Have you ever found yourself so excited about a topic that you couldn’t fit everything you wanted to say about it into a mere 400 words, let alone a single blog post?
If so, then that’s the perfect time to consider taking that one idea and turning it into a series of blog posts.
Creating a blog series simply gives you the opportunity to share in-depth insight into something you’re really passionate about. It’s also an opportunity for you to create a series of posts on a single idea, then schedule them to post at different times throughout the month.
Here are 5 tips for creating a blog series:
1. Break a large idea up into smaller ideas
Felicity Fields, a social media consultant, says, “Creating a blog series is fairly easy. Pick a topic, then break it down into several points with each point becoming its own blog post. . . Often the most difficult thing is restraining yourself to one single point or topic per blog post.”
Jessica Clark of Room To Breathe has another approach. She likes to write about her subject matter in one setting, “then chop it up into different posts to create a series.” She finds it easier to keep her creative juices flowing if she writes everything in a single sitting, rather than trying to return later to create a follow-up piece.
2. Make sure your posts stand on their own
Even though you’re creating a series of blog posts that will span several days, it’s important that each post makes sense on its own.
You don’t want someone coming to your blog from the search engines, landing on one of the middle posts in the series, and asking, “Am I missing something here? I am confused.”
A great way to do this is to introduce each post in the series by stating something like, “Yesterday we talked about how I discovered I wanted to be an artist, and today we’re going to talk about the steps I took to make it happen.” Then make sure to link the word “yesterday” to your previous blog post. That way your readers can easily move backwards and start at the beginning of the series.
3. Keep your blog series on topic
Bary C. Sherman, CEO of PEPworldwide reminds us of the importance in keeping our blog series on topic by stating that the key to creating a strong blog series is to “make it short, make it clear, make it valuable to the reader, and make it consistent.”
4. Write with purpose
Margot Carmichael Lester, owner and content strategist for The Word Factory reminds us that a “unified blog series must serve a purpose” not just “engage our audience.”
Margot feels that you can’t start writing your content until you consider “the most important thing you want your readers to learn from the series” then include at least “five details (examples, anecdotes, explanations, evidence) to support that one thing.”
5. Don’t drag your blog series out
Michael D. Greaney, the director of research for the Center for Economic and Social Justice, believes that a blog series should be “limited to no more than half a dozen or so postings.”
I couldn’t agree more. Any larger and you might as well write a book—though I have seen longer blog series done successfully, such as Darren Rowse’s 31 Days To Building A Better Blog (which by the way was later made into a book).
The great thing about writing an art blog series is that it allows you to explore something that interests you in great depth, while at the same time becoming an authority figure on that topic.
And of course it doesn’t hurt that as people start linking to your series, the search engines will take notice too—which means more traffic coming your way!