Blogging is subjective.
What’s good to one reader is probably a turn-off for another.
What’s good for a blogger is probably a turn-off for another.
This is both a good and bad thing. Or a good and frustrating thing. It’s frustrating because when something is challenging we like to hope that there is an easy answer. A formula we can follow or change to that will make us the best at something.
There is knowledge that can certainly help you in the right direction. But ultimately it comes down to trial and error. Figuring out what you do well and what people want.
But let’s look at a few of those tips that can push you in the right direction for writing good blog posts…
1. The Venn Diagram Of Blogging
Good is subjective in blogging, but I would say that most people find success when they find their own Venn Diagram of Blogging. You probably know that a Venn Diagram is two circles that overlap. I guess it could even been three circles that overlap at the same point.
Anyway, in blogging, one of the circles represents you:
- Your expertise
- Your history
- Your story
- Your interests and curiosities
- Etc.
The other circle represents an audience:
- Curiosity
- History
- Interests
- Expertise
- Etc.
Where those two intersect is where you could define a “good” blog post.
I would say it’s pretty rare that you get to blog about something you feel extremely passionate about. In other words, you can write about whatever you want. But people don’t necessarily owe you the courtesy of reading what you write. There is almost always a balance of creating what you want and what other people want to consume.
This Venn Diagram scenario occurs in the music world all the time. Music tastes change, at least a little bit, every 5-10 years. Even artists with careers on the charts that span multiple decades change with the times. Not entirely, but they change enough so that their interests align with interests of the audience.
Take Aerosmith, for example. Perhaps the first or second most successful American rock band of all time. During the 1970s, they rose to stardom playing hard rock. In-your-face, rock and roll. When the 1980s came, they fell out of favor in a big way. Hard rock wasn’t quite as popular with the mainstream or at least Aerosmith’s version of it wasn’t.
Then by the late 1980s, Aerosmith was back on top of the music world again. This time around their biggest hits on the pop charts were just about all power ballads, which were riding a wave of popularity.
Most successful music artists have a run of about 5-10 years. Then tastes change and the world moves on. It’s just the way it works. Sometimes you’ll hear a few musicians say that they want to create the music they want to create. And that’s totally fine. They may even sell a few copies to diehards. But they rarely see immense success like in the past.
We’re just often unwilling to change what we want to do. Maybe it’s a fear of selling out. But I think it’s just more about what the difficulty of finding where the two circles intersect.
With blogging, you can still blog about what you want and what you’re good at, but in order to find real success you have to figure out what people want or demand and find where those cross.
How do you figure out what people want? You can look at other blogs that are popular. You can look on social media for popular topics and discussions. You can look at other forms of content like videos and podcasts. There are lists for just about every little niche and form of content in the world.
See what’s trending. See where the interest is. Find the intersection with your own knowledge and interest and you’ll be in a pretty good spot.
2. Education + Entertainment
Mel Gibson said that his, or one of his, leading rules for filmmaking was trying to Educate, Entertain and Enlighten. I think the first and last are kind of the same so I like to think of creating content as Educating or Entertaining…or both.
When people seek content, it’s usually for one or both of these reasons. It’s why we watch Netflix. It’s why we listen to podcasts. It’s why we read books and blog posts.
It’s a simple concept, but not always easy to put into practice with a blog. Normally, you’ll do pretty well if you aim to answer the questions people are asking. Answer those questions to the best of your ability. Use your current knowledge. Seek out other resources you can cite and curate and share in your blog posts. Try to provide the best answer you can and over time you’ll probably provide the best answers, period, to a lot of questions.
Now, if you’re also able to provide some entertainment to the education, you’re really hitting a home run. But it’s not that easy. Think of your time in school. You probably had at least one teacher that you really liked. One that both educated and entertained you while in class.
Most teachers can educate. Not all can entertain. And it’s a fine balance. Entertain doesn’t mean act goofy or silly. Clint Eastwood is entertaining to a lot of people, but he’s about as far from goofy and silly as you can get. The key to entertainment, in my experience, is assessing your personality. Really figure out what makes you feel good and what makes you comfortable. Then lean into that personality when you’re writing content.
One way this can work is if you treat blogging more as documenting. Instead of writing a how-to post, which can be fine, on a topic, you share a story of how you learned about the topic and let the story teach and entertain he reader.
Let’s say you sell wood stoves. You know that many people want to learn how to start fires. You could write the post, How To Start A Fire, with the simple 1, 2, 3… steps. It will probably be fine.
But you could take the angle of telling the story of how your grandfather taught you how. Include the details. Even the funny story of how you accidentally burned the tip of your finger the first time on the match.
3. Formats
Just about all content platforms of channels have different formats. Usually standards develop over time. And it’s good to follow the standards most of the time. It’s what people expect. It’s what they’re comfortable with. Sure, you can take risks here and there with off-the-wall formats, but it’s risky and probably not good to do all the time.
There is a reason most movies are about 2 hours. There is a reason most TV shows are about 30 or 60 minutes. There is a reason most songs are about 3 minutes. There is a reason most blog posts are how-to or list posts or sometimes stories.
Whatever the reason, it’s good to follow the common format most of the time. Maybe 90% format following and 10% experimenting.
Like a musician that puts 10 songs on their album. Nine probably follow the basic format. One is completely experimental. Usually a couple of the formula-based songs will be hits. Every once in awhile the experiment will be a hit.
4. A Word On Word Count
Blog posts are usually list posts or something along those lines. Broken up into sections. Similar to how books are setup into chapters.
Also, most blog posts fall into a range of about 500 to 2,000 words. At various times throughout the years that blogging has been around, word count success has shifted, but usually it’s somewhere in this range. If it’s shorter, you’re more like a social media update. If it’s longer, you’re more like an ebook or something you download and read.
You want to fall somewhere in this word count range with your posts. It can depend on the topic. You want the answer to be appropriate. You don’t want to force anything.
Conclusion
Writing a good blog post is subjective. There is no one-size-fits all for any type of content. One of the biggest challenges with blogging is finding that overlap where what you want to write overlaps with what people want to read. If you find this it can be really exciting, but one of the even more frustrating things is that this often changes. If you want continued success you have to readjust the Venn Diagram to find the overlap again.