For example, they may not be able to view youtube or any web video at work.
I find that the number on rule in getting customers still applies. Make the product or service highly attractive and don’t make them work for it.
Thanks for posting this, John. More guest posts will follow.
@ Aldhis… regarding video… I just never thought of it. I guess that would be a good way to improve a post.
Jamie
thanks Jamie for the post
Thank you for the tips. Without any doubt I will start to use more pictures/photos on my blog.
Cheers,
The Moneyac
Excellent post. I have never really started using images for my blog’s content mainly because its so hard to find relevant and free images for my site.
I have considered taking the pictures myself though and something I plan on incorporating next year in to my blog.
Good post.
Hey Genius.
I’ve used a few of my own photos on my blog too. It’s nice to write “Photo by… me!” under the photo, rather than some random photographer from Flickr.
Thanks for the comment! Glad you enjoyed the post!
Jamie
That is great advice, I will apply those tips for my blog, I am sure this will increase my traffic and readership.
i am not sure .. it isnot better for me.. please more advice john
Awesome article. Great advice!
Great post, I know for a fact that I’m one of those that presses the Publish button to early on many occassions.
We all should take more care and improve the quality of our posts following the simple steps you have outlined.
i agree on the photos part, sometimes going through long texts is boring, but when you involve pictures, it makes it more interesting.
Yep, so true. It’s even better if videos are involved, since there would be more interactivity and you actually see things in action.
Great posts take a lot of investment, mostly in time. I always find myself looking for a shortcut and trying to GTD in a quick and effortless way. The result is not rewarding though…
The results from taking a little extra care and time are well worth the effort, netbook. When you see the visitors piling in to your latest post, it’s such a good feeling.
Thanks for the comment!
Every post I make with pictures gets about 4 times more attention that ones without. Pictures, screen shots and videos should be a must for every blogger.
True. Videos are more and more in now, and they’ve become so easy to do.
You are so true.
Take two articles that have the same exact text and add images to one of them then Stumble both, you’ll clearly see the results.
Great article.. Thanks for sharing!
Great article Jamie! I think another way to enhance your posts is to make sure you proof read them or have another person proof read for you, if possible. I’ve found many mistakes by proofreading my posts but I’m sure we all do that
Yep, that’s a very important point, Rowell.
If you can find somebody else to proof read it, do so. As humans, we have this very annoying ability to get tunnel vision so if we write something, and it’s full of errors, our brain won’t see them because it knows what it is something to say so it processes that instead.
You can’t imagine how many times I’ve done a proof read and everything looks perfect, then published the post only to read it 24 hours later and notice several grammar errors and even wrong words in wrong places. It even happened with my guest post here a few days ago. It looked perfect when I sent it to John (I proof read it three times), but then I read it a day later when John published it and I noticed several mistakes.
I’ve read today’s post, and I don’t see any mistakes so hopefully I got away with it this time.
Jamie
See, I’ve done it again with this comment. “Something to say” is supposed to be “supposed to say”. Doh!
With our posts we can schedule ahead. Take time to reread them, as no one knows they are coming. Comments a different story.
I don’t see any errors and I read it a second time through so you did a really good job haha.
i guess many people asking for that. they want to increasing the quality, but always ignore it..
Thanks for giving the tip about Flickr! I already started linking to my previous posts after reading John’s free report, “Make Money Online With John Chow.” It’s working great!
Great tips there, Also when I write post with pictures and with videos it get much attention.
Geat tips. Thanks for sharing!
very nice post.. indeed gr8 ways to increase post quality..
Very useful post! I try to do internal linking, photos, and screen shots. I need to link to other blogs more often!
Great post. I pretty much agree with everything you said. And people love pictures even more if you have an entertainment-related blog.
Thank you for the tips. Write blog often overlooked these details.
Thank for the great tips. Sometime is this small small tweaking that makes the difference. As for photo in blog, I do agree it makes long post easier to read. However sometime finding relevant images can be a problem. 2nd think you have to consider is the copyright of the images. Make sure you are given the right to post those images.
Wow great tips, great content and tips for starters and for some pros as well i am sure , keep it coming
Photos are most definitely a great way to attract viewers to a certain post on a blog. Without photos, it just looks plain, but I know some blogs can prove this statement wrong. Huge blogs can just post anything and still get commotion.
-Mike
thanks for great articles……..
Got here from your blog, Jamie. I guess John Chow are very keen in choosing a guest blogger.
Anyway, adding photos on posts is a common activity for me. In fact, it takes me time to choose one. I don’t know if Adsense bloggers will agree with me, but I suppose a good post can lose it’s quality if there is Adsense in between and above the post.
Thanks!
Very good post, and this may be one of those times where the writer has said all. Or more to the point, the writer has already said what comes to mind right away.
I have actually have read this kind of post several times but still having great time to read it
me too .. but i m not gaving great time to read it..
maybe add some images to show
Good info. Posts with photos always do better. In fact, I love to see what John eats at his dot com lifestyle high priced dinners.
these are good tweaking tips…
Good Tips, I was suprised when I found out Jamie lived 5 minutes away from me o.0
Thank you Jamie,
Those are some excellent tips on improving blog post quality. Especially the part about including facts. That exactly one of the most things a lot of Bloggers forget to back up there post.
Mike Kelly
nice post
Hey great post John. I guess another good way to do this is to have guest bloggers post on your blog every now and then if you can, like what you’ve done with this one.
Thanks for the great article on improving the quality of blog post, Will follow this in my blog posts.
Thanks for the tips, Jamie, it’s never enough of them.
john…..how many photo ideal placed on our blog or web?
Adding your own personal touch (opinion on the matter) to the post also helps increase its quality.
Good stuff on quality blogging. Thanks John!
Good tips…thanks. Wondering what is it about some blogs that gets us hooked on it and bookmark it, share it, comment it, while some don’t have that appeal. Can anybody shed some light on this?
I’ve got a few posts that I’ve been working on. They’re taking me a while to write because I can’t find anything on them in Google.
I can only hope I finish them before someone else figures out it needs to be discussed.
Great post!
Hey Jamie, Thanks for the excellent tips. Sometimes I’ve been tempted to hit the publish button too quickly, now I proofread several times.
It’s really a useful article, John !
Dinh Trung
I see video continuing to add value to this subject