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How To and Why You Need a Blog Post Series

 

This is part of the Developing Great Blog Content Series. Check out the other posts!]

Creating great blog content can sometimes seem like a mystery to even the most experienced bloggers out there – what exactly attracts readers so that they subscribe and keep coming back for more? What style of writing, tone, voice, and perspective are needed to create that “killer” blog with that “killer” content?

Although I do have some thoughts about those aforementioned ideas I really want to spend a bit more time on the practical side of creating amazing blog content – in other words, strategies and techniques that can work regardless of how good of a writer you are and how “seasoned” you are as a blogger.

The first is the fine art and science of a “Blog Series”:

Why Create Blog Post Series?

There is honestly not much to it – and you probably know already how to create a blog series. But for those that need a more “official” definition a Blog Series is most simply a number of organized blog posts that cover a particular area of content or idea.

You can see some very typical examples in the number of series that I’ve created for you here at TentBlogger.

It helps you further organize your thoughts around an idea. This is especially helpful for me since I can struggle with focusing on one particular area at a time!Why would you want to create a blog series? Here are some reasons why having one (or more) series is a good idea:

  1. Incredible SEO value as it helps you establish deep keyword association between your blog and those particularkeywords in the content. This is a must-have!
  2. It helps you establish your authority as you expand and execute on areas of yourexpertise and passion. The more you can share about a particular subject (and in an organized fashion) the better!
  3. It strategically gives you an opportunity to write more posts. This is always a good thing as sometimes us bloggers have struggles coming up with stuff to write! I know I do!
  4. These posts might become your most attractive posts and resources that your blog provides to your readers. This sustainable mechanism can also turn into profit long-term as you seek to monetize your blog!
  5. It strategically ties content together that can provide additional resources and keyword links to your content, brand, and blog.
  6. Provides expectation and excitement for your readers as they wait eagerly for the next post. They might just subscribe to your blog because if it!
  7. Provides a significant increase of pageviews and clicks as someone who’s knew to your blog might just click through your entire series of posts the first time they visit your blog! This has definitely happened (I’ve tracked it via analytics) on this post series herethat has nearly 50 posts (and counting)! I don’t mind one visitor clicking 50+ times per visit!

And more. They are, without question, some of your most important posts for your blog as you establish yourself within the blogosphere.

Just think – most people just blog about whatever comes into their head when they wake up each morning. By providing this additional level of structure and strategy you literally put yourself ahead of hundreds of thousands of un-organized bloggers.

I love that. I think about that all the time.

How to Create an Effective Blog Post Series

Again, the science behind creating an effective series isn’t too hard. You probably already know a lot intrinsically by just reading a few yourself, but here are a few things that you’ll probably want to consider as you work through your own:

  1. An Outline – Sure, you can work through your proposed series on-the-fly (as I do at times) but it’s generally suggested to have at least an outline of what you want to write about.
  2. Table of Contents – Generally you’ll want some sort of “Table of Contents” which can either be a post or a actual page. I personally like to use a blog post for this since I can gather feedback from my community on posts they’d like to see or any other types of feedback that they might have throughout the series. You’ll post your proposed outline here.
  3. A Timeline – It’s generally a good strategy to have, at least internally, a timeline of when you’ll be posting so that you can stay on track and on schedule as well as providing your readers some sort of expectation of when they will see the new blog posts. You can share this publicly and explicitly or if your community trusts your control and release of the content you can simply have an internal schedule to write towards.
  4. Strategic Links, Navigation – You will want links in your post that link back to your Table of Contents or perhaps to the “Next” and “Previous” posts in the series as you desire. This will help your readers to walk through your series with ease and get them back to more content. I have chosen for many of my series not to have the “Next” and “Previous” since I have not created a robust outline for my posts but you might find this advantageous for your community and your style of writing.
  5. Template, Consistency – Generally you’ll want to provide some sort of understandable consistency between the posts in your series so as to ease the consumption of the content and to provide a cadence to your blog posts. Perhaps you’ve created a template for your series posts which you’ll use consistently throughout. Or, perhaps you haven’t.

These above five are merely suggestions and you have a lot of creative freedom to create your own series as you wish but hopefully it’ll help you get your series off the ground and to be a bit more successful at it!

Love to hear your thoughts as well as your proposed series posts that you’ve got coming up! Plan to do at least one this year (and more if you can)!

[This is part of the Developing Great Blog Content Series. Check out the other posts!]