Write a Blog Post: A Simple Formula
Dear user You Have To Know that ,............
According to Ignite Spot, 77% of Internet users read blogs, 6.7 million people blog on blogging sites, and 12 million people blog via social networks.
Blogging is clearly here to stay.
As marketers, blogging is essential to our jobs -- but it isn't easy. We have to come up with a topic, write something engaging, optimize it for SEO, and take a ton of other steps to make sure we are writing the best possible post that stands out from other similar topics online. There are 6.7 million people blogging, yet we have to stay original.
Though we cannot explain blogging to a science, there are certain steps you can follow to make sure it has the essential components necessary to perform well. Here are 10 steps that can get you on the write path to blogging like a pro.
Step 1: Understand your audience.
Before you start to write, have a clear understanding of your audience. What do they want to know about? What will resonate with them? This is where creating your buyer personas comes in. Consider what you know about your buyer personas and their interests while you're coming up with a topic for the blog post.
For instance, if your readers are Millennial looking to start their own business, you probably don't need to give them information on getting started on social media -- most of them already have that down. You might, however, want to give them information on how to adjust their approach to social media from a more casual, personal one to a more business-savvy, networking-focused approach. That tweak is what separates you from blogging about generic stuff to the stuff your audience really wants (and needs) to hear.
Step 2: Start with a topic and working title.
Before you do anything, you need to pick a topic for your blog post. The topic can be pretty general, but it is essential to come up with a few topic ideas to get you started. After you choose one to run with, you need to create a working title. What's the difference? A topic is general, while a working title is specific and will guide your post so you can start writing.
As an example, let's take the post, "How to Choose a Solid Topic for Your Next Blog Post." Appropriate, right? The topic, in this case, is probably "blog content." The working title may have been something like "The Process for Selecting a Blog Post Topic." And the final title ended up being "How to Choose a Solid Topic for Your Next Blog Post."
See that evolution from topic, to working title, to final title? Even though the working title didn't end up being the final title, it still provides enough information so you can write your post around something more specific than a generic topic.
Step 3: Write an intro (and make it captivating).
We spoke about this in the post, "How to Write an Introduction [Quick Tip]," but let's review.
First, grab the reader's attention. If you lose the reader in the first few paragraphs of the introduction, they will stop reading even though they haven't given your post a fair chance. Then, show the purpose of the post and explain how it will address a problem the reader may be having.
This will give the reader a reason to keep reading and give them a connection to how it will help them improve their work.
Step 4: Organize your content.
Sometimes, blog posts can have an overwhelming amount of information -- for the reader and the writer. The trick is to organize the info so readers are not intimidated by the length or amount of content. The organization can take multiple forms -- sections, lists, tips, whatever's most appropriate. But it must be organized!
Let's take a look at the post, "Productivity Tools and Techniques to Stop Wasting Away Your Workday." There is a lot of content in this post, so we broke it into 4 sections: Checking Email; Blocking Distractions; Sourcing Content; and Meetings, Collaboration, and Brainstorming. The sections are then separated into sub-sections that to go into more detail, but also make the content easier to read and less intimidating.
To complete this step, all you really need to do is outline your post. That way, before you start writing, you know which points you want to cover, and the best order in which to do it.
Step 5: Write the content.
The next step -- but not the last -- is actually writing the content. We couldn't forget about that, of course.
Now that you have your outline, you're ready to fill in the blanks. Use your outline as the guide and be sure to expand on all of your points as needed. Write about what you feel comfortable talking about, and do additional research, if necessary, to gather more information.
Step 6: Fix your formatting.
Visual Appearance
No one likes an ugly blog post. Pictures don't make a post visually appealing -- the formatting and organization of the post does.
You may notice that the titles and subtitles in the post are consistent. The pictures always have a similar border. The style stays consistent from post to post. There is always an image at the top to not only make the post look prettier, but also so it's included in social when the post is shared. Having this consistency allows people to recognize your company and brand at first glance while also keeping the post easier on the eyes.
Meta Description
Meta descriptions give searchers the ability to read a short summary of the post before clicking into it. They are ideally between 150-160 characters and start with an action verb, such as "Learn," "Read," or "Discover." It gives the searcher a snapshot of what they will get by reading the longer post.
Tags
Tags are specific keywords that describe the post. They allow the readers to search for more content in the same category on your blog.
Step 7: Include a CTA at the end.
At the end of every blog post, you should have a CTA. Typically, you think about the CTA being beneficial for the marketer. Your visitors read your blog post, they click on the CTA, and, eventually, you get a lead. But the CTA is also a valuable resource for the person reading your blog post -- they're going to click on the CTA if they enjoyed your blog post and want more information on that particular topic.
In the blog post "How to Strategically Promote Slide Share Presentations on Your Blog," for instance, readers were given tactical ways to promote their Slide Share presentations on a blog without giving away the entire presentation. At the end of the presentation was a CTA referring readers to a PowerPoint template for Slide Share presentations.
See how that's a win-win for everyone? Readers that want to learn more have the opportunity to do so, and the business receives a lead they can nurture ... that may become a customer!
Step 8: Optimize for on-page SEO.
After you finish writing, go back and optimize your post for SEO.
As you're doing this, you may be thinking, "Is my post too long? Or perhaps too short?" Don't worry about it. Google doesn't care about the length of your post.
You might also be wondering if you've put in enough keywords. Again, don't worry about it. If there are opportunities to incorporate keywords, and it won't impact reader experience, do it. If you can make your URL shorter and more keyword-friendly, go for it. But don't cram keywords, or shoot for some arbitrary keyword density -- Google's smarter than that!
Here's a little reminder of what you can and should look for -- if you want a really detailed explanation, read this blog post.
Anchor Text
Anchor text is the word or words that link to another page -- either on your website or on another website. Carefully select which keywords you want to link to other pages, because search engines take that into consideration when ranking your page for certain keywords.
It's also important to consider which pages you link to. Link to pages that rank well for that keyword. You could end up having it rank first instead of second. That ain't small potatoes.
Local Search
More and more, social media is playing a bigger role in search engine optimization. When a piece of content is shared on social media, it's prioritized in the ranking results. Because of this, you'll want to encourage your readers to tweet out parts of your post.
You should also encourage your writers to update their Google+ accounts with their social networks and pictures. Google will often prioritize posts with an author's picture, and they also stand out more in search engines to someone who is searching for a topic you've written about.
Optimize for Mobile
Having a website that is responsive or designed for mobile has become more and more important. According to a report by Google, "What Users Want Most From Mobile Sites Today," 74% of users say they're also more likely to return to a site in the future if it's mobile-friendly. As a result of information like this and other similar statistics, Google is now prioritizing websites that are optimized for mobile.
Step 9: Pick a catchy title.
We have a simple formula for writing catchy titles that will grab the attention of your reader. Here's what to consider:
Start with your working title.
As you start to edit your title, keep in mind that it's important to keep the title accurate and clear.
Then, work on making your title sexy -- whether it's through strong language, alliteration, or another literary tactic.
If you can, optimize for SEO by sneaking some keywords in there (only if it's natural, though!)
Finally, see if you can shorten it up at all. No one likes a long, overwhelming title.
I recently served as a "consultant's consultant," advising a world leader in his field on what to do about his website. In particular, this expert asked me whether he should start a weblog. I said no.
You probably already know my own Internet strategy, so it might not surprise you that I recommended that he should instead invest his time in writing thorough articles that he published on a regular schedule. Given limited time, this means not spending the effort to post numerous short comments on ongoing blogosphere discussions.
Weblogs have their role in business, particularly as project blogs, as exemplified on several award-winning intranets. Blogs are also fine for websites that sell cheap products. On these sites, visitors can often be easily converted and the main challenge is to raise awareness. For example, a site that sells pistachio nuts should post as much content about pistachios as possible in the hope of attracting quick hits by people searching for that information. Some percentage of these visitors will buy the nuts while visiting the site.
Avoid Commodity Status
For many B2B sites with long sales cycles, quick hits to commodity-level content are insufficient. Instead, these sites need to build up long-term customer relationships based on respect.
Take my own business, for example. When I talk with people at my usability conferences, they often say that they've wanted to attend for ages, and only recently secured their boss's approval to come. To address this issue, we added a "convince your boss" section to our conference sites, explaining the benefits of spending money on usability training. Still, realistically, I expect to wait 3-5 years before meeting new readers of my site in person.
Blog postings will always be commodity content: there's a limit to the value you can provide with a short comment on somebody else's work. Such postings are good for generating controversy and short-term traffic, and they're definitely easy to write. But they don't build sustainable value. Think of how disappointing it feels when you're searching for something and get directed to short postings in the middle of a debate that occurred years before, and is thus irrelevant.
Obviously, I am referring to the user experience and to the style of the content in this analysis; not to the technology used to serve up this content. Thus, what I call "articles" might be implemented on a blogging hosting service. What matters is that the user experience is that of immersion in comprehensive treatment of a topic, as opposed to a blog-style linear sequence of short, frequent postings commenting on the hot topic of the day. It doesn't matter what software is used to host the content, the distinctions are:
in-depth vs. superficial
original/primary vs. derivative/secondary
driven by the author's expertise vs. being reflectively driven by other sites or outside events
Demonstrate Leadership
For the sake of argument, let's say that you're the world leader in your field. We'll quantify that as being the #1 expert among the 1,000 people with websites in your field. In other words, you are in the 99.9th percentile.
(Although you might think you have many more than 1,000 competitors, the Web thrives on specialized content, so it's better to conceptualize yourself as leading a smaller subdiscipline, unless you're so good that you're #1 out of millions of people.)
We can measure expertise as some combination of intelligence, education, experience, correct methodology, professionalism (say, avoiding profanities and politics), and willingness to be frank. The exact metric doesn't matter here; let's just assume there's a way to quantify how good people are within their field. The metric probably follows a normal distribution, meaning that the 1,000 people have the following levels of expertise:
Assuming that you're this good, you have to show it to gain customers. And blogs aren't the way, as we'll see once we plot the distribution of postings as opposed to writers.
Variability of Blog Posting Quality
Assume that the 1,000 people each write 10 blog postings. The resulting 10,000 postings will follow a much broader distribution, because the quality of postings is extremely variable.
Let's assume that a given writer's posting quality is normally distributed, with a mean representing that person's level of expertise and a standard deviation 3 times as large as the SD for expertise among people. I don't know what the actual number is, so this is just a rough estimate. But it's reasonable to assume that posting quality is more variable than expertise for several reasons:
Sometimes people toss off a posting in a minute. Other times they spend hours.
Sometimes a writer happens to know a lot about the topic at hand, possibly because they've just spent several months working on that exact problem. Other times people know nothing — which doesn't keep them from voicing their opinions :-)
Sometimes people are lucky and get a blinding insight. Other times they post more out of duty than anything else.
The following chart shows the distribution of the quality of 10,000 postings in one Monte Carlo simulation I ran:
Of course, if I'd run many more simulations, the histogram would be smooth, but the overall shape would be the same.
In the above histogram, each of the tiny dots represents a blog posting. The larger red dots indicate the ten postings by our leading expert (who was ranked #1 out of the 1,000 bloggers we're considering). Although our expert tends to write good postings, a few of the many lower-ranked people will sometimes write even better postings.
Even if you're the world's top expert, your worst posting will be below average, which will negatively impact on your brand equity. If you do start a blog despite my advice, at least screen your postings: wait an hour or two, then reread your comments and avoid uploading any that are average or poor. (Even average content undermines your brand. Don't contribute to information pollution by posting material that isn't above the average of other people's writings. Plus, of course, follow guidelines for blog usability.)
In my simulation, our expert's best posting happens to be #25 from the top. The expert's second-best posting was ranked #300 from the top. It might seem fine to be the author of postings #9,700 and #9,975 out of a group of 10,000 blog postings. But in fact, it's nowhere near good enough.
The beauty of the blogosphere is that it's a self-organizing system. Whenever something good appears, other blogs link to it and it gets promoted in the system and gains higher visibility. Thus, the 24 postings that are better than our expert's very best attempt will gain higher prominence, even though they're written by people with lower overall expertise.
Prospective new customers don't even have time to read 24 postings, so they'll never make it down the list of rank-ordered blog postings to reach our expert's best.
Beating the Internet
It's almost impossible to fight the Internet: you're up against millions of people who are willing to work for free. But you have to do so, because if you work within the prevailing Web paradigm you're letting the search engines take 98% of your content's value. That's okay if you're not in the content business. Our pistachio site doesn't mind that it's not making money off its recipe for delicious pistachio ice cream. Just as long as it sells nuts.
If you're an expert who wants to live from adding to the world's knowledge, you must go beyond the mainstream Web model of single page visits driven by search traffic. It's easy enough to build a website that freeloaders will use, but that shouldn't be your approach. You must change the game and create content that's so valuable that business users are willing to pay for it.
You should also focus on material that lower-ranked content contributors can't easily create in their spare time.
Both of these needs are met when you produce in-depth content.
In-Depth Content Is Value-Add Content
It might take you only an hour to write a blog posting on some current controversy, but a thousand other people can do that as well (in fact, they'll sometimes do it better, as shown above). And customers don't want to pay for such a tiny increment of knowledge. Sure, sometimes a single paragraph holds the idea that can increase a site's conversion rate so much that a reader should have paid a million dollars to read it. But they don't know that in advance, so they won't pay.
In contrast, in-depth content that takes much longer to create is beyond the abilities of the lesser experts. A thousand monkeys writing for 1,000 hours doesn't add up to Shakespeare. They'll actually create a thousand low-to-medium-quality postings that aren't integrated and that don't give readers a comprehensive understanding of the topic — even if those readers suffer through all 1,000 blogs.
Thorough content's added value can rise above the threshold where customers become willing to be separated from their money. This is the true measure of a sustainable business.
You have to identify opportunities with a non-linear utility function: where paying customers assign more than 10 times higher value to something that costs 10 times as much to produce. The old open-source manifesto " The Cathedral & the Bazaar" holds much truth: when you're the duke, you can't trade in coffee beans, because the bazaar dealers will always undercut your price. You should build a cathedral, because a thousand tents can't compete with the Note Dame.
The following chart shows another example from my own company: trends for key statistics across three editions of our report on e-mail newsletter usability:
The report's price has increased less than its page count: as we keep doing this research, we become more efficient. You could argue that customers are getting more for their money, and that's why they're buying more. But this argument works only if customers in fact assign extra value to more comprehensive reports. So either way, I conclude that in-depth content sells.
Why are paying customers (the people who matter) attracted by detailed information? Because systematic and comprehensive coverage is more actionable. It also protects them against the risk of losses caused when something important is overlooked.
In my report example, consider an Internet marketing manager who's in charge of the company's email newsletter. The report's price is trivial compared to the millions of dollars many companies would gain from increased subscription rates, increased open rates, increased click through rates, and enhanced customer loyalty from content that's both better appreciated and read more often. To improve these key performance metrics for her newsletter, the manager could spend a week surfing the Web and reading a thousand short pieces about newsletter design. The result? A scattered set of imprecise advice that neglects many important issues. Instead, that manager could spend a day gaining much deeper insights from reading a single, well-structured report with all-inclusive coverage of the topic (and based on empirical data instead of each blogger's personal opinion). Saving 4 days is worth a lot in business, which is another reason to target business customers with value-added information.
In-depth content provides more value in less time than numerous superficial postings. That's why business customers have empirically been willing to pay, and that's why you should emphasize fewer, better pieces as your content strategy.
Expertise vs. Content Usability
This has been a very long article, stuffed with charts, mathematical modeling, and theoretical concepts — like standard deviations and utility functions — that I know most readers find difficult. Recommending in-depth content flies in the face of all guidelines for Web writing, which call for fewer words and Annabelle information.
The content usability guidelines are correct: they are indeed the way to make a site easier for most people. Thus, you should follow the guidelines — rather than emulate this article — for normal business websites and intranets. (When I say "business sites," I include government sites and non-profits, as well as e-commerce and corporate marketing sites.)
For most sites, the content is not the point. Instead, you want to answer customers' questions as rapidly as possible so that they'll advance in the sales cycle and start buying (or donate, or sign up for your newsletter, or whatever else you want them to do).
Elite, expertise-driven sites are the exception to the rule. For these sites, you don't care about 90% of users, because they want a lower level of quality than you provide and they'll never pay for your services. People looking for the quick hit and free advice are not your customers. Let them eat cake; let them read Wikipedia.
Still, even if you run an expertise-driven site, you should comply with the bulk of content usability guidelines: be as brief as you can; use bulleted lists and highlighted keywords; chunk the material; and use descriptive headings, subheads, and hyperlinks. The small percentage of users who are qualified prospects still read in an F-pattern, so a headline's first words are more important than its last words, just as they are for normal sites.
Dear user You Have To Know that ,............
According to Ignite Spot, 77% of Internet users read blogs, 6.7 million people blog on blogging sites, and 12 million people blog via social networks.
Blogging is clearly here to stay.
As marketers, blogging is essential to our jobs -- but it isn't easy. We have to come up with a topic, write something engaging, optimize it for SEO, and take a ton of other steps to make sure we are writing the best possible post that stands out from other similar topics online. There are 6.7 million people blogging, yet we have to stay original.
Though we cannot explain blogging to a science, there are certain steps you can follow to make sure it has the essential components necessary to perform well. Here are 10 steps that can get you on the write path to blogging like a pro.
Step 1: Understand your audience.
Before you start to write, have a clear understanding of your audience. What do they want to know about? What will resonate with them? This is where creating your buyer personas comes in. Consider what you know about your buyer personas and their interests while you're coming up with a topic for the blog post.
For instance, if your readers are Millennial looking to start their own business, you probably don't need to give them information on getting started on social media -- most of them already have that down. You might, however, want to give them information on how to adjust their approach to social media from a more casual, personal one to a more business-savvy, networking-focused approach. That tweak is what separates you from blogging about generic stuff to the stuff your audience really wants (and needs) to hear.
Step 2: Start with a topic and working title.
Before you do anything, you need to pick a topic for your blog post. The topic can be pretty general, but it is essential to come up with a few topic ideas to get you started. After you choose one to run with, you need to create a working title. What's the difference? A topic is general, while a working title is specific and will guide your post so you can start writing.
As an example, let's take the post, "How to Choose a Solid Topic for Your Next Blog Post." Appropriate, right? The topic, in this case, is probably "blog content." The working title may have been something like "The Process for Selecting a Blog Post Topic." And the final title ended up being "How to Choose a Solid Topic for Your Next Blog Post."
See that evolution from topic, to working title, to final title? Even though the working title didn't end up being the final title, it still provides enough information so you can write your post around something more specific than a generic topic.
Step 3: Write an intro (and make it captivating).
We spoke about this in the post, "How to Write an Introduction [Quick Tip]," but let's review.
First, grab the reader's attention. If you lose the reader in the first few paragraphs of the introduction, they will stop reading even though they haven't given your post a fair chance. Then, show the purpose of the post and explain how it will address a problem the reader may be having.
This will give the reader a reason to keep reading and give them a connection to how it will help them improve their work.
Step 4: Organize your content.
Sometimes, blog posts can have an overwhelming amount of information -- for the reader and the writer. The trick is to organize the info so readers are not intimidated by the length or amount of content. The organization can take multiple forms -- sections, lists, tips, whatever's most appropriate. But it must be organized!
Let's take a look at the post, "Productivity Tools and Techniques to Stop Wasting Away Your Workday." There is a lot of content in this post, so we broke it into 4 sections: Checking Email; Blocking Distractions; Sourcing Content; and Meetings, Collaboration, and Brainstorming. The sections are then separated into sub-sections that to go into more detail, but also make the content easier to read and less intimidating.
To complete this step, all you really need to do is outline your post. That way, before you start writing, you know which points you want to cover, and the best order in which to do it.
Step 5: Write the content.
The next step -- but not the last -- is actually writing the content. We couldn't forget about that, of course.
Now that you have your outline, you're ready to fill in the blanks. Use your outline as the guide and be sure to expand on all of your points as needed. Write about what you feel comfortable talking about, and do additional research, if necessary, to gather more information.
Step 6: Fix your formatting.
Visual Appearance
No one likes an ugly blog post. Pictures don't make a post visually appealing -- the formatting and organization of the post does.
You may notice that the titles and subtitles in the post are consistent. The pictures always have a similar border. The style stays consistent from post to post. There is always an image at the top to not only make the post look prettier, but also so it's included in social when the post is shared. Having this consistency allows people to recognize your company and brand at first glance while also keeping the post easier on the eyes.
Meta Description
Meta descriptions give searchers the ability to read a short summary of the post before clicking into it. They are ideally between 150-160 characters and start with an action verb, such as "Learn," "Read," or "Discover." It gives the searcher a snapshot of what they will get by reading the longer post.
Tags
Tags are specific keywords that describe the post. They allow the readers to search for more content in the same category on your blog.
Step 7: Include a CTA at the end.
At the end of every blog post, you should have a CTA. Typically, you think about the CTA being beneficial for the marketer. Your visitors read your blog post, they click on the CTA, and, eventually, you get a lead. But the CTA is also a valuable resource for the person reading your blog post -- they're going to click on the CTA if they enjoyed your blog post and want more information on that particular topic.
In the blog post "How to Strategically Promote Slide Share Presentations on Your Blog," for instance, readers were given tactical ways to promote their Slide Share presentations on a blog without giving away the entire presentation. At the end of the presentation was a CTA referring readers to a PowerPoint template for Slide Share presentations.
See how that's a win-win for everyone? Readers that want to learn more have the opportunity to do so, and the business receives a lead they can nurture ... that may become a customer!
Step 8: Optimize for on-page SEO.
After you finish writing, go back and optimize your post for SEO.
As you're doing this, you may be thinking, "Is my post too long? Or perhaps too short?" Don't worry about it. Google doesn't care about the length of your post.
You might also be wondering if you've put in enough keywords. Again, don't worry about it. If there are opportunities to incorporate keywords, and it won't impact reader experience, do it. If you can make your URL shorter and more keyword-friendly, go for it. But don't cram keywords, or shoot for some arbitrary keyword density -- Google's smarter than that!
Here's a little reminder of what you can and should look for -- if you want a really detailed explanation, read this blog post.
Anchor Text
Anchor text is the word or words that link to another page -- either on your website or on another website. Carefully select which keywords you want to link to other pages, because search engines take that into consideration when ranking your page for certain keywords.
It's also important to consider which pages you link to. Link to pages that rank well for that keyword. You could end up having it rank first instead of second. That ain't small potatoes.
Local Search
More and more, social media is playing a bigger role in search engine optimization. When a piece of content is shared on social media, it's prioritized in the ranking results. Because of this, you'll want to encourage your readers to tweet out parts of your post.
You should also encourage your writers to update their Google+ accounts with their social networks and pictures. Google will often prioritize posts with an author's picture, and they also stand out more in search engines to someone who is searching for a topic you've written about.
Optimize for Mobile
Having a website that is responsive or designed for mobile has become more and more important. According to a report by Google, "What Users Want Most From Mobile Sites Today," 74% of users say they're also more likely to return to a site in the future if it's mobile-friendly. As a result of information like this and other similar statistics, Google is now prioritizing websites that are optimized for mobile.
Step 9: Pick a catchy title.
We have a simple formula for writing catchy titles that will grab the attention of your reader. Here's what to consider:
Start with your working title.
As you start to edit your title, keep in mind that it's important to keep the title accurate and clear.
Then, work on making your title sexy -- whether it's through strong language, alliteration, or another literary tactic.
If you can, optimize for SEO by sneaking some keywords in there (only if it's natural, though!)
Finally, see if you can shorten it up at all. No one likes a long, overwhelming title.
I recently served as a "consultant's consultant," advising a world leader in his field on what to do about his website. In particular, this expert asked me whether he should start a weblog. I said no.
You probably already know my own Internet strategy, so it might not surprise you that I recommended that he should instead invest his time in writing thorough articles that he published on a regular schedule. Given limited time, this means not spending the effort to post numerous short comments on ongoing blogosphere discussions.
Weblogs have their role in business, particularly as project blogs, as exemplified on several award-winning intranets. Blogs are also fine for websites that sell cheap products. On these sites, visitors can often be easily converted and the main challenge is to raise awareness. For example, a site that sells pistachio nuts should post as much content about pistachios as possible in the hope of attracting quick hits by people searching for that information. Some percentage of these visitors will buy the nuts while visiting the site.
Avoid Commodity Status
For many B2B sites with long sales cycles, quick hits to commodity-level content are insufficient. Instead, these sites need to build up long-term customer relationships based on respect.
Take my own business, for example. When I talk with people at my usability conferences, they often say that they've wanted to attend for ages, and only recently secured their boss's approval to come. To address this issue, we added a "convince your boss" section to our conference sites, explaining the benefits of spending money on usability training. Still, realistically, I expect to wait 3-5 years before meeting new readers of my site in person.
Blog postings will always be commodity content: there's a limit to the value you can provide with a short comment on somebody else's work. Such postings are good for generating controversy and short-term traffic, and they're definitely easy to write. But they don't build sustainable value. Think of how disappointing it feels when you're searching for something and get directed to short postings in the middle of a debate that occurred years before, and is thus irrelevant.
Obviously, I am referring to the user experience and to the style of the content in this analysis; not to the technology used to serve up this content. Thus, what I call "articles" might be implemented on a blogging hosting service. What matters is that the user experience is that of immersion in comprehensive treatment of a topic, as opposed to a blog-style linear sequence of short, frequent postings commenting on the hot topic of the day. It doesn't matter what software is used to host the content, the distinctions are:
in-depth vs. superficial
original/primary vs. derivative/secondary
driven by the author's expertise vs. being reflectively driven by other sites or outside events
Demonstrate Leadership
For the sake of argument, let's say that you're the world leader in your field. We'll quantify that as being the #1 expert among the 1,000 people with websites in your field. In other words, you are in the 99.9th percentile.
(Although you might think you have many more than 1,000 competitors, the Web thrives on specialized content, so it's better to conceptualize yourself as leading a smaller subdiscipline, unless you're so good that you're #1 out of millions of people.)
We can measure expertise as some combination of intelligence, education, experience, correct methodology, professionalism (say, avoiding profanities and politics), and willingness to be frank. The exact metric doesn't matter here; let's just assume there's a way to quantify how good people are within their field. The metric probably follows a normal distribution, meaning that the 1,000 people have the following levels of expertise:
Assuming that you're this good, you have to show it to gain customers. And blogs aren't the way, as we'll see once we plot the distribution of postings as opposed to writers.
Variability of Blog Posting Quality
Assume that the 1,000 people each write 10 blog postings. The resulting 10,000 postings will follow a much broader distribution, because the quality of postings is extremely variable.
Let's assume that a given writer's posting quality is normally distributed, with a mean representing that person's level of expertise and a standard deviation 3 times as large as the SD for expertise among people. I don't know what the actual number is, so this is just a rough estimate. But it's reasonable to assume that posting quality is more variable than expertise for several reasons:
Sometimes people toss off a posting in a minute. Other times they spend hours.
Sometimes a writer happens to know a lot about the topic at hand, possibly because they've just spent several months working on that exact problem. Other times people know nothing — which doesn't keep them from voicing their opinions :-)
Sometimes people are lucky and get a blinding insight. Other times they post more out of duty than anything else.
The following chart shows the distribution of the quality of 10,000 postings in one Monte Carlo simulation I ran:
Of course, if I'd run many more simulations, the histogram would be smooth, but the overall shape would be the same.
In the above histogram, each of the tiny dots represents a blog posting. The larger red dots indicate the ten postings by our leading expert (who was ranked #1 out of the 1,000 bloggers we're considering). Although our expert tends to write good postings, a few of the many lower-ranked people will sometimes write even better postings.
Even if you're the world's top expert, your worst posting will be below average, which will negatively impact on your brand equity. If you do start a blog despite my advice, at least screen your postings: wait an hour or two, then reread your comments and avoid uploading any that are average or poor. (Even average content undermines your brand. Don't contribute to information pollution by posting material that isn't above the average of other people's writings. Plus, of course, follow guidelines for blog usability.)
In my simulation, our expert's best posting happens to be #25 from the top. The expert's second-best posting was ranked #300 from the top. It might seem fine to be the author of postings #9,700 and #9,975 out of a group of 10,000 blog postings. But in fact, it's nowhere near good enough.
The beauty of the blogosphere is that it's a self-organizing system. Whenever something good appears, other blogs link to it and it gets promoted in the system and gains higher visibility. Thus, the 24 postings that are better than our expert's very best attempt will gain higher prominence, even though they're written by people with lower overall expertise.
Prospective new customers don't even have time to read 24 postings, so they'll never make it down the list of rank-ordered blog postings to reach our expert's best.
Beating the Internet
It's almost impossible to fight the Internet: you're up against millions of people who are willing to work for free. But you have to do so, because if you work within the prevailing Web paradigm you're letting the search engines take 98% of your content's value. That's okay if you're not in the content business. Our pistachio site doesn't mind that it's not making money off its recipe for delicious pistachio ice cream. Just as long as it sells nuts.
If you're an expert who wants to live from adding to the world's knowledge, you must go beyond the mainstream Web model of single page visits driven by search traffic. It's easy enough to build a website that freeloaders will use, but that shouldn't be your approach. You must change the game and create content that's so valuable that business users are willing to pay for it.
You should also focus on material that lower-ranked content contributors can't easily create in their spare time.
Both of these needs are met when you produce in-depth content.
In-Depth Content Is Value-Add Content
It might take you only an hour to write a blog posting on some current controversy, but a thousand other people can do that as well (in fact, they'll sometimes do it better, as shown above). And customers don't want to pay for such a tiny increment of knowledge. Sure, sometimes a single paragraph holds the idea that can increase a site's conversion rate so much that a reader should have paid a million dollars to read it. But they don't know that in advance, so they won't pay.
In contrast, in-depth content that takes much longer to create is beyond the abilities of the lesser experts. A thousand monkeys writing for 1,000 hours doesn't add up to Shakespeare. They'll actually create a thousand low-to-medium-quality postings that aren't integrated and that don't give readers a comprehensive understanding of the topic — even if those readers suffer through all 1,000 blogs.
Thorough content's added value can rise above the threshold where customers become willing to be separated from their money. This is the true measure of a sustainable business.
You have to identify opportunities with a non-linear utility function: where paying customers assign more than 10 times higher value to something that costs 10 times as much to produce. The old open-source manifesto " The Cathedral & the Bazaar" holds much truth: when you're the duke, you can't trade in coffee beans, because the bazaar dealers will always undercut your price. You should build a cathedral, because a thousand tents can't compete with the Note Dame.
The following chart shows another example from my own company: trends for key statistics across three editions of our report on e-mail newsletter usability:
The report's price has increased less than its page count: as we keep doing this research, we become more efficient. You could argue that customers are getting more for their money, and that's why they're buying more. But this argument works only if customers in fact assign extra value to more comprehensive reports. So either way, I conclude that in-depth content sells.
Why are paying customers (the people who matter) attracted by detailed information? Because systematic and comprehensive coverage is more actionable. It also protects them against the risk of losses caused when something important is overlooked.
In my report example, consider an Internet marketing manager who's in charge of the company's email newsletter. The report's price is trivial compared to the millions of dollars many companies would gain from increased subscription rates, increased open rates, increased click through rates, and enhanced customer loyalty from content that's both better appreciated and read more often. To improve these key performance metrics for her newsletter, the manager could spend a week surfing the Web and reading a thousand short pieces about newsletter design. The result? A scattered set of imprecise advice that neglects many important issues. Instead, that manager could spend a day gaining much deeper insights from reading a single, well-structured report with all-inclusive coverage of the topic (and based on empirical data instead of each blogger's personal opinion). Saving 4 days is worth a lot in business, which is another reason to target business customers with value-added information.
In-depth content provides more value in less time than numerous superficial postings. That's why business customers have empirically been willing to pay, and that's why you should emphasize fewer, better pieces as your content strategy.
Expertise vs. Content Usability
This has been a very long article, stuffed with charts, mathematical modeling, and theoretical concepts — like standard deviations and utility functions — that I know most readers find difficult. Recommending in-depth content flies in the face of all guidelines for Web writing, which call for fewer words and Annabelle information.
The content usability guidelines are correct: they are indeed the way to make a site easier for most people. Thus, you should follow the guidelines — rather than emulate this article — for normal business websites and intranets. (When I say "business sites," I include government sites and non-profits, as well as e-commerce and corporate marketing sites.)
For most sites, the content is not the point. Instead, you want to answer customers' questions as rapidly as possible so that they'll advance in the sales cycle and start buying (or donate, or sign up for your newsletter, or whatever else you want them to do).
Elite, expertise-driven sites are the exception to the rule. For these sites, you don't care about 90% of users, because they want a lower level of quality than you provide and they'll never pay for your services. People looking for the quick hit and free advice are not your customers. Let them eat cake; let them read Wikipedia.
Still, even if you run an expertise-driven site, you should comply with the bulk of content usability guidelines: be as brief as you can; use bulleted lists and highlighted keywords; chunk the material; and use descriptive headings, subheads, and hyperlinks. The small percentage of users who are qualified prospects still read in an F-pattern, so a headline's first words are more important than its last words, just as they are for normal sites.