There are different types of content and not every content you write will bring the desired result, however, there are some things you can do to maximize the chances of your content becoming explosive.
It is also important to know that there’s a huge difference between “explosive” and “viral“. Many people often mistake explosive for viral.
According to the Google dictionary explosive can be defined as serving to explode or characterized by explosion or sudden outburst. If you take a look at that definition you’ll notice the word sudden. That’s the difference between viral and explosive. A viral content can be sudden and it can also be gradual but an explosive content is always sudden. This post will be explaining some keys to writing explosive content for your blog.
1. Build a Community
The process of writing explosive content is often misunderstood by many bloggers, mostly newbies, and they go on writing content with hopes of it becoming a success without them having a community to give it the desired push.
If you’re going to write explosive content it’s important to focus on building your community first, it’s your community that will give your content the initial push it needs to explode. If you’re the only one reading your blog you shouldn’t expect much results, which is why it is very important to focus on building a community first.
There are many ways to build a community around your blog and below are some very effective tips you can use to get immediate results.
Define Your USP: A USP is called a Unique Selling Proposition or Winning Difference and it is what distinguishes your blog from every other blog in the niche. Your USP is your approach.
We can all be blogging about how to blog or how to money online, it doesn’t matter the subject we blog about, what makes us different is our community. Because we both blog about blogging tips does not mean we have the same community. The community here at Famous Bloggers is different from that at my blog, YoungPrePro, so that is why it is important to have a USP.
Defining your USP is very important because it helps distinguish you and your community, the way you define your USP will determine how your community will respond to your content. The fact that this article can go viral on Famous Bloggers does not mean it will go viral on my blog so that’s why it is important to have a USP.
Spread The Word: Once you’ve defined your USP, the next thing to do is to spread the word about your blog, try to get people to know what your blog is all about by telling them about it using as many outlets as you can. The fact that you have a solid USP does not mean that you have an audience, your USP is what determines how your audience respond to your content but you have to work on building that audience. There are many ways to spread the word about your blog and below are 3 of my favorite methods.
– Guest Blogging: My no 1 approach on building an audience around a blog is guest blogging and this explains why I’ve written almost 300 guest posts this year alone. I’ve gained a lot of knowledge from writing hundreds of guest posts for different blogs so I’ve written a special report on that.
– Blog Commenting: This is another way to spread the word about your blog and it can be very effective depending on how you go about it. I’ve written a great article about the many rules you have to follow to effectively get the best from blog commenting.
– Social Media: You can also spread the word about your blog by leveraging the power of social media sites. People love to hang out on social media sites and Facebook, the number one social media site is having over 500 million users so you’ll definitely gain traction using this method. Getting results from social media sites is not all about creating an account and waiting for traffic, you have to follow some social media best practices.
2. Tailor Your Post to Your Audience
Now that you have an audience, the next thing to do is tailor your post to meet the needs of your audience. This is where many people miss it and no wonder you’ll see farmers blogging about carpentry while still expecting their content to explode. The fact that a post did well on another blog does not mean it will do well on your blog, your audience is different from that of another blogger and your content must be different.
It is important to know clearly who your audience are, what they love and what they respond to best.
Everybody have needs and a sure-fire way to make sure your content succeeds is by tailoring your post to meet their needs. If you discover that the major problem bloggers face is with monetizing their blog and you blog about how to blog, you’ll get great results by writing a detailed post on how to effectively monetize a blog.
The aspect of tailoring your post to your audience is the most important aspect in writing explosive blog content, once you could get this aspect right, it will be very easy for you content to experience a sudden outburst.
3. Use Power-Packed Headlines
It doesn’t matter how great your content is, there’s every probability it won’t be explosive if you have a poor headline. Why? Because many people don’t bother to read your post if your headline sucks.
People will only take action on what they read, they can’t share your post with their followers if they haven’t read it and there is no sure-fire way to make them read it than having a great headline. Writing great headlines has to do with you understanding how human beings work. You can read the best guides on writing the best headlines but you won’t be able to come up with great headlines if you don’t understand how human beings work.
If there’s one thing about human beings, it is that they care for themselves only and you can get anything from them by showing them that you care for them. It is important to let your headline reflect clearly the immediate benefit your readers will get. You’ll notice the two words “clearly” and “immediate“. There’s no point in being subtle with the benefits of your post in your headline, make it clear what people will gain and let them know they will gain it now.
People also love to get results faster so it is very important to make sure your headline makes it clear that your content is actionable and fast.
You can read this great Famous Bloggers’ article for more on writing great headlines.
4. Over-Deliver With Exceptional Content
You might be wondering why this is very important; it’s important to always over-deliver so that you’ll forever be able to leverage the power of your audience to make your content explode. Many bloggers think they’re wise so they play a lot of tricks with their readers, one of those tricks is to write a poor post and “over-hype” it with a great headline, not alone will this make sure their post does not explode but it will also damage their future relationship with their readers because their readers will not be able to take their word for it again.
If you’re promising to deliver 3 solid tips in your post then make sure you deliver 3 solid tips, and nothing less. The reason for this is that your readers will be able to see you as someone who can be trusted and someone who knows what he/she is saying.
Another important factor to note is that your readers’ love for you can determine whether they’ll share your content or not, if you always give your best it will help you gain their trust and also make them like you but if you try to play games with them they’ll eventually hate you and might never share your content again.
5. Leverage The Power of Time
This is not a new theory but I wonder why it is underused. I’ve read a lot of blog posts and books on when blog posts go viral and also from personal experience I have discovered that there’s an increased potential of blog posts going viral at some particular time of the day and on some specific days.
The results you’ll get from writing your blog post on a Wednesday evening will be different from what you’ll get from writing it on a Monday morning. I’ve personally discovered that blog posts tend to go viral on Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s and around 5-6pm in the evening – this is also the time when most people are active on social media sites so you might get the best if you post at this time.
There are so many detailed posts online about when to write a post for maximum benefit but one great post I recently read on this subject is this one on Blog Tyrant – i recommend you give it a read!
6. Make Your Posts Scanable
Did you remember the last time you visited a blog and what you saw was a blog post with over 1000 words without paragraphing or formatting, what was your first reaction? I guest it was to click that big X button.
People love to scan and those who don’t love to scan love to read digestible content so it is very important to make your posts scanable. Don’t make the mistake of writing big blocks of texts without any formatting, paragraphing or anything, this will only discourage your readers and stop them from reading your posts, but making your posts scanable will make it better for every type of readers – both skimmers and readers.
7. Make it Easy to Share
Oh! This is the major mistake many bloggers make. They write great content, they want it explode but they don’t have a single social sharing button on their blog. This is a killer!
Your readers want everything at their comfort and preventing them from taking one extra step before they can share your content will go a long way to make a difference.
Try to look for the best social media plugins that fits with your blog or even hire a designer to hard-code social sharing options into your theme, this will make it easy for your readers to share your content and it will go a long way to make your your content explodes.