What Most Blog Posts Fail to Achieve—and How to Fix It

Everyone these days is a blogger. Brands blog, companies blog, experts blog, hobbyists blog, celebrities blog, people blog. There’s no shortage of blogs to read on the Internet. 

Some blog with a strategy for more leads, more business and more revenue. Some blog with a goal of more readers, more visits and more clicks. And others blog simply for the sake of blogging.

But your readers don’t care about why you’re blogging. All they care about is whether or not your blog post is worth reading. 

If it is, they stay. If it’s not, they bounce. It’s really that simple.

So, if it’s that straightforward, why is it so hard for blogs to earn more leads and more readers? 

Here’s What Most Blog Posts Fail to Achieve

Let’s first start with what many blogs get right. 

Bloggers skilled in the craft of blogging know what to blog about and how to blog about it. They take the time to research topics that are relevant to their readers and their consumer lifecycle. They investigate how their target audience searches for these topics. They include precise keywords and keyphrases within their blog post. They bulk up all their metadata with as much SEO as it can hold.

Anything to stand a chance in the competitive circus ring known as the Search Engine Results Page.

Even with all of this effort, their blog posts still don’t attract the results they desire. Readers may click onto the blog post, but they stay for only 30 seconds before bouncing back to the search engine. And we all know that a high bounce rate means low interest and lower leads.

So, what are these bloggers doing wrong?

Strategy is only the start to a successful blog post. If the blog post only scratches the surface of what your readers want to read, then they don’t stick around.

Let me put it this way. If your blog post doesn’t provide value, then it doesn’t provide your readers with what they want. 

Generic lists do not provide value. Quick summaries of solutions do not provide value. Meandering tangents not aligned with your blog or the subject at hand do not provide value.

If you fail to achieve strong purpose within your blog post, then there’s no point of blogging in the first place. In fact, you are better off not having a blog at all if you don’t deliver what your readers want to read.

Writing for a list of keyphrases can help your intended readers discover you, but your readers are smart enough to figure out if your blog post is just a webpage that hosts search phrases.

Your readers are in search of answers. Your readers want to learn and they want to self-educate on how to be self-efficient on the topic. If your blog post does not provide this service, then your blog post does not provide your readers what they want.

Here’s How to Write a Blog That Provides Value to Your Readers

Value means going the extra mile for your reader. The words within your blog post should inspire your reader to take the next step in their journey and prepare them with the tools to make that happen. Anything short of that is just a waste of time for your readers.

So, how do you write a blog that provides value? Here are a few suggestions:

Spell Out Solutions

I have come across dozens of blog posts that call out great ideas on how to solve problems—but that’s it. No “here’s how to get it done” or “here’s how I made it happen.”

In fact, the follow-up sentences tend to talk more about why it’s such a great solution and who has previously executed the solution successfully. The blogger doesn’t clarify how to enact the proposed solution from A to Z. 

Write a blog that provides value by focusing more on the how rather than the why of a solution. Trust that your readers see your solution as a great idea and your readers will trust the steps you provide so that they can carry out the solution within their own lives.

Explain, Explain, Explain

Be a guide, not a synopsis. So many blog posts skip over well-needed explanations or simply summarize what they said in the previous sentence just to make word count. It’s like talking about having a map that takes your reader where they want to go, but never showing them the route.

Make sure your examples clearly educate your readers on what they need to know. When you write a blog that provides value, don’t assume that your reader can figure it out—while some can, most cannot. What’s the point of your blog post for your reader if you’re not going to provide the experience they came for?

Walk the Walk

There’s a big difference between a blogger that talks the talk and a blogger that walks the walk. When you know what you’re talking about, the words within your blog post make sense to your reader and flow easily onto the digital screen. In other words, you can easily write a blog that provides value when you write on a subject where you can easily provide value. 

I’m not saying that you can’t write a blog post on a topic where you’re not an expert. But it takes a lot more effort to research the topic before you can write about it. And how well can you guide your readers when your knowledge about the subject is borrowed from other competing blog posts?

No Life Stories, Please

While you are the blogger of the blog post, you are not writing the blog post for you. So many writers forget this and allow all their blog posts to rely heavily on life story tangents. There are a few creative writers that can find a way to make this work in a way that ties the blog post together in a pretty bow. But most bloggers become so engrossed in their own story that they forget why they were blogging in the first place—leading to little value (if at all) for your readers.

Here’s how to write a blog that provides value and allows you to tell a quick story.

• First, write your story down in full in one document.
• Then, write the substance of your blog post that provides takeaway value for your readers in another document.
• Lastly, see how you can interweave your story into your blog post without chipping away at what your readers want to read. This may mean telling your story at a faster pace or breaking it up throughout the blog post.

Did I miss any? What are more ways to write a blog that provides value? Share your strategies in the comments section below.