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Day 11 of The 100 Days To Webpage Excellence Guide

Writing a post on your blog every day is important in order to keep the traffic up and attract new visitors.  However it can be extremely difficult to come up with a new idea to write about every day, especially if you want that idea to be a good one.  Instead of trying to think up something new everyday, take one great idea and expand it into a series of posts.  A series of posts can be great for you as a blogger, since they can be much easier to write than many disparate posts, and they can be good for readers as the readers know what they will be seeing the next day.

So what makes a good series of posts, and how can you write one?   A good topic for a series of posts should be several things, interesting, have many areas to cover, and in demand.  Clearly you need to pick a topic which your visitors want to read about, and one that will keep them interested.  A topic you can write about in detail is essential if you expect to actually be able to create a series.

What are some tips on creating a good series?  Although writing a blog series is as simple as writing several posts and linking them together, writing a great series requires a little more work.  Here are some things you should work on as you write your series.

1) Write the series in one sitting - By writing all the articles of your blog series at one time, and then spreading them out using the Wordpress timestamp features, you can ensure that they all get written.  Although having a series can be great for attracting readers, stopping your series halfway can anger people, and having a post hanging over your head every night can be a lot of pressure.  By writing your series all at once, and then posting, you can ensure that you don’t start until all the posts are written.  Additionally, by writing the series at one time you can make sure that you don’t lose your train of thought during the posts.  It can be awful to start a series and sit down the next day and not understand what you were going to write about, or why you thought it was interesting.

2) Interlink the series - Chances are you will have new visitors who aren’t reading your site daily.  They will stumble onto one post in your series and find it interesting.  If you don’t link to any of the other posts in the series, they won’t even know those posts exist, and may very well leave your site.  By linking up your series you can turn a on off visitor into a multipage reader, and perhaps even a subscriber.

3) Make the progression natural- A good series should flow from one post to the next.  For instance if you were writing about how to win a poker tournament, a good series might be How to play when you first sit down, How to play on the second day, how to play at the final table, and how to win a heads up battle.  Each naturally ties into the other, and leads your visitors to follow your series in order, and to read them all.   If you post series doesn’t tie together neatly, your visitor might not feel obligated to read them all, costing you page views.

4) Spend time on the title - Although it is very important to write a great title for regular blog posts, it is even more important to do so for series.  The title of your series will span all of your posts, and a crappy one can doom the series to failure before you even begin.  Spend some time in order to make sure that the title accurately describes what the series is about, as well as intrigues your visitors into reading your series.

5) Invite comments - When you introduce your series, ask your readers if there is anything they would like you to cover.  It could make a great addition to tag onto the end of your series, or it could inspire you go to back and improve one of the posts that are in the series already.

So do you tend to write single posts or posts in a series?  Which one has generated a better response from your readers?