Too often perfectionism or setting unattainable goals makes us worry that our writing, our blog posts or our work aren’t good enough.
Repeatedly we’re told: Content is king! Quality over quantity!
Inevitably we start to wonder if our blog posts are good enough and sometimes the fear that they’re not makes us stop writing or publishing altogether.
Avoid falling prey to perfectionism and falling into the trap of believing that only the highest quality writing should be published. Sometimes good content is good enough and no one expects you to write earth-moving blog posts every time.
Never publish bad content – although most new writers write badly from time to time – but it’s fine to publish content that is good, solid writing because:
- You can never really tell what’s going to be a hit and what will bomb until you publish your post;
- The more you publish the more chance there is of your blog being found by new readers;
- The more you publish the higher the chance that you’ll write a great blog post which does go viral;
- You can’t expect great content every single time.
5 tips to ensure your blog posts are good quality
- Work on improving the headline. Sometimes an ordinary post can hit the sweet spot based on headline alone.
- Check for typos and spelling mistakes. We all make typos sometimes but be sure all your blog posts aren’t peppered with them every time.
- Edit your posts and remove unnecessary words and verbiage. If it doesn’t add anything to the meaning of your post or enhance your message then reading it only wastes people’s time.
- Format your blog posts so they have plenty of white space around them and are fast and easy to read.
- Add numbered or bullet-pointed lists if appropriate to help your readers read faster and understand more easily.
Aim for Quality and Quantity
As long as your posts are good enough you should publish and share them. Every now and then you can will write a great post, maybe some pillar content, a new idea, or something controversial, that everyone will bookmark or share and which goes viral.
But in between those flashes of genius you need to keep writing and publishing all those posts which are good enough. Keep the quality high but make sure that demand doesn’t reduce the quantity of your blog posts too much.
Do your quality control but keep publishing those posts regularly because chances are they are good ones and some will even be great.
Would you like personal advice about your blog or content marketing strategy? Contact Mucho now.
Thanks so much for writing this, Annabel! I think this is one of the things I have to work on with my blog. I notice I struggle the most with coming up with attention-grabbing headlines, but that’s always been a problem of mine even before I started blogging–coming up with titles for anything is not my thing, haha. Great tips, as always! :)
Hi Felicia,
Just keep practicing with the headlines and have fun with them.
You’ll find more blog headline tips in these posts:
How to Write Hypnotic Headlines That Drive People to Your Blog http://ow.ly/bH8lr
Blogging Tips A-Z: H for Headlines http://ow.ly/bH8nt
5 Blog Headline Formulas Readers Can’t Resist http://ow.ly/bH8oA
Newcomer, here :) What a great no-nonsense post! It’s so nice to be brought back down to earth and allowed to just do the work. Looking forward to your next post.
Hi Kirsten,
Great to see you here! Let me know what you most need help with and I’ll see what I can do:)
Excellent advice Annabel! I still struggle with headlines. I think I’m getting better, but you never know. I am often surprised at the posts that garner amazing traffic. It’s not that I don’t shoot for that all the time, it’s just I didn’t expect it on ‘that’ one.
I guess that’s a lesson in not underestimating your readers and even when you think it’s just mediocre publish anyway. No one can publish blog posts weekly or more and expect every single one to be a winner.
Thanks,
b
Hi Barbara,
So true:) Maybe we overthing the headlines sometimes. I love doing that but sometimes it’s best to just lay it out as it is.
Hey Annabel,
I think what’s important is that we stay focused, understand the relationship between quality and quantity (both matters!) and write valuable content.
Two things I would like to add are to never force ourselves to write something (never write something just for the sake of consistency) and to practice writing. For instance: My best posts are ones that came to me, while I was doing something else that was completely unrelated to blogging. Practicing writing or free writing on different topics can help us to shape our writing skills and to become a better writer and a better blogger.
Thank you for the post,
Jeevan Jacob John
One of the most important challenges before a blogger is figuring out how to enrich and add value to the audience and in so doing to stand out from the pack in a meaningful way.