Why Should You Write a Series for Your Blog?
Have you ever written a series of posts for your blog? That’s a set of posts about the same topic which you purposely linked together. If you haven’t, writing a series for your blog could be a great decision.
Your blogs goal should be to create stories that engage your readers and provide them with information which holds their interest. Instead of only writing individual posts, you should occassionally consider writing a series of posts for your blog.
As you read further you will discover the many benefits of writing a series of related and linked blog posts.
How Can You Decide on a Blog Post Series Topic?
It’s often difficult coming up with an idea for one blog post. How do you come up with a great idea for a series?
To develop a fixed series with a limited number of posts, you might want to consider:
- A blog post series gives you the opportunity to dig into a topic. A series allows you to dig deeper and examine different aspects of the topic. I did this recently on Sustainability International with a series on business sustainability.
- A blog post series can be a great introduction to your blog. Your posts can be on diverse topics, however, you can link them together and aim them at specific groups.
For a regular, ongoing series, you might look for:
- A topic that you could blog about indefinitely. Your choice of topic could be diverse and be about almost any topic that would interest your audience. Your topics could also address issues that make blogs better. Topics such as search engine optimization, writing tips, or using social media to promote your blog.
- A particular type of blog posts. You could do a weekly “Question and Answer” blog post dealing with reader comments. Your posts could be motivational, inspirational, or even informational – depending on the type of blog you are writing.
If you’ve got several ideas and aren’t sure which would work best, why not ask your reader’s to leave their comments as input on what topics they would like you to write about.
What’s the Best Approach to Writing Your Blog Series?
If you look at a series of posts on the blogs you read, you’ll probably find they fall into one of two categories:
Blog Post Series Type #1: You can write a Series of Posts which are Time-Limited. Thes would be run over a set time period, usually every post published on the blog during a set time period is part of the series.
For example, your three-part series of linked posts may appear on consecutive Mondays. After three weeks, you go back to publishing stand alone posts.
I recently wrote a five part series about employee sustainability engagement for my Business Sustainability Blog, Sustainability International:
- Why Your Business Should Openly Embrace Sustainability.
- Engage Your Employee’s on Sustainability in 4 Easy Steps.
- How to Embed Sustainability in Your Company Culture.
- Connection, Next Step in Employee Sustainability Engagement.
- Action! The Final Step to Employee Sustainability Engagement.
This approach works for topics that are too broad to write about in one post. It also works if you want to create a cornerstone content library to build upon. Or a series of great content posts could easily be used later to write an ebook.
Blog Post Series Type #2: You can write an Ongoing, Regular Series of Posts
I am presently writing posts for three different blogs. Each week I have new posts appearing on a specific day of the week for each blog. My blog calendar for my regular daily series of posts looks like this:
- Sunday, Original new post for Better Business Alliance, my business marketing blog.
- Monday, Better Business Alliance re-post of curated content to Facebook and LinkedIn.
- Tuesday, Better Business Alliance re-post of curated content to LinkedIn and Facebook.
- Wednesday, Original new post for Better Business Alliance, my business marketing blog.
- Thursday, Accessibility International re-post of curated content to Facebook and LinkedIn.
- Friday, Original new post for Accessibility International, every other Friday.
- Friday, Original new post for Sustainability International, every other Friday.
- Saturday, Sustainability International re-post of curated content to LinkedIn and Facebook.
If you want to build continuity, consistency and community on your blog, this is a good type of series to use. Your audience quickly becomes used to and anticipates your publishing and re-publishing of curated content.
How Do You Structure Your Blog Post Series?
Hopefully, you feel confident about structuring your individual blog posts. Things are just a bit different when it comes to a blog post series. You have to make some structural decisions about your blog post series:
- Your blog post series posts. You might write a post to introduce your series and explain what your readers can expect to learn about with each of the following posts in the series. As each successive post in the series is published you would then update your posts with links to each of the posts that are part of the series.
- Your individual posts within the series. How can you structure these so they are homogenous as parts of the blog series as a whole? You could brand your images or use a specific type of image for each post in your series. You could title your blog posts in a different but consistent manner. Or you could format your posts similarly, perhaps including your introduction from the first post of your series.
Can You Boost Your Blog By Writing a Series?
Writing a series of posts for your blog gives you the opportunity to:
- Showcase your expertise by digging deeper into a topic.
- Encourage your readers to come back for more.
- Allow you to create a lot of internal links between your posts.
- Develop great content readers can bookmark, share, and return to.
Writing a series of posts can be especially helpful for a new blogger. Writing a series of blog posts helps you build credibility with your audience. A series can also be a terrific way for a new blogger to begin developing their “evergreen content” library.
How Can a Blog Post Series Help Your SEO?
We Are all constantly bombarded with a message which frightens many blog and content writers. SEO or Search Engine Optimization. To the uninitiated, these terms are largely misunderstood. The bad news is that there are no special tricks to getting good rankings in search queries. The good news is that search engines like well written content.
The good content that you write today, hopefully will become what I call “evergreen content.” Future search queries will find and return your post as part of the results to search queries long into the future.
You can increase the attractiveness of your series of blog posts to search engines by interlinking the individual posts so readers can easily navigate between them. Search engines love both out-going and inbound links.
It’s good to remember, not everyone will read your series as you publish it. Some readers will initially skim your content, coming back to it when they have more time to read the whole series. However, many more will find your series in the future through search engines or social media.
That’s the main reason I don’t date my posts. Even though my post’s content may still be relevant, many readers will pass over it, not reading it if it is dated from several years ago.
You can interlink your series posts in several ways.
- Create a tag or category for your series, which is what I did with my Business Sustainability series about employee engagement. Your readers can then get all the parts of the series by clicking that tag/category name.
- Put links at the top of each post leading to the previous posts, so readers can easily go back to any posts they missed.
- Put links at the bottom of each post leading to the next part, so readers can easily go through the series.
- Add links in the body of your post whenever you mention a topic you’ve already written about in your series. I do this in every post, linking to any prior posts that cover the same topic.
Be consistent, however you choose to link your posts together. Always remember to check back after finishing any post or series of posts to see if there are opportunities to add some extra links.
How You Can Take Your Blog Post Series Further
Once you’ve completed a series, it’s worth considering whether you can repurpose your series into something else.
How could your blog post series be repurposed:
- You could compile your series posts into a free ebook. Perhaps you can use some of your curated posts and add some bonus content.
- Publishing your posts as a product to sell. You could also turn your posts into a paid-for ebook to offer to your readers.
A short series could also be used as the inspiration for a longer more in-depth blog post series. It could even become an ongoing series to engage your readers more fully with your blog.
Tell me how you’ve used a blog post series? What were your results? Was your blog post series successful? Tell us how you intend to use blog post series in the future. Please share your thoughts below by leaving a comment.
