The Art Of Writing Your Most Popular Posts
December 20, 2007If you are not already, you should be writing your best posts, rather than cranking out yet another average post.
Your most popular posts are your blog’s most valuable asset. These posts are what attract majority of your visitors to your blog. They are the widest, most welcoming doors of your online home.
If you build upon the popularity and success of such posts to write your new posts, your traffic, subscribers, and every other counter related to your logging success will sky rocket, and your blog will become a must-subscribe for the visitors in your niche.
How to make your every post a success
Let’s consider this scenario:
- You write yet another post for your blog, publish it, yawn, and go off to the bed.
- You get up next morning, check your blog’s stats, and notice something different. There are a lot of new visitors coming in from various sources, and there are a lot of new comments.
- You are pleasantly surprised. You realize that you have written your most popular post. So you proudly pat yourself.
Everything is right so far, except you jot down another post, yawn, go the bed, wake up next morning preparing yourself for more pleasant surprises, but alas – this one turned out to be an average post.
So what went wrong?
Well, you didn’t learn anything from your previous success. You took it for granted. You thought success comes from a lucky stroke of fate.
Not true. There are always certain kinds of posts that suit your style, your niche, and your audience. When you write such a post, it becomes an immediate success. But you won’t be going far on the success route if you get complacent, or simply don’t realize what makes things tick.
OK, I get it – what now?
If you have been blogging longer than two months, there must be already a bunch of popular posts on your blog. Look for following traits in every post to recognize your most popular posts.
- It got plenty of comments.
- Many other blogs linked to it.
- It was received well by the social media crowd.
- It still brings you traffic from the search engines.
And here are the next steps:
- Write more posts to follow up the most popular posts.
- Write similar posts.
- Improve upon previous ideas.
- Write more in-depth, lengthier posts.
- Explore related topics.
If you keep on building upon, improving, and exploring the topics of your most popular posts, not only your blog will be more focussed to your niche audience, but it will also soar higher up with every new addition.
By writing posts without giving thought to how they will be received, or if they will help your blog make inroads into the territory of success, you are simply denying yourself the recognition you can easily achieve.
So here’s the deal: When you write your next post, you must write it with an aim to make it your most popular post to date. And go back to your archive of most popular posts for inspiration.
Deal?
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A lot of people save their best ideas for later—when they’ll have more readers. I confess, I feel this way sometimes as well, but it’s mistake for two reasons.
First, you should be getting better as a writer, so it’s only reasonable to assume your future writings will be even better than your earlier works.
Second, life is competition. Do you still regret jumping on the blogging bandwagon late, now that you see your peers pulling in tens of thousands of readers? Well, publishing average posts is a good way to guarantee they keep growing and you don’t catch up.
With blogging, you don’t save the best for last. Get it out there and let people see what you have in store for them!
Sometimes, i finish my article, publish it and go to bed. On the next day, i noticed that there are a lot of visitors, but when i check my stats, they are coming from StumbleUpon. If someone stumble your article, it can bring you a lot of visitors, even your article is an average article. This is what i experienced.
But, some of my good articles receive a lot of comments even though fewer people read them.
For me, i rather receive a lot of comments than a lot of traffic from StumbleUpon, because comments means my readers really go through my articles, right? So how about you?
Dicky, I’d definitely prefer comments to SU traffic. While it’s nice to see the increased traffic, involved readership would be much better.
SU surfers don’t seem to even bother giving a thumbs up very often, so you don’t get much interaction out of them.
I am now trying hard to get my readers to give comments. I am trying to give free Entre credits as a rewards. Don’t know it works or not. But looks like that article attract many people attention.
Aaron, that’s so true. The day when you’ll be popular never comes if you keep your best ideas unpublished.
Like you said, a writer gets better as he writes more, so it’s fallacious to think that the brilliant ideas of today will have much sparkle left by tomorrow.
dicky, StumbleUpon traffic is a quick way to get exposure for your blog. If it wasn’t for StumbleUpon, many bloggers wouldn’t have known me, let alone leave comments on here.
So, unless you have a better way to attract audience to your blog, SU traffic has its importance.
As for comments, the majority of us happens to be passive readers. We usually don’t click away from the comfort of our RSS readers to leave comments on others’ posts.
Getting others to comment on your articles is an art in itself. You literally have to touch a nerve with people to make them voice their thoughts. Maybe I’ll cover this subject in a post sometime later.
“As for comments, the majority of us happens to be passive readers. We usually don’t click away from the comfort of our RSS readers to leave comments on others’ posts.” – Mohsin
This is so true. I followed some of the first personal finance blogs for years and I rarely commented. It turns out that was a huge mistake because I allowed a one way relationship to form. They write, I read.
Now that I’ve reached the point where I have time to blog as well, I’m really regretting not actively participating. It would be nice to have a few friendships to help distinguish me from the mass of people hoping to make a quick buck with financial ads on their blogs.
I should have done a better job of proof reading. Sorry about the typo with your name!
Great post on leveraging your existing success to create more success. Just like in the real world, networking is key, so comment as much as you can!
Aaron, sad isn’t it? When we are just readers, we don’t even drop a comment on the blogs we regularly read, and when we become bloggers, we realize how much we care about readers’ participation on our own blog.
turtie, thanks for liking.
I think all of my posts are pretty decent. I try to keep them intersting, get the user involved and write catchy titles. Mine is not a money blog and is basically there to entertain. I think I have accomplished what I set out to do and I hope people continue to enjoy them. My readers or commentators make the blog even more interesting.
I always leave comments on blogs that I read, not only to tell the blogger that, “Hey, I read you!” but because I know how good it feels to know that somebody actually reads you
That said, I stop leaving comments once the blog becomes popular because then, the blogger would receive a lot of comments, and he wouldn’t be bothered by another comment from another average blogger
Well the life of your blog totally depend on the content you write… its not as to start writing good post when you have good amount of readers… its basically attraction towards you blog… the more quality articles you provide the better changes of getting yourself recognised in the blogosphere and the more changes of gaining reader…
You have some really good ideas in this post, and the discussion in the comments is an interesting variety as well. I found you through Stumble, and I am leaving a comment, does that mean I am not normal? LOL
I am new to stumble, and having fun with it.
Laurie
Your tips very useful….I must learn and try to be good writer too…thanks
I hate writing….I am poor idea…..help…..
This is an article that really is helpful to bloggers out there.
However, not all people comment on your blog posts no matter how much
they loved the way you talked about the matter. But then again, there would be those true souls that would mind giving you feedback and support.
Don’t be down spirited, make your ideas grow and jot it down.
Hm.. seems so good. On looking at the title I thought this is gonna be a step by step guide for a better approach. But ended up as a usual one. But not bad. It feels like refreshing my thoughts from the depths. keep writing
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I think it is impossible to make every single post a success.
But thanks for taking the time to write this up.
Thanks,
Mark
Now that I am trying to write creative posts to drive more traffic to my site, I’m wishing I took more writing classes in college and paid more attention in the ones I did. Trying to find those captivating words that draws in your reader can be quite the challenge. Thanks for the advice.
They were put to great trouble to fit the new garment on me and to even greater trouble by my occasional reluctance to give up some ‘original’ fashion of my own. ,
I like this, I’m a new in blogging and just started my blog site (http://rockpinoy.com) it’s a Philippine base website, I’m not a writer nor not a blogger, but i want to learn to be one.
Can you please teach me were to start…
cheers mate
Trying to come up with those creative, enticing words can be quite a challenge, but it is a work in progress.
I love blogging, but finding the right contect and words is my biggest challenge. I love the design and creativity, so I think guests posts might be a good option for me.
I will try it, thanks a lot for the tips