We’ve all seen posts with hundreds if not thousands of comments and sometimes that post didn’t actually have a lot of content in it, sometimes it was just one question or one video that sparked a huge debate. Here is my breakdown to writing a very quick and easy post that will shoot straight to your most popular list.

  • Poll

Polling your readers is a great easy post, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad post. You could make a poll about anything (you can find a wordpress poll plugin here) no matter what market you are in. I have run two polls on this site so far, each with a good response. One was asking what the readers of this site wanted more of, one was for a runner up prize. Either way letting your readers poll answers to a question is a really good way of getting to know your readers a lot better and to actually let the readers feel connected with whats going on.

  • Question

Asking your readers a question is bound to deliver some answers and answer spawn debates, that in turn brings traffic. It doesn’t matter if you’re into marketing online or the consumer white goods market asking questions is a great great way to fire up a site. I know of one problogger who quite regularly posts content that is pretty much a padded out question and it gets a great response.

It’s especially good if the poll doesn’t quite hit the mark and you want your readers to actually elaborate a little bit on their answers. Hopefully you will get people with differing opinions and the whole community gets involved. Please be aware not to start fights though, it’s not really good juju going onto someone else’s site and start flaming everyone to be clever or to do it then hide behind the shield of being real (more on this soon)

  • Comparison

I love making comparisons, for me I think about it a lot as I like analysing the way different people are despite having the same options in life. My post Problogger V Gary Vaynerchuk looked at the comparisons of someone who is fired up and always on the go (Gary) compared to the more zen like Darren Rowse (Problogger). 83 comments later and the post did really well. Look at your market place, if you’re in the lifestyle design type niche then look at the big guns in your market, are they different, if so how? Then put it to your readers.

Offering comparisons allows you to talk about so many other things, maybe even follow up posts about the different traits etc.

  • Links

A monthly round up of your best and most popular posts are great for recycling old content whilst actually providing fresh content if you can talk about what it is that made those posts so popular. Another way to use links is to link to 5 of your absolute must reads on the net, or 5 really cool website designs. What ever fits your niche, but link out and actually show people what you are interested in and why.

It’s a great way to show some love for the people you really do follow closely, but to draw people and show then some new sites and get them passing the word onto their friends.

  • Be Good

Being the motivating one is great, it’s great to actually make people go about their day with a smile, so do something that will make them feel happy and part of your site rather than the usual you speak and they listen type of site. You can do this in a variety of ways; pure thank you posts that mention individuals or a hyped pumped up post. Whatever your style making people smile is a great motivator for people to come back and see what you are all about.

  • Giveaway

Give something away, simple. People love having the chance to win something, they love the possibility it could be them out of everyone else they might just be the ones that win. Don’t worry you don’t have to give a thousand dollars away or anything like that.

It could be something as simple as a tester product, say for example if you run a hair products company, then you could run a competition to win a mini-hamper, but all they would have to do is enter their details in a mailing list, or spread your post to 5 of their friends etc. You can really capitalize on giveaways which will actually result (hopefully) in you earning more in business than the products you’re giving away actually costs.

  • Rant

Now I’ve turned a corner both personally and in this site, but that said rants done properly can be a good post and should be fairly easy to write as rants constantly feed the fingers. You really have to be careful with this one though as I said I’ve turned a corner with this site and emotionally and don’t want to get involved in flaming other people when it actually doesn’t affect me, that said I still read things that lights me up, but I refuse to let the readers of this site be distracted by it and instead want them to be focused on empire building.

If you do have a rant, I think a safe way to do it and to get people engaging with it is to try and have a bit of padding around it in which your readers will take a lot of positives away from it, for instance if your rant is about a corporate customer services helpline that is clearly not in the country or the corporation and as such you simply can’t get your problem understood, then rant about it. Remember to add the constructive solution to it though.

Sofia - stretching
Creative Commons License photo credit: kaibara87

So there you go 7 relaxed ways to make a great post what does everyone think?

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