What ingredients go in to making the perfect blog post? It’s not an easy question to answer, but Philip Agnew at Brandwatch has a good idea.
Not happy with merely sharing his opinion of what works, Agnew has consulted some data from Brandwatch’s blog. He has taken the 10 most popular entries and distilled the most common traits, or family resemblances.
The main findings (numbers quoted are averages):
– Five sub-headings
– Four pieces of added media
– 54 letters in the title
– 819 words in length
Out of the top 10 blogs, three were published on a Tuesday and three on a Friday, making these days the most popular. Tuesday slightly edges out Fridays in terms of the response (re-tweets and likes) the posts received on Twitter.
What happened when Brandwatch tested the data?
With these results in mind, Brandwatch decided to make the perfect blog, with exactly the characteristics listed above – The Bolt Phenomenon: Four Reasons Why Usain’s a Natural Champion.
And the results? Underwhelming. It fell short of the top 10 blogs posted in August. In fact, it only got 88 views when the most popular entries enjoy more than 5,000. The blog’s only notable success was a longer dwell time: 4:47 minutes, compared with the usual 3:55 minutes. This at least suggests that the page works in retaining readers.
Perhaps this poor showing shouldn’t come as a surprise, especially to those who have tried – and failed – to make their content go viral. As Agnew states:
Hopefully this will resonate with any budding bloggers out there showing that although data, measurements, metrics and comparisons are great to check and improve your work – nothing will substitute for interesting and gripping content written by expressive, inspired authors.
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