Ever Wonder What It Takes to Craft a Killer Blog Post?

Well, I’m going to break one down for you so you can see what worked wonders for one of the big boys so maybe you can swipe some of their gangster moves for your own blog.

In order to do this, I’m going to use my man Ian Cleary from RazorSocial’s most popular blog post from 2015 as an example.

How do I know this was his most popular post? Because I’m on his mailing list and he told me so. And that’s good enough for me.

So, let’s get into it shall we?

Stats From a Top Blog Post

First off, let’s start with some hardcore numbers.

In his most popular post 0f 2015, 26 Social Media Monitoring Tools (Reference Guide), here are the particulars:

 

A few things stand out here.

First, close to 3,000 social shares is an outstanding number most bloggers would love to have.

You might be asking yourself how he got that many shares. Well, a big part of it is because of the other numbers shown.

So, let’s examine some of the other numbers and see what strategies you might be able to snatch.

Use Mucho Blog Post Images

Ian used 17 freakin’ images! 17!

That is a LOT of images.

Most bloggers stop at one image and are happy as can be.

Do you know what the best thing about his images is?

The fact that they aren’t fat images, weighing down his website and destroying his page load times.

Check out these results from Pingdom for this particular blog post.

His image-heavy blog post popped up on my screen with no problems. And that is what makes a website visitor ultra-happy!

Your Blog Posts Should Embrace Long Form Content

I’ve found myself writing much longer blog posts than I used to, and you should too.

A recent study by serpIQ found that the average length of the content in the top 10 results of Google search queries was over 2,000 words.

If you look at Ian’s post, he threw down nearly 3,000 words. That is impressive.

I know it may be painful to knock out that sort of content, but the benefits far outweigh the ease of knocking out traditional 300-500 word blog posts.

Crack those knuckles and start tapping those keys!

Keywords are Not Dead

I have no proof that Ian’s keyword selection was “social media monitoring”, but it makes sense based on the structure of his blog post and what I know about SEO and keyword usage.

Let’s take a look.

Highlighted in the image above, you can see the use of the keyword not only in the blog post title, but in the first sentence of the content as well.

The keyword is used again very soon after, still nice and early in the post.

Overall that particular keyword was used 12 times in his content.

Strategically placing your keywords in the title, early in the post, and spread throughout (without stuffing the keyword everywhere) will definitely set you up to be liked by the search engines.

You want that.

Oh, and it was also used in his URL razorsocial.com/social-media-monitoring/. Another solid move to make for your own keyword placement.

Offer Non-Traditional Ways to Share Your Blog’s Content

I’m a big fan of making your content easy to share.

I also like novel ways of doing it.

Click to Tweet is one of the easy ways to accomplish both of these objectives.

It is still rather new so many of your visitors will find it appealing because it’s something new and fun to do.

Functionally speaking, it’s nice to offer ways for people to share your content as they read down the page.

Sure, you can have floating social share bars and various other icons scattered about, but it’s nice and clean to have one particular social network highlighted inline with your content.

Now let’s move down the page and see what else we find.

Structure Your Blog Post Content for the Reader

Looking at the first part of the blog post a few things stand out.

Ian does a nice job of organizing his content.

The paragraphs are minimal and easy to consume.

He uses highlighting on words he wants to emphasize, and as a result, draws the eye of the reader.

He implements headers for dedicated sections and entices the reader with saucy text like “What You Will Learn From This Post?”

He starts off the post asking the reader questions and engaging them in a dialog. He then asserts his authority and starts to lay the foundation for what his post will address. Well done.

While his image looks a little out of whack in this screen shot, that is only because I zoomed out in the browser.

If you look at the aspect ratio, it’s clear that Ian chose to format his picture so that it could easily be shared on Pinterest.

The problem bloggers often run into with Pinterest images is it takes up so much room. I do like what Ian did here by making the image smaller and aligning it to the left of the content.

Oh, and wait until you see the killer, smack-your-momma, graphic coming up!

Reference Other Blogs or Websites

In the image below, you can see multiple graphics from other websites. This is a theme he uses throughout the post.

When you reference other pieces of work you not only establish your authority but you share quality content with your readers from other sources.

Constantly strive to feed your audience regardless of who came up with it. Swallow your pride and give your community what it wants – even if you weren’t the mastermind behind it.

Talk to One Person

As you read the blog post, you will see extensive use of the word, “you”.

This is a strategy you should absolutely adopt and one that I’ve been following for years.

As I write my content, I imagine I’m speaking to one person.

By doing this, you allow the reader to become fully engaged in your content and you establish a more personal relationship with them.

A funny stat: There were 140 uses of the word “you” in his post. 🙂

Use Stunning Graphics or If You Really Wanna Be a Badass, Use Infographics

This is where Ian elevates his content to Top Friggin’ Shelf.

Check out this beauty:

Problem With the Infographic

Now, there are some problems here.

When I tried to include the infographic using his embed code from the box shown in the image below, it failed.

Here is the code that failed:

<div style=”clear:both”><a href=”http://www.razorsocial.com/social-media-monitoring”><img src=”http://www.razorsocial.com/wp-content/uploads/Infographic-SocialMediaMonitoringTools.png?new” title=”26 Social Media Monitoring Tools (INFOGRAPHIC)” alt=”RazorSocial” width=”600″ border=”0″ /></a></div><div>Courtesy of: <a href=”http://www.razorsocial.com/social-media-monitoring”>RazorSocial</a></div>

However, when I used the smaller box at the bottom of the blog post, it worked.

Here is the working code:

<div style=”clear:both”><a href=”http://www.razorsocial.com/social-media-monitoring”><img src=”http://6b7o7u172h-flywheel.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Infographic-SocialMediaMonitoringTools.png” title=”26 Social Media Monitoring Tools (INFOGRAPHIC)” alt=”RazorSocial” width=”600″ border=”0″ /></a></div><div>Courtesy of: <a href=”http://www.razorsocial.com/social-media-monitoring”>RazorSocial</a></div>

As you can see, there is a discrepancy in the location of the actual image (highlighted in red).

An even bigger problem is the incorrect code is highlighted more on the website by being showcased in the box while the working code is an afterthought at the bottom.

Make sure you validate all of your links, especially beautiful infographics.

Infographics Can Win the Day

Including a custom infographic will send your content soaring.

There are tools out there to help you create infographics but most of them are limited in templates and take significant work to make usable.

But the benefits are huge.

Your content becomes much more shareable with a graphic like this embedded in the middle.

And he made it super easy to share the graphic on your own site by adding the embed code.

What a guy!

Provide Actionable Information

What is actionable information?

It’s the type of content your reader can actually use.

Make sure you aren’t just pontificating about random thoughts on your blog. Provide real value and make sure it is quick hitting, presented tightly, and based on direct experience.

Ian uses this technique by breaking down all of the tools mentioned in the blog post as seen in the screenshot below.

By showing screenshots of the tool and providing feedback from real world experience, Ian establishes authority and the reader in turn can trust the information.

If you have significant experience with the topic you are discussing, don’t be afraid to show it.

Do the Hard Work for the Reader

In the image below, you will notice that the blog post has deciphered one of the most important aspects to every online consumer…price.

Ian went the extra step to figure out the cost for the user on each of the tools and then included that information as key data within the infographic.

While it is time-consuming to pull data from various vendors, consolidate, and present in an effective manner it is very valuable.

Having a pricing breakdown like this makes your content instantly bookmarkable. (sure, that’s a word)

Think about what YOU would want to know about the tools/products and then do that leg work for your audience.

Bring It All Together at the End

What should you do when you arrive at the end of an epic blog post? Sum it up for the reader!

You covered a helluva lot of information so it’s important for you to recap or at least add a nice little bow to the end of it.

Ian does just that at the end of this post.

I like to do this on posts regardless of the size.

Given the speed at which readers skim content, sometimes they just jump to the end and grab what they need and bounce.

Enable them to get the value you want to provide so they will hopefully return in the near future.

Here you can see the smaller, less emphasized, embed code for the infographic I was talking about earlier. This is the one that actually works.

You’ll also notice that Ian still allows comments on his blog.

There has been a lot of back and forth on whether to keep comments on your blog or not.

I prefer to keep them on so a sense of community can be established.

It’s also important to add the sharing capabilities to the end of the post. If a reader reached the end, that typically means they were interested and probably much more likely to share with their community.

Your Takeaways

Hopefully, this information helps position you to craft your next epic post.

Just to recap…

• Use a significant number of images
• Embrace long form content
• Remember the importance of keywords (still)
• Offer unique ways for people to share your content
• Make sure your content is structured well
• Reference other websites/bloggers
• Talk to one person
• Use amazing graphics…especially infographics
• Provide real actionable information
• Do the hard work nobody else wants to do
• Sum it up at the end

While this isn’t everything you need to do to master the art of the blog post, it does provide you a nice framework and a puncher’s chance of standing out in a noisy online world.

If you want a nice little download with additional items to check before you hit publish, just grab my free Blog Post Checklist below.

Thank you so much and I can’t wait to see your next killer blog post!

By the way, I’m only at 1935 words on this post so I guess I won’t make the 2,000 word-count threshold. 🙁