How (And Why) To Run A Blog Series
Launching a blog series is a fantastic way to create some buzz and generate traffic to your blog. In today’s post, we’re going to teach you how to launch a series and also explain the benefits of doing so.
Blog Series Ideas
So first thing’s first. What the heck do you write about? Well, we’re happy to tell you that coming up with topics for your blog series is easier than you might realize. People in general like shorter bits of content … content that’s easy to read and quickly digest.
To develop topics for your blog series, think about high-level subject matter that’s more complex. Then plot out how you can break it down into blog post topics!
An example series might center around How To Run Your First Marathon. Topics in the series might include:
How To Choose The Best Running Sneakers
5 Post Run Snacks To Help You Re-energize
Tips For Avoiding Injuries While Running
3 Sample Marathon Training Schedules
10 Things You Must Do The Day Before Your First Marathon
Think about the questions you commonly get asked by your clients or customers. How can these questions be transformed into a blog series? The most important part of content development is making sure your audience is going to find it interesting and worthwhile to read!
For more advice on coming up with blog post ideas, read this blog post:
3 Ways To Come Up With Blog Post Topics
Tips For Writing Your Blog Content
Once you lock down the topics you’ll be covering in your blog series, the next step is writing the posts. Remember, posts within the series should be kept a bit shorter. The whole point of a series is taking a complex topic and breaking it down into smaller, more manageable, parts. Try and keep each post between 500-700 words if possible.
As you’re writing your posts, keep in mind that people are visual! Plan to utilize bullet points and line breaks to better organize your ideas. You should also incorporate relevant photos into your posts to create a more appealing aesthetic on the page. Because who wants to look at a screen full of words?
Another tip for writing your posts: Always be thinking about linking other relevant content! If there are blog posts you’ve previously written that tie into any of the topics in your series, find opportunities to link them.
As your series moves along, you’ll also want to try and link the earlier topics to the new ones. This can be done by simply recapping what the previous post covered at the beginning of your next post and then creating a link to it. Another pro tip: Tease your upcoming post at the end of each post!
Need extra tips for laying out your posts? Definitely read this!
How To Design Blog Posts
The point of a series is taking a complex topic and breaking it up into smaller parts.
Determining A Schedule
You’ve written all of this amazing content. Now what? It’s time to determine a posting schedule! How long is your series going to last? One week? A month? How will you space out your posts during this period of time?
We recommend waiting no more than a week in between posts. So if you’re running a blog series for a month and have four posts waiting in the hopper, you’d release a new post each week. The schedule truly doesn’t matter all that much … what does matter is communicating to your audience what that schedule will be and then sticking to it!
Promoting Your Blog Series
A blog series is a great way to grab new subscribers and re-engage your existing subscriber base as well. Utilize email marketing and social media to promote your series a week or two before it launches. Let people know what it will be about and, more importantly, why they absolutely need to tune in!
The Benefits Of Running A Blog Series
Here are just a few of the benefits to launching a blog series!
1. You’ll fill your content calendar.
A blog series will essentially eliminate that feeling of being stumped over content. Each post in and of itself is something to promote on social media. You can also extract interesting tidbits from each post and create infographics from them. There are countless ways to repurpose the content within your series. Get creative!
2. You’ll improve your SEO.
Each new blog post equals a newly indexed page on your website. Plus, “Offering a series of related posts allows you to interlink the posts between them, which helps with your SEO!” (The Sway)
3. You’ll generate more traffic to your website.
If your content is intriguing to your audience, they’ll be drawn to it … and keep coming back for more! While promoting your series before it begins is important, you’ll want to continue the push while it’s going on. Remind your followers on social media while the series is underway and tease your new, upcoming posts anytime you can.
4. You’ll establish yourself as an expert.
Writing a blog series can definitely help position you as an expert on the topic you’re covering. “It helps you establish your authority as you expand and execute on areas of your expertise and passion. The more you can share about a particular subject (and in an organized fashion) the better!” (John Saddington)
5. You’ll grab new subscribers.
As we’ve already mentioned above, if you’re producing valuable content within your series, there’s a great chance you’ll gain new subscribers who are interested in learning more about the subject you’ll be covering.
Have we motivated you to launch a new blog series? We sure hope so! Comment below if you’ve ever run a successful series and give us some insights on your winning formula!
