Start Building your Audience with a Blog Series
If you’re already blogging regularly, pat yourself on the back! Now, have you tried blogging a series? Here’s why you should and how to do it:
As we have said many times before, blogging is an ideal way to consistently add fresh, search-term-laden content to your website. That helps both the algorithms and your human audience find you online. Blogging also provides you with info to quotes and links for your social media marketing. Sprocket websites strongly encourages you to blog for your business and we offer blogging as one of our services.
Blogging a series takes your content-building to the next level and it has several advantages that make it worth your while. Let’s take a look at what you gain and share some tips for series blogging.
Pre-planning takes off the pressure.
Once you have committed to a blog series, you’ll already know what your next topic will be. Sure, you still have to write it, but that’s so much easier than staring at a blank screen, desperately trying to come up with a topic that you will still have to write anyway.
Big topics are broken into manageable bites.
People barely read much now. If you want to share information about a complicated issue, they are never going to wade all the way through a lengthy blog on it. Breaking up a big topic into multiple articles means your audience is more likely to read your posts and has a better chance of absorbing your message. And, of course, that’s a few less topics you have to come up with!
Internal links are good.
Reminding your reader of previous posts or guiding them to the next article in the series gives you the linking opportunities. That helps human readers move around within your website, which is good for SEO, and gives you extra chances to move a prospective client toward that “buy” decision.
Now that you see the advantages of writing a blog series, check out these tips for making the task easier and more successful:
Find a good series topic.
Start by brainstorming ideas, even if they seem unrelated. Think back to the most common questions customers ask. Look through your social media to see which posts get the most engagement and for posts you found the most engaging that were posted by other people. Make a list.
Organize and outline your ideas.
Look for commonalities to group your ideas together. It could be as specific as “building leg muscles” or as open-ended as “home maintenance.” Maybe you have content enough for more than one series with different themes. Order your list within the over-arching theme so that the progression makes sense.
Make the commitment.
Decide on the frequency of your blog posts. Experts warn that fewer than one post per month doesn’t register with readers, but do what you can. The most important aspect of your schedule is that you are consistent. Three posts in rapid succession and then nothing for months makes people suspect that you’re out of business.
Write.
With your outline in front of you, write an article using the first idea on your list. End that post with a teaser line about the next idea on your list. Now you are committed to making good on that promise! And since you already know what you are writing about, don’t put it off until the next deadline. A few minutes here and there can move you along.
When you’re comfortable, try some extra credit options.
You can reinforce the series concept with simple labels such as “The Pregnancy Series: Month One” or by using similar titles such as “Your Business Plan,” “Your Business Entity,” and so on. Choose graphics that relate to each other, too. Try tying the posts together with color, style, or image. Finally, consider self-publishing your series as a book that you can use as a marketing tool.
Your series doesn’t have to last forever, but it should probably be longer than two posts. If you run out of things to say or come up with some new ideas, it’s okay to adjust the series as needed. The important part is grouping your thoughts and committing to a schedule. If you want help, we have shared many blogging tips in the past or just give us a call and let the Sprocket team take on this task for you.
Kate Gingold
I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.
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I have been writing a blog with web marketing tips and techniques every other week since 2003. In addition to blogging and client content writing, I write books and a blog on local history.
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