How to Write for the Internet and Gain a Following: Write About What People Want to Read About!
Posted: Thursday, November 12, 2009
by Bruce Horst
WryteStuff
We all know the saying "writers write." If you've been writing for a while you also know that not everything you write will be read. This is especially true on the internet, where there are millions of writers competing for eyeballs. I hope this information will give you a competitive advantage while writing for the internet. This will also help you in our current writers' contest.
This week I want to talk about the second rule in writing popular articles for the internet: You must write about what people want to read about. It seems obvious, doesn't it? I would guess that nearly 100% of the people who email SearchWarp asking why they don't have more readers really don't understand this concept.
In print, the popularity of your writing is directly related where you are published. Whether in the newspaper or in a book, you will most likely be read by people who either just happen to stumble upon your writing or by people who had someone else recommend your writing to them. This isn't true on the internet.
Sure there are reader recommendation sites like Digg and StumbleUpon, but I've seen very few readers come to SearchWarp because of these services. Instead, the vast majority of readers come from search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.
What are these people searching for when they come to SearchWarp to read an article? They almost never come because they are searching for someone's name, rather they come because they are looking for information.
There are a few lessons to be learned from some of the articles submitted to the writers' contest in the past week. Steven Rogers tried an article titled with the most popular terms searched for on the internet. Good try Steven! This article has had only 4 outside referrals so far. The lack of soaring popularity indicates that there's more to it than just popular titles. I believe there are two issues holding this article back. First, the title doesn't really describe the information contained in the article. Mismatched titles don't usually do well.
The other issue is as popular as Steven's title is, he's got a lot of competition . Highly competitive topics can also reduce the number of readers your articles attract. There used to be tools available to help internet marketers decide what to write about by taking the estimated number of monthly searches that a topic receives and dividing by the number of web pages on the internet already addressing the topic. What's left is an index of the topics on which you have the greatest chance of receiving readers. Too bad those tools don't really work anymore.
The next example I'd like to use is Fran Larson's article Shay Sorrell, Dry Your Tears; You Are The Biggest Winner on the Biggest Loser."
Fran wasn't even expecting to enter this article in the contest. When I told her that if the article was in the News > Current Events category it would instantly be in third place in the contest, she gladly had the category changed. Here is what an article like this can do to a writer's popularity rating: Fran's popularity rating went from 2,100 the day she posted the article to 6,700 the next day to over 10,000 today. Congratulations, Fran!
Fran is now hooked. She told me (and gave me permission to mention) that her competitive spirit has come out and she is consumed with thinking about what she's going to write next!
Today she submitted the article, "What Shay and Daniel, Biggest Loser Contestants told Jay Leno: A Secret About Weight Loss." This is a great article that once again goes after pop culture by referencing Biggest Loser contestants, but this article isn't attracting many readers. The problem? The article is about a Leno show that happened 2 days before the article was posted. If you've been watching her first article in the contest, it received almost all of it's readers within the first 24 hours of its posting . The second article probably would have done as well if it was posted right after the Leno show, but two days later is just too late.
This demonstrates the caveat in writing pop culture articles. Popularity is often short lived. The other end of the spectrum is what is called "evergreen" articles. Evergreens attract readers continually, year-round. Factual, statistical and how-to articles are usually evergreen. Have you seen the all-time most popular article on SearchWarp? "How to Know if You're Pregnant" has been the most popular article for over a year. In fact, the most common phrase in the 100 most popular articles on SearchWarp is "How To." How-to articles are usually evergreen, they attract readers year-round.
That's not to say there is no value in pop culture articles. Personally, I believe there are great opportunities being missed by SearchWarp writers not writing pop culture themed articles. Look at the articles that Kacycarr has in the writers' contest. With all those readers, she has the potential to cultivate a real following; a following which would read her articles no matter what she writes about. Isn't that what most of us writers want?
Connor Davidson mentioned to me yesterday that he had received an email stating, "Connor, write about something interesting for a change!" Don't we all want to write about things that our readers find interesting?
I'd like to again mention a vastly underutilized tool for writing popular articles. It's called Google Trends and can be found at http://Google.com/trends. Play around with this tool and you'll see hot topics you can use to write opinion pieces on. With proper titling and use of the "related searches" phrases in the trends report, most writers could establish incredible popularity and, eventually, a following.
In conclusion, I hope I've left you with a better understanding of one of the most important concepts of writing for the internet, writing what people want to read, and its three key elements: popularity, competition, and being evergreen.
This Article has been viewed 1,966 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
More commentsTHANKS,THANKS,THANKS!!!! Marijo
Am here again for reader's club - have printed this out and plan to "test drive" these suggestions really soon. Very much appreciated! Marijo
Thanks Bruce for posting this. Although most of my writing is issue-driven (sociological, theological and historical), I have tried some of the things you talked about --- notice the length of my titles now?I'm trying certain things out for size. If your article has accomplished anything it is that you have caused me to try some new ways of writing . For that I say thanks.
All very true and may I also suggest writing short bio's on your favourite high profile people past and present. On a high ranking site like this with an amusing title, they can be real crowd pullers. Perhaps a competition to this effect?
great article Bruce, informative, certainly some good point to apply
Your article is such excellent advice and touches on many helpful and valuable points. I love to write but I don't research the topics as you so wisely suggest. If I had time, I would of course. But I've got two websites going and play the role of webmaster, etc. for both. I'm doing all the optimization. The articles help bring folks in. Ideally, I'd like to try everything in your article and write my heart out. Can't seem to find the time so I write about my website subject (horses) or subjects I have studied or know about. I spend a lot of time making sure my horse articles are geared for the novice owner or families with 4H kids.
I have been writng for some years now and of course reading extensively on how to write. Some of your tips are excellent. I always tried to write short catchy headlines but your observation that writing descriptive headlines is the best advice I could have gotten about writing. Great piece of writing.
Excellent advice! Definitely will help with future articles.
Hi Bruce, great article really enjoyed the read (you do your self an injustice 'bio') excellent advice thanks for taking the time to share your knowledge.Thanks Jon. I originally wrote that bio to test something, I guess it's time to update it!
Very Informative...thanks.
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