Your Blog Post Sucks – 6 Easy Ways to Reinvent It

As bloggers all of us have good days and bad days. On good days we write really great posts that win rave reviews, attract comments and strike up discussions and debates. On bad days we churn out posts that no one appreciates and more importantly we ourselves think suck.

Did I write that? How come I thought it would be a good idea but my readers didn’t? Such thoughts are bound to come to mind but don’t despair you can do something about it.

What can you do? Reinvent them is what I’ll say and write them off is what other people would say.

Why reinvent them? Why not just forget all about them and write something new? You can always choose to write something new but I think a blog post (every blog post to be precise) is an investment which sooner or later will pay off if you know how to flip it and use it wisely.

That’s why today I’m going to tell you about 6 easy ways to reinvent a blog post that sucks…

1. Start at the Beginning…The Title

The best place to begin is the beginning that’s why I say start at the beginning…the title. A good title is like a brand name. Just as a brand name is the first point of call between you and your customers a good title is the first point of call between you and your readers.

If your blog post sucks chances are you haven’t got a great title for it. A good title is a people magnet so start by ensuring you have a good title that induces curiosity, creates hype or makes people think.

Here are some things that you can do:

Take a long hard look at the contents of your post. Read it at least twice and the central idea or theme will emerge very clearly. Then look at the title and consider whether it does justice to the contents or is it in sync with the contents. If it doesn’t, try working around it and make it more relevant to the central idea.

Alternatively you can redraft the title, turn it around…make it a question, a strong statement, add some words or delete some words.

Try emotions…shock, surprise, awe, anger and incorporate them in to the title…they all work!

2. Explore the Unexplored

No matter how comprehensive you consider your post to be there’s always going to be some aspect that needs to be explored further. You may have written this post six months ago or one year back and it may have had all the contemporary information at that point of time. However six months down the line things may have changed and you could write on the same topic but new information…a sequel of sorts.

Again, reading your old post will reveal areas that have not been covered properly and which might call for writing a post or a series of posts on the aspect. That way you will have a new topic or a subject matter for a series of posts.

This reminds me of something that Darren Rowse says…a blogger should be like a photographer…he should be able to capture the same subject from different angles and each time a different perspective will emerge. So try and be like a photographer and capture all aspects of the topic.

3. Captions, Bullet Points and Organization

Many bloggers make the mistake of writing posts at one go and frankly the post ends up looking like a letter or story. That’s the reason why people aren’t interested in reading the post. The reason for this is that online reading habits are akin to reading the newspaper and very different from reading a book.

Just as you scan the newspaper for headlines, columns and images that interest you, online readers don’t read everything you write they just scan the article. This is why you have to make your post easy to read.

You can turn around an old post by adding headings, sub-headings, captions, bullet points and organize your post to make it more readable. Use editing features like lettering in bold, italics and color to make certain points stand out and scream for the reader’s attention.

Of course such minor edits alone will not suffice you need to add content too!

4. Rewrite and Link Back

Sometimes instead of attempting to update information rewriting the article is a good idea. That way you can take up new issues related to the old topic but start with a fresh perspective.

While this might be hard work it will help you present the old topic in a whole new light before your readers. You can always take a divergent view and say that you have looked at it differently in a previous post and yes…don’t forget to link back to your old post.

That way…you will have written a new piece and driven readers to your old post which hopefully they will view differently and with greater interest this time!

5. Step Back and Find the Missing Links

It is difficult to be objective about your own work and writings, ideas, designs, basically anything you churn out has to be great isn’t it? I mean how can everybody else not find it interesting?

An attitude such as this will do you no good so start by being objective about your post. Think critically about why this post didn’t get so many hits and another one got 300 on the first day. Put some distance between your post and yourself and the missing links will emerge.

Sometimes it takes another person to tell you what the missing links are. Recently I wrote a guest post for a business blog and I really believed I had done an excellent job of saying whatever I had set out to. But the owner of the blog wrote back saying that while I had explained why marketers should opt for a certain form of retail I had forgotten to add what that form of retail was (for people who hadn’t heard of it) and how marketers could adopt that format.

Two very critical aspects from the point of view of completeness I would say. This is why…when your blog post sucks it could be incomplete from information point of view. What you can do…

• Add the missing links
• If the missing links are too many…write a series of posts to fill in the gap.

6. Pack in Some Punch

There are times when you read blog posts and you feel like the author tried to pack in too much information…in bits and pieces. Quite like points without content or explanation relating to the points.

The result? You are probably giving people options and lists but you’re not telling them the how, why, what. You are missing facts and figures (which might be necessary in some cases), examples and illustrations…in short your post is not convincing because it’s too skeletal.

To reinvent such a post I would say…expand on ideas that you have presented. “Content is King” remember? Do what you need to do and make your post informative, readable, interesting and useful!

Having said that I’m not saying recycle and reuse is the way every blogger should go. But we all have days when we run out of steam and can’t think of anything new to write about. Also there are very few really outstanding posts that we may have written and many posts that aren’t even good. But you have invested some time and effort to write those and just a little more effort on your side might help you turn around average stuff in to great stuff.

So here’s to reinvention in 6 easy ways!

About the Author

Mariam Noronha is a teacher with over eight years of experience. She has taught a wide range of Management related subjects and has authored and presented papers at national and international seminars and conferences. An avid reader, researcher and writer; she has authored numerous articles in the copy writing, fiction, web writing and travel writing genre. She is a preferred member of www.chilibreeze.com writers network and manage an entrepreneurship blog of her own, TheOneOfAKindPreneur.com