A successful blog post is one that achieves the task it was created for.
It could be to attract the attention and change the mind of just one person or it could be to excite millions of people to come together and perform one act of kindness.
Whatever the goal, I have identified three elements for success every blog post has.
- One tree in a forest of trees
- Social glue within the tribe
- Delights the brain of a minimum, viable amount of readers
One tree in a forest of trees
First blog post in a brand new blog of a non-famous person will fail.
It is the first tree in what will be a forest of trees. Your tree will not be judged alone, it will be judged within the context of other trees. A person with a horde of fans and followers already has the forest built. When that first tree is planted, it is not alone.
This means a blogger must be willing to put the hours into growing her blog before that one blog post will become a blog post.
A blogger does not have a successful blog post in isolation, it is supported by the body of work which has gone before.
Each tree you plant, nurture and grow makes your forest bigger.
Social glue within the tribe
Human beings desire to connect, communicate and cooperate.
We are many tribes belonging to the one tribe of humanity. We go forward together. A blog must belong to a tribe of many. It cannot be successful if it is a tribe of one.
A blog is a communication tool, it communicates and to others in the tribe and hopefully persuades.
It is a transportation device for taking a thought from the blogger to the reader. The tribe the blog wants to be a part of is the recipient of these thoughts.
A blog post gives ideas, creativity, inspiration, and guidance to the tribe. It becomes the glue that helps hold the tribe together, to enable the tribe to achieve its goals.
A successful blog post adds to the library of the tribe, it is another notch on the communal totem.
Delights the brain of a minimum viable amount of readers
A change in the state of mind must occur in the reader, to allow the reader to know the blog post was worthy of her time.
The number of readers a successful blog post needs could be 1 or it could be 1,000,000. It depends on the specific objective of that blog post.
If you need to persuade one person to change their mind and perform a specific task for you and your blog post only existed for that purpose, then if that occurs the blog post is a success.
If your intention is to get 10,000 people to download an app that will change the world, and you do that, then your blog post is a success.
When you are starting out fresh, you have no readers. But you will. You write for those who seek to know you and desire to dig in deep.
It may be a future post attracts but the past blog posts change them from a reader to a fan.
Your forest of blog posts will enable you to create fans, not the one successful post.
Learn what delights, understand the number of people you need to attract. Focus on those who the blog post is for.
Are there other things which make a blog post successful?
Possibly.
But, I can’t think of any that belong to all successful blog posts.
it helps to be mindful of these three elements when creating your blog posts. We do tend to over complicate things, forgetting that simple truths are often what makes something work.
You could argue that “being useful”, is an essential element. But I would say it belongs to the element of “Social glue within the tribe”. Being useful helps the tribe, it improves your standing with the tribe.
There is much detail within these three elements worth exploring.
It is worth remembering though.
You grow your forest one tree at a time.