Blog content has become an undeniably effective way to communicate information in the age of digital media, and for good reason—they’re fun to read and provide information that’s interesting to members of your target audience. And although blogs might have started as a way for amateur writers to project their thoughts to whoever would read them, they’ve since branched out into all sects of the web and found a welcoming home in the business world.
What makes blog content so appealing to information seekers is that it can communicate fairly complex subjects in a digestible way. With its more informal, conversational tone, readers can consume and process the ideas presented to them much more easily than a white paper or case study.
Related: Make sure your blog doesn’t fall by the wayside
To compound this concept of readability, blogs are also formatted for consumer convenience, allowing them to break the mold of the traditional paragraph-by-paragraph newspaper article to offer more dynamic content.
Exploring the different types of blog content
Hop on over to Google and search for the phrase “Top Five Best Foods.” You’re guaranteed to get page after page of results, all aimed at informing you about the five best foods for you. What makes this search special isn’t the food aspect, however, but rather the “top five” phrasing that becomes so clearly defined. Ordered lists or “best of” lists, as they’re commonly called by bloggers, offer copywriters the opportunity to break up blog content into easy to read, focused sections. Readers process concise bullet points of information more effectively than large blocks of text, and a blog allows you do adjust your copy accordingly.
Another comparable blog format found all over the web is the “how to” guide or step-by-step instruction set. Like an ordered list, this type of blog content drives engagement, while also answering potential questions that likely led reader to the blog in the first place.
Lesser known but still just as intriguing to readers is the “saga blog” format. Much like the tried and true Star Wars trilogy, a saga-style blog post ends with a cliffhanger that encourages readers to come back later for the conclusion of the post. In many cases, this format is used for pop culture blogs, product review blogs and other such subjective material that’s worthy of a dramatic statement at the end.
This is a high-risk, high-reward style of blog content writing, as you could double your page views with a second blog post or lose the interest of potential subscribers after the first.
“Paradigm” blog posts accomplish exactly what their name suggests—offering up an example in the blog content as a way of teaching the reader a lesson or simplifying a complex concept. It might be hard to explain something like “how the Internet works,” to someone in 500-600 words. But simplifying the concept with an analogy or example also means that you’re able to simplify the number of words it takes to get the idea across.
Blog content is invaluable to anyone with information to share. It may seem as though the Internet has finally exhausted the use of blogs, with literally millions to choose from on just about any topic imaginable, but that’s not necessarily true. Presenting your blog in the most effective way possible helps to ensure that the connection happens with your information—rather than that of someone else.
Kyle Danowski is a senior editor with ProPRcopy.