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Five Great Questions That Will Improve Every Blog Post You Write

Posted: 14 Nov 2012 01:51 AM PST

Have you ever published a blog post that just sank? Maybe you got one or two tweets and comments … or perhaps nothing at all.
The best way to avoid this happening in future is to ask yourself five key questions. Get into the habit of asking these about every post you write – and you’ll get great results every time.
The best time to ask these first three questions is while you’re planning your post:

Question #1: “Does this post have one key topic?”

Your blog posts should have one topic – not several. Of course, you can still make sub-points – but those all need to relate to a bigger picture.
In this post, the key point is “improve every blog post you write” and that’s broken into five questions.

Question #2: “How will this help my reader?”

Rather than just writing about whatever’s on your mind, think about what your readers want. That could be a “how to” or tutorial, or it might be a list of tips or ideas.
Even if you’re promoting a product (or service), you can give value by pre-empting readers’ questions, or by writing an article on a related topic that mentions your product and links to the sales page.

Question #3: “How will this help me / my business?”

Although your readers matter, you should have goals for your blog (or your business) too – otherwise, it’s going to be hard to make progress.
A great way to ensure that the post benefits you as well as the reader is to add a call to action at the end (e.g. “click here to sign up for my newsletter and get my free ebook”). This works best when you can tie the topic of your post to the call to action.
These final questions are great ones to ask during the editing stage:

Question #4: “Have I used formatting effectively?”

Your post needs to look attractive on the screen. That means subheadings, bold text for key points, and perhaps bullet-points or blockquotes to help add visual interest and white space.
Formatting can make a dramatic difference to whether or not your post gets read: it’s well worth spending a couple of minutes adding it in.

Question #5: “Will my title grab readers’ attention?”

If readers come across your post through a social network, they may only see the title before deciding whether or not to read it.
This means your title is the most important part of your post – and it needs to be engaging enough to grab readers’ attention. Great ways to do that are with numbers and adjectives.
Your turn! Which of these questions is the one that could make the biggest difference to your blog? Let us know in the comments … and if you have any great questions to add to the list, let us know those too.
Ali Luke writes on content creation for DailyBlogTips. Grab your copy of her ebook Ten Powerful Ways to Make Your Blog Posts Stronger here (along with other great blogging/writing goodies).

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Original Post: Five Great Questions That Will Improve Every Blog Post You Write