How Editorial Calendars, Blog Post Length, and Visual Appeal Can Help Your Blog
It is day 6 of my 9 day experiment with social media guru Chris Brogan’s blogging secrets and the results are stunning. Traffic continues to flow and grow steadily to my blog so these secrets definitely work. Chris has 27 secrets on his site that will power your community so be sure to check them out. In this article series I test drive three secrets at a time on my home business blog and tell your results of each. Today’s experiment covers three short, simple secrets (numbers 4, 8, and 9).
Secret #9: Editorial Calendars
I love this secret because it keeps life interesting and saves you when you have to write a blog post and can’t think of a single thing to write. It’s a good idea to brainstorm blog topics and plot them out on an editorial calendar. As you write each post, check it off on your calendar. This way you’ll never be stuck without a blog post idea and you won’t risk repeating topics. My editorial calendar extends into the future for at least 6 weeks and keeps my blogging fresh. Twitter, Alltop, and blog posts from my favorite authors all help me brainstorm ideas for my home business blog. I spend about 20 minutes a week on my editorial calendar and it saves me hours during the week!
Time Spent: 20 minutes
Dinero Spent: $0
Secret #8: Blog Post Length
I admit that I tend to write long posts so Chris’ suggestion of mixing up the length of the posts is a good one. He says that people like to read articles of varied length, similar to what you would find in a magazine or newspaper. That’s good advice, so this home business blog post will be short and sweet!
Time Spent: 15 minutes (shorter than usual for a blog post)
Dinero Spent: $0
Secret #4: Visual Appeal
In addition to adding pictures to your blog, Chris suggests repeating your blog post title as a subhead in your post in a slightly smaller font. This subtitle “chunks” your post down and gives it visual appeal. I’ve found that adding section titles in your posts or breaking up the flow of text with lists helps, too. People like to read articles that they can get the gist of in a glance, and subheads help with that.
Time Spent: 5 minutes
Dinero Spent: $0
I kind of like short blog posts like this. Have any experience with the success of varied blog post length?
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