headlines – Almost An Author

The saying, “You only have one chance to make a good first impression” holds true in the blogging world. When someone visits your blog, you have between 0-30 seconds to grab your reader’s attention and keep them there.

What are some ways to make your blog shine and hold your audience’s interest?

These are the top seven elements I look for in a blog.

Title

A good title, like a good book, needs to give the reader a reason to read. Your hook or the why of your blog should be reflected in the title. List titles are especially good at getting your reader’s interest. Example, 3 Ways To ______, Top Ten _______, or How To _______, are catchy titles. Remember to use emotional words to encourage your audience to read on. Examples: Better, Fascinating, Free, Hurry, Special. You can view a list of 500+ emotional words here.

Try: coschedule.com headline analyzer to check your title before posting. A score of 70 or above is ideal.

Get To The Point

In the lightning fast pace of social media, your audience needs to be captivated by your blog within the first few lines. You may be tempted to diverge and slowly get into your topic, but I encourage you to resist the urge.

Tips:

Yoest SEO (SEO: Search Engine Optimization) suggests your keyword be written in your first paragraph. This also helps your SEO. (Your keyword should also be found in your title.) Find other SEO tips here.
The first paragraph should be the start of delivering what you promised in your title.
Telling a story related to your topic in the first paragraph also helps captivate attention.

Readability

Have you ever published the first draft of your blog? Chances are you read, re-read and edited several times before posting. Could a sentence be read easier by changing a few words? Would a paragraph be better placed near the end of the blog instead of the middle? Are there too many topics discussed with in one blog? Asking these questions and making changes helps with the readability of your blog.

Tip: If there are too many topics in one blog, cut and paste the extra topics into a Word Document. I call this document my Cut Page. The next time I’m searching for content to post, I read my Cut Page to find content.

Likability

Does the cadence and tone of the author come across as likable and friendly? Would I want to enjoy a cup of tea with the author? Likability, to some extent, is needed for most blogs, especially personal blogs. Technical or medical blogs can be more straightforward.

I remember finishing a memoir, and I couldn’t wait to find out if the author had a blog. I wanted to know more of the story and get to know her better. A blog is a perfect way for an author to give their audience a glimpse of themselves through authentic, likable content. One author who offers this likability factor is Debora Coty. She uses humor in an engaging and likable way to share her content.

Read Debora Coty’s blog here:

Flow

Have you ever watched a video on YouTube and lost interest quickly? Chances are the video didn’t flow seamlessly enough to hold your attention. One topic didn’t fit with the next topic. Or, worse yet, they went off on a tangent while you were still waiting for the content of the video. While you want a friendly and likable blog, staying on track by avoiding extra topics or tangents will help your blog not only flow but be shareable.

Note: Flow is subjective and not always definable. After editing my blog, I let it marinate for a day. The next time I review it, I find it easier to catch flow issues.

Grammar/Spelling

Have you ever read a blog and found grammar and spelling errors? Even the most seasoned blogger will occasionally miss an error. Hopefully, a kind reader will send a personal message to fix it pronto. It’s like having lettuce in your teeth; you hope someone mentions it.

To avoid these annoying mistakes, you can hire an editor. Or ask a friend to read your blog before posting. Or choose from the many grammar apps available.

Grammar Apps:

Grammarly offers a free and paid version. Monthly $29.95, Quarterly $19.98, Annual $139.95.

ProWritingAid – Prices start at $50/year.

Photos

How many photos should you add to your blog? Some bloggers only post a featured image. Others post a photo every 300 words. While this may be a question of preference, remember photos added in your blog using a keyword helps with your SEO.

It also helps with flow and readability. Since my blog is a parenting blog for special needs families, adding 2 – 3 pictures per blog is a natural fit.

Tip: I use my own photo’s for blogging. If you want to use stock photos, check out Pixabay offering royalty free stock photos.

Find other photo websites on this post.

What do you look for when you read a blog? What do you find holds your attention and makes you want to share with your family, friends and work colleagues? Share those elements below.

Evelyn Mann is a mother of a miracle and her story has been featured on WFLA Channel 8, Fox35 Orlando, Inspirational Radio and the Catholic News Agency. A special interview with her son on the Facebook Page, Special Books by Special Kids, has received 1.4M views. Along with giving Samuel lots of hugs and kisses, Evelyn enjoys hot tea, sushi and writing. Visit her at miraclemann.com.

When I started blogging, I researched examples online. I came across a blogger who posted one paragraph a day. I wondered if this was the norm. I thought there had to be more to blogging than writing a single paragraph. Is this how I find an audience for my blog?

Posting

After a few minutes, I discarded the idea of writing so few words. Instead, I chose to create blogs ranging from 400 – 700 words, depending on the topic. But what I failed to realize from the blogger I discovered was the concept of consistency. Posting daily created a body of work which helped him be found by search engines. 365 paragraphs to be exact. At 120 words on average, the total equals 43,800 words. His body of work all posted on the internet. A library of sorts, if you will. Each post with its own topic.

My sister-in-law had started a blog before me. She had consistently posted over the years creating her own body of work. When she shared my website with her followers, several of them started following me. Her consistency and sheer volume of work helped me to start finding my audience.

As a new blogger decide how often you want to post and stay consistent. At first, I posted weekly. Now, my schedule as a special needs mom, author, columnist, and social media instructor allows me to post on my own blog monthly.

How much should you post just starting out? How do you create your own body of work in a short amount of time? One way is to join this year’s NANOWRIMO which is an acronym for National Novel Writing Month.

Sure Fire Tip: Find your audience by posting quality content, 2-3 times a week. Posting once a week or once a month can still gain you an audience but at a slower rate. You may also want to guest post to help your audience find you. Read more here.

You don’t have to be writing a novel to join this challenge in November. Another writer who joined last year used the opportunity to write a blog post each day of the challenge. This year, I plan to create a blog every day in November. Once completed, I will use the body of work created as a backlog of pre-prepared blogs. With consistent posting, this could also boost my SEO (Search Engine Optimization) helping me to grow my audience. You can sign up for NANOWRIMO here

Titles/Descriptions

As an author, I know how important it is to have an attention-grabbing, gotta read it, give it to me now title. From the title of your blog to your meta-description, creating interest for your audience is key.

Use a great title generator to help you craft the perfect title. I use coschedule.com’s headline analyzer. This title generator ranks your title on a scale up to 100. Don’t fret, I’ve never received a 100 on any of my titles, but I am happy to see my title go green (above 70.)

Sure Fire Tip: Use this headline analyzer to create your titles with a score of 70 or above.

The title I intended to use for this blog post was Blog Basics For Beginners. Kinda rolls off your tongue, doesn’t it? Though it seemed like a catchy title to me, it received a headline score of 40.

How did I get my score up? I downloaded a list of emotional words:

I added Sure Fire which is an emotional word found on the list and changed the title to 3 Sure Fire Ways To Find Your Audience.

The title of this blog received a score of 71. Your score color is green when scoring over 70.

Focus Keyword

When I want to search for topics about memoirs, I type the word memoir in my google search bar. Or, in my particular area of interest, I type, medical memoirs. The first return under this topic is Popular Medical Memoirs Books by Goodreads.

If I type in my son’s diagnosis using this string of words: Thanatophoric Dwarfism Survivors, the second result is an article I wrote for The Mighty.com. The 8^th result is a blog I wrote on my website. (The Mighty.com has a much larger body of work than my blog; hence, higher on the list.)

The word or string of words searched for in the Google search bar are focus keywords your audience will use to find results for a topic. And hopefully, they will find you.

TIPS

Tip 1: When crafting your blog, think about how your audience would search for your topic/blog.

Tip 2: Before writing, search your topic in Google. What words did you use to search? Chances are, this will be your keyword or keywords. Did your search return any results? If so, peruse the results and decide if you want to narrow your topic. If no results appeared, your topic may be just what your audience wants to know.

Tip 3: Still need help finding a keyword(s)? You can find suggestions for a keyword by using Yoast suggest.

Write your article/blog with your keyword or keywords in mind. Naturally add these words in your title, article headings, picture tags, meta-description and in the body of your content. (Read Part 2 of Sure Fire Ways To Find Your Audience next month for further discussion of headings, tags, and meta-description.)

Sure Fire Tip: Use Yoast Suggest to find a fit for your keyword(s).

For this article, I searched for Grow Your Audience in Google. Potential focus keywords returned were:

grow your blog audience
how to grow your audience
how to find grow your audience

Based on this list and the content of my blog, I would select “grow your blog audience” as my keywords. This should help my ideal audience find this blog post when searching using these words.

Sure Fire Tip: Use Yoast suggest to find your keyword(s) for your blog.

Have you used any of the above websites when creating your blog post? Do you use other websites to craft your blog and help find your audience? Share in the comments below. Let’s help each other grow.