Content Strategy To Build A Successful Blog

Why We Need Content Strategy?

The first two parts of this blog post series Make Your Own Blog explained you about the blog foundation and help you to choose a right topic for your blog.

In this 3rd blog post series, I want to share my experiences in content strategy.

I hope at this stage you understand already that content is the main body of a blog. To make your blog popular and profitable, you need great contents.

The Power Of Greatness

What I mean by “Great Contents”?

Great contents are the contents that meet the following expectations:

• Provide a complete solution to a problem. Normally to reach this level, you need to details all the steps and structure it into actionable tasks.
• People could make the benefit from it, at least inspire from it. They probably even could change their life after reading a great content. It’s always possible.
• People will share to their friends, naturally even without us asking them to do so. They will share to their social networks. That’s great for us as content creators.

Once you be able to provide great contents, people will look for more. They will subscribe to your blog, they will comment and share your articles to their friends. That will make your blog grow fast!

How To Write a Great Content?

You might be shock if I tell you that today 80% of the people scan the contents and only 20% of them will read your entire content.

It’s hard to write a great content but if we are willing to write it, I am sure we can write it great. I didn’t think I could write an article of more than 2000 words. But after trying and put myself in commitment, I could make it.

The best way is to write in your own style. This will make your blog unique. But at the same time, there are some important elements that you need to include into your content to make it become a great one.

I don’t follow these rules all the time, but it’s good if you could keep them in mind when you want to write a great content.

1. Headline

The headline is the title of your content. When you read the magazine, you will scan the whole page first and read all the titles. If any title interests you the most, you will read the whole content.

Now you know that headline is very important and critical for a great content. I would suggest that you read some of the tips to write great headline at Copyblogger here.

You need to grab people’s attention with your headline, otherwise, they will pass to read other contents.

2. The promise

After grab people’s attention with your headline, you need to tell people what they will get after they read the content. We don’t have much time so we need to know right away what’s in it for us. If we are interested in knowing more details, we will decide if we should spend time to read the entire content or not.

Try to be frank as much as possible. Don’t make any promise that you cannot offer at the end of the content.

It is even better if your content delivers something more than you make people expect.

3. Image

Every content should have an image that could tell the theme of the content. I usually go to Flickr and search for Creative Commons-licensed photos. A good image will help to make the content standout from the crows.

You can insert a full width image but most of the people recommend a half width image. It depends also on the image. Some images can preserve its meaning with a small size but others don’t.

The important is to have an image inside the post.

4. Personal story

Since we are young, we like to listen to stories. Once we hear, we get attached and we remember it for a very long time. People come to your blog, because they want to get connected. So make sure you provide relevant personal story to the content.

5. Provide solutions (In details and step by step)

You made the promise at the beginning of the content, now it’s time to deliver it. It’s the core value of the content. Make it details as much as possible. Don’t be rush and don’t think people know everything you know. They need you to give them in details, step by step.

That’s why they keep reading your content.

If possible, try to use images and screenshots as much as possible. Sometime it’s easy to explain it as a flowchart or infographic.

I didn’t try any infographic before, but it is easy to make it online. I will try to use screenshots if I provide tutorial on something.

6. Call to action

That’s the last part of a great content. After delivering a great solution to their problem, you can ask anything you want. People are ready to pay your back. You can ask for their feedback or ask them to subscribe to your blog.

It’s good to ask only one thing at a time. If you ask too much, they will end up by doing nothing.

The consistency in your post schedule

It’s hard for me too but I am now trying to be consistent in my schedule. I will post one content per week, every Wednesday.

You can post twice a week or even daily. It’s up to your ability. What’s matter here is to publish the contents at the time that people expect.

It’s critical.

Because if you cannot keep your schedule, how could you deliver a great content?

A great content need time to research. A great content mostly needs more than 1 days to write. If you don’t plan it in advance, you won’t be able to make it as a great one.

Conclusion:

The content strategy is quite simple and there’s nothing of secret. It’s the matter of you, yourself, commit to it or not.

My advise is to choose a suitable content schedule and respect it. Then plan your contents in advance so that you have time to work on it.

I hope this content strategy might be useful to you. If you like this post series, please help to share to your friends. I am glad if I can provide more value to more people.

Cheers to your blogging success!