There Are Only 2 Ways To Write a Successful Blog Post

You already know about them, but are you using them correctly?

One of the few writing tips I wish I had learned about earlier is to keep things simple. Most new writers believe they need complex ideas or sophisticated words in order to stand out from the masses, but they’re so wrong.

Instead of trying to sound smart, you should try to keep your writing simple, clutter-free, and easy to understand.

Sure, that’s not true for all types of writing, but it‘s helpful advice for most non-fiction bloggers on the internet, especially those who’re aiming to inspire or educate their audience.

And if we look at it that way, there are two main ways to write a successful blog post:

• You’re focusing on one big idea and digging deep
• You’re presenting multiple options (or a step-by-step guide)

So let’s break each of these down and look at how they’re structured and why they work so well:

1.) You’re focusing on *one* big idea and digging deep

Most writers struggle with this format because it requires clarity.

When you’re focusing on one idea, you’re mostly sharing a clear problem (and its solution), a specific experience, an unusual thought, or a provocative statement.

Here are two examples:

The title of this post summarizes its core idea: To become a better writer, you should listen more. It’s one simple statement — one core idea.

If you’re wondering how exactly listening twice as much as you talk will make you a better writer, you’ll click on the piece give it a read.

Here’s another post with one big idea:

Just like the first example, this post is based on one simple idea: Achieving big goals requires effort.

The entire post shows examples of why this thought might be true and how you can use it to your advantage.

The biggest mistakes

When writing posts about one big idea, most writers fail because they mix up different stories.

Instead of sticking to the core idea, they’re adding different elements that might be loosely related to the topic but irrelevant for the specific post.

As a result, they end up with confusing stories that summarize many different thoughts but don’t lead to a clear outcome.

And without a clear outcome, your reader won’t know whether the story was valuable or not.

A simple question you can ask yourself to avoid this is:

How exactly do I want my reader to feel after reading this post?

When you know the answer to that question, you can easily stick to the specific emotion you want to create.

In my first example, I wanted my readers to feel inspired to be better “listeners” so they could create better content for their readers.

My second example, however, should be an eye-opener and help my readers see a truth most people barely talk about: “Working smart” is a privilege you might not have yet, and you might indeed need to “work hard” if you have huge goals.

2.) You’re presenting multiple options (or a step-by-step guide)

This sums up the two most popular forms of blog posts: Listicles and how-to articles, which are usually structured like this:

• Introduction
• Idea/Step #1
• Idea/Step #2
• Idea/Step #3
• ….
• (Optional: Conclusion/Summary)

There are two ways to write listicles and how-to articles: You’re presenting multiple points on a surface level, or you’re sharing only a few ideas/steps but digging deeper into each of these.

Here are two examples:

Lots of ideas:

Just a few ideas:

The biggest mistakes

Writing listicles or how-to articles is usually a lot easier than writing about one specific idea because you can treat each section like a mini-post and start from scratch multiple times.

When I write about “15 Myths That Might Be Sabotaging Your Success,” each of the myths can be standing on its own, and the 15 subsections don’t need to relate to each other.

The difficulty is that each of them needs to be interesting and valuable — and that’s what most writers struggle with.

There’s no point in writing an article that goes like this:

Title: “How to become successful”:

Subsections:

• read more books
• exercise regularly
• wake up early
• surround yourself with successful people

…and only giving basic information, such as “waking up early will help you have more time to work on your goals.”

Wanna know why?

Because it’s not interesting. It’s nothing new, and it’s not actionable.

How shall I read more books if I’m busy? Which books? Why should I read more at all?!

How shall I work out if I don’t have time? For how long do I have to work out? When? Why? How exactly?!

What does “waking up early” mean? 6 a.m.? 5 a.m.? 4 a.m.?! When do I need to go to sleep? How much sleep do I get? What if I feel tired?!

You get the point.

Readers click on listicles because they want a quick answer to their problems — and even though that’s the easiest form of writing, most bloggers fail at it because they struggle to be specific and give enough value in each sub-section.

I’ve been writing for almost half a decade, reached millions of readers online, supported hundreds of writers to start and scale a writing business, and I still meet people who think writing listicles is boring or uncreative.

And it might be true — listicles are simple. But they work.

Online readers love listicles because they promise a quick win. The gist is to give them a quick win.

If I publish an article titled “The 5 Best Decisions I Made To Grow My Writing Business”, you know exactly what to expect: a summary of the five best decisions I made to grow my writing business. It’s easy as that.

And the same is true for how-to articles.

If a post is titled “How To Increase Your Productivity Through a Simple Journaling Routine,” you’ll expect to learn how to use journaling to become more productive.

Readers love listicles and how-tos because they’re predictable, but it’s your job to make sure you follow up on your promise and deliver what they expect.

As a writer, I’ll always pick the option that’s proven to work instead of trying to be creative and writing a headline or post that’s unique but uninteresting or irrelevant.

Think of it this way: Most readers are busy. They don’t have hours to read content online. They’re browsing through newsfeeds, and if a title catches their attention, they’ll click to see whether it’s worth their time.

You don’t have more than a few short seconds to win your readers. Sometimes, it’s even less than that. You need to be concise and get to the point quickly — listicles and how-to articles help you do that easily.

What you might be wondering about

At this point, you might be wondering about what exactly this post is.

Well, it’s essentially a listicle with only two subsections, which is unusual as you’d usually use at least three subsections for a typical listicle.

However, in this specific case, there is no third point because I genuinely believe these are the two most important and relevant formats of online writing you need to know about and master.

In fact, this post could also be titled “2 Ways To Write a Successful Blog Post”. In that case, it’d be more obvious that the piece itself is a (short) listicle.

You clicked on this piece because you wanted to learn about the two ways to write a successful article, and I showed you how to do that based on my own examples.

Now I hope that you’re aware of the most common mistakes, so you can avoid them and write content that stands out and serves millions of readers.

Want to make money by writing online but don’t know how? Join my *free* 5-Day Course, and let me teach you how I went from zero to making six figures.