How to Write a Viral Blog Post: Write Like a Swinger
And get tested for STD
Here is my confession, I hit publish and write my next blog post. I’m happy if there is another person who reads my stories. You can call me the “monogamous writer.” But deep down, I ask myself, “How do you make a post go viral?”
When was the last time you asked your sex partner, “How was the sex?” and if he or she or they as non-binary people would like to be addressed, said, “It was Ok!” then the sex wasn’t good. It falls short of a “MEH.”
And that is when I realized writing is sex, it has to be more than good.
How To Make Your Article Go Viral? Get It Tested For STD
If readers are looking for answers, they will go to Google, and nobody can beat Google; size does matter. What readers are looking for are stories.
STD — SEO, Title, and Description
I had to come up with something, right? I forgot all about SEO, Title, and Description and focused on being a storyteller.
Silence! Bring back my STD.
As writers, we have to put ourselves in the reader’s shoes, giving them value. Keep it relatable and insightful. But our target audience needs to know where we are, and the only way for readers to find your article if it is optimized for discovery.
It is one of the most powerful lessons I learned from Professor Patrick Wilson. In his course, “How to Speak,” we need to give our audience an empowerment promise. It lets your readers know exactly what to expect.
1. SEO
What is Blog SEO?
Blog SEO is the practice of optimizing a blog’s content — Brian Dean, Backlinko.
Why Is Blog SEO Important?
Search engines are a super important traffic source for blogs. — Brian Dean, Backlinko.
Best Practices
Find One Main Keyword For Each Post — Every blog post you publish should be optimized around one keyword. — Brian Dean, Backlinko.
Keyword Research
As a writer, I write on topics that I love and am interested in, but the few posts that really resonated with my readers, or my viral blog posts, are the ones that teach something but are also keyword optimized. In the article below, the keyword is in the title. Can you guess what the phrase is?
You can use various keyword tools and tons of articles you can find about keyword research, but here are some of the best tips for optimizing keywords.
- Add your keyword to your title.
- Add your keyword in the first 100 words or a variation of it.
- Add your keyword in the last paragraph of your article.
Your keyword must be in the beginning, middle, and at the end.
Bonus Tip for Blog SEO — Where to Find Related Keywords?
- Do a Google search, and look for “People also ask” and “Related searches,” you must use those phrases and words somewhere in your blog post.
2. Title
I have to admit. I fail to practice what I knew would help get my audience hooked, a great headline. There are as many tools out there and tons of articles written about an engaging title’s value.
Bonus Tips for Writing Powerful Titles
- KISS — Keep it short, sweetheart! Most read titles, according to Buzzsumo, have become shorter, 11 words, and 65 characters.
- Add your keyword in the title — Yes, I said this twice.
3. Description
Writing a well-thought description helps readers decide if they would read your blog post or not. It also allows Google to understand what the article is all about, giving searchers a snippet of relevant and helpful information.
“The meta description tag won’t help you rank, but it will often appear as the text snippet below your listing, so it should include the relevant keyword(s) and be written to encourage searchers to click on your listing.” — 21 Essential SEO Tips & Techniques, Search Engine Land.
Bonus Tips for Writing Your Meta Description
- Add your keyword or a variation of your keyword in your description.
- Make use of the 159 characters that Google reads.
- Be clear.
The best examples of meta descriptions and how search engines use them come from search engines themselves.
<meta name=” description” content=” Search the world’s information, including web pages, images, videos, and more. Google has many special features to help you find exactly what you’re looking for. “> — Neil Patel, How Search Engines Use Meta Descriptions
How Can We Make a Post Viral?
Enough of STD; the truth is there is no one formula in making your content go viral on the Internet. If you need a refresher on STD, click here.
The Valence-Arousal-Dominance (VAD) Model
To help us understand why some content on the Internet becomes viral and some don’t the same way articles we write finds their audience and why we can sometimes hear the cricket’s sounds. Let’s deep dive into some research done by behavioral scientists.
Jacopo Staiano of Sorbonne University and Marco Guerini of Trento Rise sheds light on the roles that valence, arousal, and dominance play in content that goes viral … Each individual emotion is a combination of three characteristics … Viral content tends to be surprising, emotionally complex, or extremely positive … these emotional combinations are so effective at driving people to share — because they achieve the right configurations of arousal and dominance. — Harvard Business Review: Excerpt, The Emotional Combinations That Make Stories Go Viral
- Valence is the positivity or negativity of an emotion. Happiness has a positive valence; fear has a negative valence.
- Arousal ranges from excitement to relaxation. Anger is a high-arousal emotion; sadness is low-arousal.
- Dominance ranges from submission to feeling in control. Fear is low-dominance; an emotion a person has more choice over, such as admiration, is high-dominance.
For Content Creators Looking to Create “Viral” Content
In a similar study:
A similar pattern emerged in the New York Times articles we analyzed that were among the top 20 most emailed, tweeted, and shared articles over the course of three months in 2016. Here, we found that longer articles and those that contained more inspirational words (e.g., awe, inspiring, profound, appreciate) were more likely to be viral among readers. — What Makes Positive Content Go Viral?, Sophie H. Janicke, Greater Good Science Center (GGSC) at the University of California, Berkeley.
How to Write a Great Blog Post?
A great blog post is interesting, clearly written, and ends with a call to action. A call to action can be a form of a question that will ask for your readers’ engagement, either through comments or by allowing your readers to bring the conversation on social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter.
Treating readers right is vital. Your readers deserve genuine value from you. Readers can quickly scroll past clickbait articles that grab their attention.
To create a blog post that will go viral, you’ve got to do two things. The first thing you need to do is identify the target market and the second thing you need to do is make sure you’re telling a story.
When you’re writing about a particular niche or topic, you must determine if the audience is interested in that topic. If they’re interested, write your blog post to them.
When deciding on what topic to write about, find out what people are talking about. What are they looking for? What problem are they facing? What do they want from their lives?
These are the things your readers will be looking for when they come across your article or blog post. List them out. Make sure you have at least one relevant topic per article.
To write a viral post, you need to know who your audience is and then tailor the article’s content around their needs or wants.
Secrets to Writing a Viral Blog Post
Every blog post you write, get it tested for STD. And even I have to remind myself, take the time to write a great headline.
Headline warning: Never allow cute, creative headlines to blind you to the need for accuracy. Be alert to headlines that have unintended meanings. — Dr. Merlin R. Mann, Associate Professor of Journalism.
How to Write a Blog Post That Gets Traffic — Write Like a Swinger
The truth is nobody wants to read like they are reading from their Sunday school teacher. Attention is a prized commodity. Readers are the same, there is just too much content out there, and if your article falls flat, then nobody will read your story. Writers need traffic for their blog posts.
Why Write Like a Swinger?
A swinger opens up their sexuality to new possibilities and discoveries. As writers, we can’t be monogamous. Otherwise, we write for ourselves, and that isn’t blogging. It’s called journaling, which is perfectly fine.
I will definitely follow my own advice and transform from being a monogamous writer to a swinger writer.
To form a non-monogamous relationship with my audience and start connecting to my audience, it is time to stop being a prude and turn into a nymph.
Love, sex, and writing are never one-size-fits-all. We all have different goals as writers, we can obsess on how to write a blog post that gets clicks, shares, and conversions, but we can also stay true as to why we write in the first place and find that sweet balance.
Be kind to yourself when your blog post doesn’t go viral. You have to give yourself the allowance to say to yourself, “I’ll try to do better next time!”.
By the way, a study shows that Swingers rate themselves happier than the general public. It doesn’t hurt if, as a swinger writer, you also become a happy writer.
