One of the most significant problems with the idea of creating compelling blog content is staying fresh, relevant and interesting over a long period of time. The problem with this lies in the fact that every niche has a relatively limited number of topics that you can get into before your content become, well, repetitive. Nonetheless, there are so many different angles, voices and narrative techniques for you to discover. With that in mind, these several tips might be something that every single content creator might end up needing at one point.
1. Try storytelling
The first thing you might want to try out is a tad different approach from the way you usually write. For instance, instead of just going with a regular, run-of-the-mill narrative, why not start with a problem and hint on the solution (foreshadow) in order to keep your audience tuned in? This is just one of many narrative techniques that writers are using to keep their readers interested, even prevent them from skimming. Aside from this, you can also try to write in the first person, make underdog success stories and even resort to many other, similar storytelling techniques. It all depends on your audience, your preferences, and your writing prowess.
2. Invest a fair amount of research
Numbers change, and just because you’ve unveiled an important industry-related metric a year ago, it doesn’t mean that it still holds up. In fact, even if nothing’s changed in the industry (which is highly unlikely), the chances are that your readers might be turned away by the fact that the content that they’re reading is not from 2018. Therefore, you should regularly revamp and edit old content, even make a comparison as to how numbers hold up over the course of several years.
Furthermore, you need to look for credible sources, which is why it’s wise to look for government organizations or prestigious institutes. Just because you’re not the original researcher, people will still hold you responsible if you’re the one that they got that information from. For those who are doing a lot of research in their creative work, a dual-monitor setup might be particularly useful, since you can write and fact-check without having to switch between tabs or windows. This is also why your creative work might benefit from an additional Samsung monitor.
3. Don’t be obsessed with word count
As of late, there’s a statistic that blog posts that average more than 3,000+ words tend to do much better than shorter posts. This makes some bloggers try so hard to get past this threshold that they quickly go off topic, and it even makes them feel compelled to resort to fluff text as much as they can.
Sure, a quality 3,000+ words long post may be more efficient than a quality, under 1,000 words post, however, keep in mind that this only happens in a scenario where both of these articles are of the same or similar quality. Sacrificing your post’s quality for a slight algorithm-favoritism (potential favoritism at best) is never a good idea.
Besides, three 1,000-word posts can be stretched over two or three weeks, while publishing a single 3,000-word article per month won’t be deemed nearly as appropriate. Keep in mind that this is usually the same amount of work that we’re talking about.
4. Don’t stick to text
Previously, we talked about words and word count, however, if you aren’t that keen on writing, keep in mind that there’s no reason why you should stick to it in the first place. A video, a podcast episode or an infographic are just as informative and can be far more entertaining than their textual counterpart. Besides, keeping your content diverse may help you attract more audience, while at the same time making your job much more interesting. Remember, once you stop being passionate about what you do, the quality of your work will inevitably start declining. Keeping your content diverse is one of the ways to keep things spicy and exciting enough.
The problem with this particular idea lies in the fact that different formats may require some specific knowledge that you currently don’t possess, or they might even need some specialized equipment. This means that you would either need to enroll in a course and get some shopping done or that you will have to team up with someone from this branch and start outsourcing/collaborating.
Conclusion
The best thing about the above-listed four ideas is the fact that they’re not exhaustible. There are always new narrative techniques to discover, new content formats to explore and old content to revamp. In other words, for those who are serious about keeping their blog content fresh and exciting, there’s no excuse for failing to do so. Especially now that you know better.
Dan Radak is a marketing professional with eleven years of experience. He is currently working with many companies in the field of digital marketing, closely collaborating with a couple of e-commerce companies. He is also a coauthor on several technology websites and a regular contributor to Technivorz.