Larry Brooks suggested, in a recent article on problogger, you should post a blog series if you want to increase your readership and traffic. It takes a little more time to research and write, but it’s worth the effort. And based on my own experience, I agree with him. A series of posts does increase traffic and reader subscriptions.
Back in July of last year I wrote a 5 part series on installing and hosting your blog, choosing a theme, adding plugins and making money from wordpress. I have to admit I wrote the series and scheduled the publication date of each article (a very neat feature of wordpress) because I had a 10 day family break organised in Cornwall and didn’t want to see a gap in my publishing frequency. But I was pleasantly surprised by the uptick in visitors and subscriptions to my blog.
There are other benefits too. You garner more authority on your topic, which can have hidden advantages. You will be regarded as the expert by visitors and by google. People like reading a series and it persuades them to tune in for another episode. The popular television programmes use this technique all the time. I takes more work but you could weave your product or service into the series. Or simply write about a subject you know well.
Start with a plan for at least a 1000 words. Then break it down into logical sections or chapters. I based my series on the steps needed to install, configure and start a wordpress blog. And don’t forget to tell your readers what’s coming next at the end of each post. If it’s really popular, it could be the basis of an ebook you can sell. Larry reckons he’s done this successfully more than once.
As an example, he is running a series of posts on his blog, called storyfix, which deconstructs the best-selling novel shutter Island. So, if you want to get more visitors and reader subscriptions, get your thinking caps on and get writing.
