We all want it, and most of us try our damnedest to create it.
Question: But what are the secret ingredients of the perfect blog post?
Answer: Es are good.
I’m going to start stamping my feet right away to get your attention. That’s not terribly effective in the online medium, I concede.
Creating a great blog post is easy: find your niche – boutique hotels, aubergine recipes, whatever makes your heart soar – and turn it into winning words and pictures.
Pull this off repeatedly, injecting personality and zippy zeitgeist to reel in the unpaying public, and you’re on the way to an inspirational blog.
But the very best know it takes much more than passion. I’m totally passionate and motivated about life, but I’m still growing in the blogosphere.
Is possessing an online raison d’etre enough to pull in the crowds? Negative.
There are three ingredients of a perfect blog so secret that I’m revealing them right here.
This is the first in a series of posts where I go deep cover to investigate how
the best in the business generate posts so sublime, sweet and mellow as to abduct the reader’s mind through a gentle, pixellated process of quasi-hypnosis and coax them back for seconds, thirds and eternities. Butterflies and cornfields.
You want it. You need it.
You got it.
Prepare to pop some Es. Once you’ve ingested these, you’ll never need artifical inducement to reach a blog high:
Empathise. Rid yourself of the notion you’re writing for a crowd. Every post needs be a two-way conversation. Reader is friend, ally and evangelist. I’m through with this concept of profiling personas, identifying demographics.
Who is your best friend? Why do they listen to you? Grasp the reality outside your monitor and apply it to Miss QWERTY. We really want to hear about your new magnetoscopic discovery but you need to make us listen. Subject us to your personality. Don’t use long words and don’t make us want to hurt you. Let feedreader show you how valuable voice and empathy can be.
Entertain. The bedfellows of genius and idiocy should carry a fine line warning. Don’t play the fool and don’t be the next Johnny Vegas. You’re not, and no-one will thank you for taking their time to audition. But at the same sweet time you need to invigorate your reader-friend. They just got a cranky bellow from the mad boss at work and they’ve occurred upon your site for a moment of motivation. So bodycheck their expectations with a neat angle on a hackneyed subject, to achieve that tumultous combo emotion of surprise and comfort.
Alternatively, give them that magnetoscopic moment that sets the world on fire, brings diggs galore and reveals you as the nemesis of convention and affable aspirant.
One more thought on this subject: if anything in your post carries an invisible superscript asterix then cut it right out. If anyone’s bothered enough by your grandiose insinuations they’ll contact you soon enough, so KISS – Keep It Simple, Stoopid.
Educate. My friend, I have preached from the altar of lifelong learning on average 1.3 times per blog post. It’s because it’s one half of the essence of mankind. It’s that important. When we rest, we rust (a wonderful acquaintance taught me the importance of thinking of yourself as Metal Mickey. Oil the joints of the mind and the body and you’ll keep running for years – and you’ll enjoy a turning circle the envy of your robotic peers).
You can educate in the most subtle or blatant of ways. So long as you set your stall out early – deliver the knockout line first, then reel them in right to the end – your blog post will define you and your success from the outset.
I’ve one final tip on making sure your blog posts are dependably wonderful: use mindmapping to put everything together before you even think about hitting the text field. There are some magical online and desktop mindmapping services to work with – bubbl.us does the trick (but hates Chrome) while PersonalBrain is a cute app you download (free unless you want to do file attachments and stuff) to brainstorm online. And since I now have a Mac-toting accomplice its multi-platform-compatibility is certainly one perk I couldn’t do without.
E, E and E. Will you remember that until next time?
Love ya. Stay motivated, deep breaths, half an hour of meditation each day. Perfect now?
Namaste.