Business Logs

The Secret to Writing Interesting Content

Monday, November 24th, 2008 by Dee Barizo

The key to writing interesting content is being reader focused.

A common mistake in blogging is to only write about what interests you. However, by neglecting the interests of your readers, you’ll miss out on a lot of new traffic and repeat visitors.

If you follow some of the top blogs, you’ll find that they’ll often get comments like “This is exactly what I was looking for” or “I definitely needed to hear this”. Those bloggers understand what their audiences want and they give it to them on a consistent basis. That’s what makes their blogs so successful.

How to Figure Out What Your Readers are Interested In

So, how do you find out what your readers want? Here are a couple practical methods.

Browsing through forums is an excellent way to do research on your target audience. What you want to look for are threads that get a lot of responses. The topics on these threads are perfect topics for future blog posts. Also, watch out for recurring questions. Many people go to forums to ask questions. Writing in-depth blog posts that answer those questions will earn you a reputation as an expert.

While were talking about questions, Yahoo! Answers is another place where people ask questions. Simply search using common keywords in your niche and see what questions people are asking in your niche.

Keyword tools tell you the popular words in your industry that internet users are searching with. Writing blog posts based on these keywords will not only make your blog more interesting but it will increase your search engine traffic. Here are two free tools to try out: Google AdWords Keyword Tool and SEO Book Keyword Suggestion Tool. Enter in the name of your industry and see what related words the tool gives you.

If you have a lot of traffic or a big enough email list, it’s a good idea just to ask your readers what kind of content they want. If you have little traffic or a small list, you might not get a lot of responses.

You Don’t Have to Guess

You could guess what content your audience finds interesting. But why guess if you don’t have to? A little bit of research before writing can go a long way to making your blog more interesting.

Reader Comments

3 Responses to “The Secret to Writing Interesting Content”

Matt Says:

I understand what you are trying to say here, and there is a web application already available for blog owners to put on their website for their readers to suggest topics for discussion, try out http://skribit.com

But what about writing because you want to write and not worry about what your visitors want?

November 25th, 2008 at 11:26 am

Dee Barizo Says:

Matt, thanks for the link. Interesting application.

In regards to your question, I think writing whatever you want to write about has less chance of succeeding in business. Your writing may not satisfy a big enough of a market to be profitable.

But giving a large audience what it wants will always work because people pay for what they want.

Now, if you don’t see your blog and/or site as a business venture, then it makes sense not to worry about your visitors. Blogging can be more enjoyable without worrying about what others think.

Also, if what you want to write about is what your target audience wants to hear, well then, that’s the best place to be :)

November 27th, 2008 at 9:41 pm

Business Logs » Blog Archive » How to Never Run Out of Things to Say Says:

[...] others. If you’re writing about something other people are willing to talk about, chances are your blog readers will also be interested in that [...]