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the Inconsequential Rantings of Bruce Horst

Bruce Horst ⁽¹⁶²⁾ Texas, USA

Bruce Horst

How to Write for the Internet and Gain a Following: Write About What People Want to Read About!

Posted Thursday, November 12, 2009 (8 days 10 hours ago.) Viewed 596 times.

We all know the saying "writers write." If you've been writing for a while you also know that not everything you write will be read. This is especially true on the internet, where there are millions of writers competing for eyeballs. I hope this information will give you a competitive advantage while writing for the internet. This will also help you in our current writers' contest.

Last week I gave some statistics showing that the longer and more descriptive your titles are, the more readers your articles will attract. We can tell this advice was well received. Jean was complaining to me this morning that the titles on the home page are now so long that she needs me change the layout so that they fit properly. Eeek! I am happy to do this if it means more readers.

This week I want to talk about the second rule in writing popular articles for the internet: You must write about what people want to read about. It seems obvious, doesn't it? I would guess that nearly 100% of the people who email SearchWarp asking why they don't have more readers really don't understand this concept.

In print, the popularity of your writing is directly related where you are published. Whether in the newspaper or in a book, you will most likely be read by people who either just happen to stumble upon your writing or by people who had someone else recommend your writing to them. This isn't true on the internet.

Sure there are reader recommendation sites like Digg and StumbleUpon, but I've seen very few readers come to SearchWarp because of these services. Instead, the vast majority of readers come from search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

What are these people searching for when they come to SearchWarp to read an article? They almost never come because they are searching for someone's name, rather they come because they are looking for information.

There are a few lessons to be learned from some of the articles submitted to the writers' contest in the past week. Steven Rogers tried an article titled with the most popular terms searched for on the internet. Good try Steven! This article has had only 4 outside referrals so far. The lack of soaring popularity indicates that there's more to it than just popular titles. I believe there are two issues holding this article back. First, the title doesn't really describe the information contained in the article. Mismatched titles don't usually do well.

The other issue is as popular as Steven's title is, he's got a lot of competition. Highly competitive topics can also reduce the number of readers your articles attract. There used to be tools available to help internet marketers decide what to write about by taking the estimated number of monthly searches that a topic receives and dividing by the number of web pages on the internet already addressing the topic. What's left is an index of the topics on which you have the greatest chance of receiving readers. Too bad those tools don't really work anymore.

The next example I'd like to use is Fran Larson's article ‘Shay Sorrell, Dry Your Tears; You Are The Biggest Winner on the Biggest Loser."

Fran wasn't even expecting to enter this article in the contest. When I told her that if the article was in the News > Current Events category it would instantly be in third place in the contest, she gladly had the category changed. Here is what an article like this can do to a writer's popularity rating: Fran's popularity rating went from 2,100 the day she posted the article to 6,700 the next day to over 10,000 today. Congratulations, Fran!

Fran is now hooked. She told me (and gave me permission to mention) that her competitive spirit has come out and she is consumed with thinking about what she's going to write next!

Today she submitted the article, "What Shay and Daniel, Biggest Loser Contestants told Jay Leno: A Secret About Weight Loss." This is a great article that once again goes after pop culture by referencing Biggest Loser contestants, but this article isn't attracting many readers. The problem? The article is about a Leno show that happened 2 days before the article was posted. If you've been watching her first article in the contest, it received almost all of it's readers within the first 24 hours of its posting. The second article probably would have done as well if it was posted right after the Leno show, but two days later is just too late.

This demonstrates the caveat in writing pop culture articles. Popularity is often short lived. The other end of the spectrum is what is called "evergreen" articles. Evergreens attract readers continually, year-round. Factual, statistical and how-to articles are usually evergreen. Have you seen the all-time most popular article on SearchWarp? "How to Know if You're Pregnant" has been the most popular article for over a year. In fact, the most common phrase in the 100 most popular articles on SearchWarp is "How To." How-to articles are usually evergreen, they attract readers year-round.

That's not to say there is no value in pop culture articles. Personally, I believe there are great opportunities being missed by SearchWarp writers not writing pop culture themed articles. Look at the articles that Kacycarr has in the writers' contest. With all those readers, she has the potential to cultivate a real following; a following which would read her articles no matter what she writes about. Isn't that what most of us writers want?

Connor Davidson mentioned to me yesterday that he had received an email stating, "Connor, write about something interesting for a change!" Don't we all want to write about things that our readers find interesting?

I'd like to again mention a vastly underutilized tool for writing popular articles. It's called Google Trends and can be found at http://Google.com/trends. Play around with this tool and you'll see hot topics you can use to write opinion pieces on. With proper titling and use of the "related searches" phrases in the trends report, most writers could establish incredible popularity and, eventually, a following.

In conclusion, I hope I've left you with a better understanding of one of the most important concepts of writing for the internet, writing what people want to read, and its three key elements: popularity, competition, and being evergreen.

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Increase Your Popularity: How to Write for the Internet and Attract Readers - Part 1

Posted Sunday, November 08, 2009 (12 days 10 hours ago.) Viewed 754 times.

We've just begun a new writers' contest to see who can write current events articles which attract the most readers from outside of SearchWarp. For many people this will bring up the issue of how to write for the Internet.

It's fascinating to me how there can be so much difference in writing for print as opposed to writing for the Internet. I've known many writers who excel at writing for print publications, some even earn their living from their printed work. But when it comes to writing for the Internet, they fall flat and fail to get noticed. I'd like to explore this a little in a two part series on how to write for the Internet to attract readers.

The first concept to understand is this: People must understand what information your article contains completely from your title. I've said this many times, many different ways, but we continually receive articles from professional level writers who fail to title their articles properly. At the risk of offending some, I will say that if your articles have less than 6 to 8 words in their titles, you probably don't know how to write for the Internet.

Let me say that again, if your articles have less than 6 to 8 words in their titles, you probably don't know how to write for the Internet.

Let's try something. Go to the SearchWarp home page and look at the "Most Recent" list in the right column about half-way down the page (in the blue box.) Read the titles. Do you know what the information is that you'll find in these articles? Not the general idea, I'm talking about the specific information you'll fine in these articles. While I'm writing this, about a third of these are titled properly. The rest have vague titles which may be cute or witty, but they don't indicate what information can be found in the articles themselves. They might contain a clue as to what the article is about, but if your potential readers have to guess, they will never become your readers.

This isn't good. If you don't believe me, walk through a few steps with me that will hopefully open your eyes.

Look to the left on the home page. In the left column you will see "Hot Comments" in a green box. Out of the 7 articles listed as I'm writing this, 6 have titles that state exactly what information you will find if you read the articles. The most active articles are titled properly.

Look back to the right-hand column to the green box marked "Today's Most Popular," as I'm writing this 9 of the 10 most popular articles state clearly the information you will find by reading the articles. This list is somewhat skewed by the fact that some of the articles appear on the home page, which makes them popular, but the rest of them will almost always have proper titles.

If you then go up to the "Interesting Links" section and click "What people are looking for" you will be taken to a page which shows what people are searching for that brings them to SearchWarp. If you hold your mouse over the search terms, you'll see the titles of the articles which these people were taken to. Right now as I'm writing this, all but 2 are titles which state clearly the information that the articles contain. This is because non-descriptive titles don't attract readers.

Now if you go back to the home page and click on "Hall of Fame" you'll see the most popular writers on SearchWarp.

Kacycarr is by far the most popular writer on SearchWarp. I hate to give away Kacy's secrets, but click on her name and look at the list of articles she has written. Every single one has a title which explains exactly what you'll find in the article. You can look at all the writers at the top of the Hall of Fame and you'll see the same thing.

Now go to the control panel and click "View / Edit Your Articles." Look at the list of your articles as if you've never seen them before. Ask yourself if you would have any idea what information is found in these articles if you hadn't written them yourself. Ask what questions your articles answer. Do you see them differently? How could your articles explain what information they contain more clearly and completely?

I have to say that the editors are constantly surprised at the excellent writing on SearchWarp which is titled very poorly. It's saddening to see that these writers don't receive the readership that they deserve.

We like to feature the most talented writers on the SearchWarp home page. We often receive comments that the writers on the home page don't have the highest popularity ratings (as indicated by the little number by their names.) Look at these writers on the home page and the columnists and the readers' choice writers on Page 2. Usually the article teasers you see with the longer titles have authors with higher popularity ratings. Once you understand this, it becomes obvious why the teasers with the short, cute titles have authors with lower popularity ratings.

If you're still not convinced, I've done a little test. I've run some reports on the SearchWarp database. Here are some interesting statistics:

The average article on SearchWarp with less than 5 words in the title has attracted 3 outside readers.
The average article on SearchWarp with more than 5 but less than 10 words in the title has attracted 4 outside readers.
The average article on SearchWarp with greater than 10 words in the title has attracted 12 outside readers.

That's 4 times as many readers as the articles with less than 5 words in the title!

Here it is stated a different way:

Articles on SearchWarp which have attracted more than 1,000 readers average 11 words in their titles .
Articles on SearchWarp which have attracted 0 outside readers average 6 words in their titles.

How many words do your titles contain?

By understanding this, it is clear that the more descriptive your titles are, the more readers your articles will attract.

I hope this convinces you that informative titles are very important in writing for the Internet. Having descriptive titles alone will not make you famous, but not having descriptive titles could keep you from becoming famous.

Do you want people to read what you write? I challenge you to use at least a dozen words in the titles of your articles to describe the wealth of information found within.

Now get to work!

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the Inconsequential Rantings of Bruce Horst

How to Write for the Internet and Gain a Following: Write About What People Want to Read About!

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