Are you looking for ways to write the perfect post?
You’ve come to the right place.
Guest author Fred Capser shares seven ways to write the perfect post.
After all, there is not a one-size-fits-all approach to blogging.
By the time you’re done reading, you’ll have an arsenal of blog post formats that enable you to write the perfect post every time.
Your readers will be hooked and keep returning to your blog.
The Top 7 Blog Post Templates That Still Draw Page Views
Fred Capser
There are more than 600 million blogs on the Internet today, with 77.8 million blog posts published monthly on WordPress alone. That’s more than 5.7 million posts published every day.
That’s a lot of posts. How do you get your blog to stand out in this sea of competition?
Sure, not all of those blogs are commercial blogs, and many aren’t in your industry. Luckily, most aren’t direct competitors of yours.
But regardless, there’s a lot of noise out there. The perfect post is uniquely powerful, valuable, interesting, and engaging. If this doesn’t describe your content, your company blog is a waste of your time.
The best way to stand out is to deliver high-quality content. Provide value, and people won’t just read your blog post, they will follow your blog for further posts and tell their friends about the great content.Â
How to create high-quality content is a topic that can easily fill entire classes. We’re here today to talk about one powerful tool: templates.
The Power of Blog Post Templates
Templates succeed because they let you focus your energies where they matter most. If you need to develop a structure and format for every blog post, then it limits your team’s energy. With templates, they only need to focus on making the content shine.
Create a library of templates to set structures for your posts that allow for variety, but make the basic structure and formatting automatic.
To help you, here are seven of the best blog templates to consider if you want to write the perfect post.
7 Blog Post Templates That Still Draw Page Views
Use these blog post formats to write the perfect post every time you publish.
1. The Listicle
“The Top 10 Ways to Master Dance!”
“9 Things That Will Kill You Tomorrow Unless You Do This!”
Because it’s 2020, we assume you’re familiar with this format. It’s quite popular.
Lists are entertaining for readers because they’re organized and easy to digest. They’re fun for content creators for the same reasons. The structure makes composing them simple and delightful.
Add to that the power of headlines. The human mind likes numbers. We are drawn to them when we see a link promising us a handy-packed morsel of information. Brands like Cracked.com and Buzzfeed are filled with listicles because they work. Lists are more than a decade old, but they perform well.
Upgrade Options
- Take your list and combine it with a powerful element such as a celebrity. For instance: “17 Home Improvement Tricks From Jimmy Carter” or a “10 Beach Destinations Where All Celebrities Go” slideshow.
- Add a stinger: “7 Things That Can Cause You To Get Sick (You Won’t Believe That Travel is One of Them!)”
2. The Famous Person’s Guide
People love celebrities. The top 20 Instagram searches of 2019 included one magazine, one shoe brand, and 18 celebrities. It’s such a draw that malware distributors commonly use celebrity names as bait to trick people into downloading their harmful software.
Posts featuring celebrities relevant to your brand or thought leadership can draw eyes to your blog that may not otherwise view your content. Not all of them will be interested beyond their fandom for that particular celebrity, but a percentage will get hooked on the quality of the article and become curious about you.
Although actual interviews are great if you can get them, there’s an easier way. Search the Web for quotes, articles, videos, and other material with the celebrity talking about the topic you want to write about. Then compile those quotes into a post of what that celebrity has to say on the subject.
For example, if you’re writing a home improvement article, you could scour the Web and put together advice from Bob Vila or Tim Allen. An IT blog could include Bill Gates’s thoughts on a new tech trend.
Upgrade Options
- Post a list of videos containing the relevant celebrity quotes to leverage video content in your blog.
- When you share the post on your social media, tag the celebrity in question. You never know what might happen.
3. The How-To
In truth, this is just another form of the listicle. But instead of listing items with a common theme, you’re listing the steps in a process.
How-to articles are easy to organize and easy to write. Since you’ll likely be writing them about areas of your subject matter expertise, you can often write them off the top of your head with little to no research.
How-tos have consistently performed well since the late 2000s, forming the driving force behind giants like eHow.com and taking up a sizable amount of virtual YouTube real estate. They remain relevant and popular to this day because people will always need to learn new things.
Upgrade Options
- “Flip the script” with a title like “How Not To” that lists mistakes and how to fix them.
- Incorporate images and video to increase engagement.
4. The Round-Up
This template has been around for a while, under the same name, since the days of print newspapers. You’ll sometimes hear it called “curated content,” but it’s the same kind of writing it has always been.
In a round-up post, you write about a collection of examples of a topic relevant to your brand. You keep your own writing short and sweet and allow quotes, excerpts, and links from other sources to do most of the talking.
Some bloggers advise against round-ups that link to external sources, saying you shouldn’t send readers away from your page. This is bad advice. Doing so makes you a trusted source of information and shows you’re willing to lose immediate traffic to do right by your readers.
Upgrade Options
- Do a round-up of your own blog posts, with internal links to your own content, as a summary of the high value on your blog.
- Use Google’s search completion function to identify the most popular searches around your industry, and use that to decide your round-up topic.
5. The Newsjack
Trends rise and fall, so any post you can link to a hot topic can give your blog a quick, if temporary, boost. Interjecting yourself or your brand into a timely topic is called newsjacking. A few good places to find ideas for a newsjacking include:
- Sports events
- Movie releases
- Celebrity or political scandals
- Disasters (but use with care!)
- Unexpected viral sensations
- Major holidays
Use this strategy sparingly for two reasons. First, like the famous person template, it will draw a lot of eyes that aren’t interested in your brand. Most will move on with their lives after reading that one article. Second, newsjacking blog posts aren’t evergreen. They won’t draw readers in a month from now.
That said, they can bring broad attention to you from time to time.
Upgrade Options
- Pair this with the famous person template by using a trending celebrity as its base.
- Pair this with a round-up article if the trending news is relevant enough to your brand that it makes sense to do so.
6. The Slideshow
Sometimes it’s nice to take a break where you write less but produce more. Slideshows let you do that. For those unfamiliar with the form, they’re basically an easier version of a PowerPoint presentation. You put up a large photo, add a sentence of description about it, and repeat those two steps for as long as you want.
Although they sometimes feel like cheating, slideshows can be effective. Research shows that images are viewed longer and remembered better than text alone. Combining that power with excellent, insightful commentary is a big win for your blog.
Just do us a favor, OK? Don’t force the reader to load a new page for every slide in the show. It’s annoying, and it will increase your bounce rate.
Upgrade Options
- Make a slideshow of infographics for an information-heavy piece that will be remembered and shared.
- Use this format for a how-to article, with a new photo for each step in the process.
7. The Ultimate Showdown
Also called a pro/con or comparative review, this blog template consists of comparing two or more items, offerings, methods, or decisions against one another. When it comes to introductory material for your blog, it’s hard to beat a selection of this type of article.
This format is easy to read and write and simple to understand. People are drawn to it and likely to read the entire piece.
By writing an ultimate showdown article about a decision relevant to your customer base, you establish yourself as an authority on the subject. People facing a decision will trust your advice about the topic, including people who will ultimately make a decision to purchase from you.
Upgrade Options
- Write a buyer’s guide showdown that includes a recommendation to buy a competitor’s product. This will establish immediate trust.
- Embrace controversy. What are the hot-button questions in your industry, and how can you leverage them?
I highly recommend this method and repeat it often. In fact, just today I published a post detailing the advantages and disadvantages of Facebook.]
Final Thoughts on How to Write the Perfect Post: It’s Not What You Do, But How You Do It
Always remember that if the content you write isn’t excellent, no amount of clever template usage will change that fact. Using templates isn’t a shortcut around providing the best possible content for your readers. It’s a way to help you provide excellent content that brings readers back for more.
The biggest mistake people make with these tools is using them so they can spend less time blogging. Instead, spend the same amount of time blogging, but use the time you save on formatting and structure to fine-tune your work until it outshines all of your competition.
Then, and only then, will you be on your way to writing the perfect post.
Host blogger’s comments:
Takeaways:
In this article, guest author Fred Capser gave you seven ways to write the perfect post.
Use this list as an action plan to vary your blog post format.
When you offer variety, your readers are hooked, and you increase user experience.
This, in turn, brings readers back for more and keeps them on your blog longer.
Readers, please share, so bloggers discover these 7 blog post templates and learn how to write the perfect post.
I look forward to your views in the comments section. Are there any additional formats that help bloggers publish the perfect post?
Fred Capser is an online content writer who lives in the South. He also helps small businesses manage and create their blogs.
