One day I realized that writing for social media sucks!
Instead I focused on ways of writing for subscribers and other regular visitors.
How to fulfill the needs of your regular readers?
Ideally you know their main motivation for coming back.
Regular readers want more of the same but better.
What does this mean? Here’s a primer for starters!
When writing for regulars how to do it better?
Subscribers already may know a lot about the topics you cover.
Better does not essentially mean more!
Especially it’s not just about adding more of the same!
That would be redundant. It has to cover the same things and
offer additional value on top.
This “better” can mean a few things:
- deeper
- fresher
- broader
- easier
- smarter
Of course there are manifold ways to write to motivate people to visit again and ideally subscribe!
Here are some!
Different ways of blogging for returning visitors
There are at least 7 ways of writing for subscribers that propel them to new heights.
- update
- revisit
- follow up
- collection of similar items
- series
- column
- future outlook
An update is basically taking an old post and either fixing and rewriting it.
It can also be about tackling the same subject matter with the same purpose again after a while.
A revisit is very similar to the update but its purpose is more to verify whether what you wrote once still holds true.
A headline like “blogging revisited” suggests a return after a while and a reassessment or at least added new insights.
A follow up is simply elaborating on a subject you already covered but which could yield more.
Anything that hasn’t been covered completely yet. Also
new developments can make a follow up possible after everything was said before.
You can go into more detail e.g., explore an adjacent topic, and add a new perspective.
A collection of similar items is just a repackaging of a few similar posts in a manner that allows an overview.
Do you cover a particular topic a few times?
Consider adding something so that you can recontextualize these items in a list post.
Writing techniques for subscribers is such a new context.
A series is made up a 3 or more posts planned in advance.
Often one post in a series offers just a part of the whole story.
Sometimes each post works for itself but each new one adds more value.
A column is a regular post following a common thread.
Back in the days I wrote a regular column for an UK Search Awards winning blog. It was called “Twitter Friday”.
My role model here was one of my favorite green blogs, Inhabitat’s “Prefab Friday”.
It’s long gone by now but it worked when prefabs were all the rage.
A future outlook might be one of few things: It might be a preview of upcoming posts.
It might cover future trends in your area of expertise.
It might also deal with the overall direction you and your blog is taking.
Anything that offer an additional perspective for what’s coming up might work.
Why write for subscribers at all?
All of these modes of writing for subscribers provide regular readers with more of the same but better.
That way they offer positive incentives to come back to your blog.
Why? You don’t want to always start from scratch.
Regular visitors who already know you and what you said are also more likely to buy something!
