Creating more appealing posts in 4 simple steps

In exchange for writ­ing posts on your blog, wouldn’t you want for some­one to read those posts? Do you think it defeats the pur­pose of writ­ing on your blog if no one reads it? Some peo­ple answer “No” to that ques­tion because they blog just for the fun of it. But there are oth­ers (who I believe to be the major­ity of blog­gers) nowa­days who want to write if some­one will read it. Is that so hard to ask for?

I am happy when I have even a few peo­ple read­ing my posts, so I’d say if those posts help one of two peo­ple out then it was worth the 30 – 60 min­utes I put into writ­ing the post. For those blog­gers who write posts so peo­ple read them, I have a short list of 4 sim­ple tips to help get those posts read.

1. The use of eye catch­ing titles

An eye catch­ing title can be writ­ten in many ways. Includ­ing adjec­tives like “easy”, “fun” and even some syn­onyms of those words will really help. What sounds bet­ter to you? “Learn Web Design” or “Web Design in 5 Easy Steps”. I’d def­i­nitely want to read the sec­ond arti­cle, it sounds pretty easy.

Craft­ing your awe­some title

Some­times cre­at­ing a catchy title is hard. I know it takes some time for me to come up with half decent titles, and still they aren’t always the best in the world. It takes a few steps to mak­ing that title you are happy with.

Cre­at­ing that per­fect title checklist

1. You should always write your post BEFORE you write the title. The title can be the most over­looked thing in the post, and if you start out by writ­ing your title before your con­tent then it can start to raise eye­brows. You may have changed a few things up in the con­tent, and you may have a title that doesn’t reflect the new idea. Since you are so wrapped up in fin­ish­ing that post, it is very likely to not revise the title.

2. Using a The­saurus will help you a lot. If you have a com­mon, overused word in your title, then it can make it look pretty bor­ing. By plug­ging that word into an online The­saurus, it will give you a list of syn­onyms for that word. Some­times the words sound bet­ter, so it’s bet­ter to include them in your title.

2. Design plays a large role in post readability

Not only is hav­ing a good design on the outer area of your post major, but the design that dis­plays your con­tent is even more impor­tant. If you do stu­pid stuff like putting dark text on a dark back­ground, how many peo­ple do you think will want to read it?

When a user has hard time read­ing, you have a design problem

On my old blog, I had green text on a light green back­ground. Not the smartest design choice at all, and when peo­ple came to read my posts I always had a “I can’t read the text very well” com­ment. I was not a very friendly per­son when it came to those com­ments, so I just ignored it because I could see the text fine. Can you believe I was like that?

Always lis­ten to your read­ers, even if only one per­son has a prob­lem read­ing it. It may be a weird thing to do on a rather larger blog, but I think it’s some­thing that shouldn’t be overlooked.

Clog­ging up your posts with ads

Now, it’s not nec­es­sar­ily a bad thing to have ads in posts. Plenty of larger blogs do it, and it’s a great way to mon­e­tize. How­ever, when the ads are for­mat­ted obtru­sively into the post, or it breaks the post, you can have a prob­lem. Always make it a pri­or­ity to make sure the ads are inserted into your posts care­fully. Just think about it, if the ad makes your posts look bad then who would want to buy an ad in a post that won’t even get read!?

3. Judg­ing the length of a post

Every­one loves a long post. And every­one loves a short post. But how do you know how to bal­ance it out?

When you should write a long post

If you have A LOT to say. If you have links, quotes, the inside scoops, etc. then include it of course. Those are the kind of infor­ma­tion peo­ple want, and those are the pieces of infor­ma­tion that use up the most space.

Shorter posts can be just as informative

You should write short when you have only a few things to say about a cer­tain topic. I’m not talk­ing about just writ­ing “Buy­Sel­lAds is awe­some you should use it”. That is short, but it has no opin­ions, facts, or any use­ful infor­ma­tion at all. Writ­ing summaries/short reviews of a prod­uct or web­site, or spread­ing link love make excel­lent short posts.

While we’re on the sub­ject, you can check out a for­mer post I wrote on the Pros and Cons of short posts.

4. Back your words up with some nice images

I try to include a nice lit­tle image in every post here. It makes the post look more cre­ative, and backs up what I am saying.

Things to keep in mind when using an image in a post

• Keep the images related to what you’re say­ing. Don’t put a foot­ball in a post about soc­cer. It’s that easy.
• Try to be cre­ative; think out­side the box. What I mean by that is find an image that has more than what the text sug­gests. For exam­ple, in one of Free­lance Switch’s lat­est arti­cles “Plan­ning for Next Year: Client Acqui­si­tion” (cre­ative title by the way :p) they have an image that doesn’t directly relate to the title of the arti­cle. It shows army men fight­ing each other for a client, and that is think­ing out­side the box.

Where can I get these fancy images?

My two favorite ref­er­ences are:

• Amanda Fazani wrote an arti­cle at Blog­ging Tips with a killer list of free, high qual­ity images for your blog.
• Get some pho­tos from Flickr. Always remem­ber to read the license on the images before using it on your blog!

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