57 Varieties of Blog Post
In which I offer simply 57 prompts for blog posts, and offer a model for focusing content along two dimensions: relatability and purpose.
Relatability
Put simply, a blog post can be all about you, or it can be all about your audience. The personal post appeals because people are keen to learn your story, and to have a sneak peak into your lived experience. We are all nosey neighbours at heart. Alternatively, laser-focusing your sights on a particular group of readers when writing makes your post highly relevant, and your readers believe it’s written just for them.
Purpose
Your readers surf the web for one of two reasons, to be enlightened or to be entertained. You can have a go at both at once, but scoring highly on either aspect is a great start. How can you make it MORE entertaining? How can you make it MORE useful?
57 varieties of blog post
I recommend using these prompts at the planning stage to think about a seasons worth, or even a year’s worth of content. These 57 prompts are not mutually exclusive;
You can mix 2, 5 and 15 together to get a series of interviews for your blog where you put two experts head to head on a subject, and then pull out their best quotes to create memes to share on social media.
You can mix 12, 14 and 21 together to create the ultimate visual checklist for pretty much anything from buying kitchen gadgets to choosing a holiday to share with vegetarian friends.
Here’s the list in full:
- The interview — plain and simple
2. The interview — Same question asked to different people — experts
3. The interview — Contrast two views — e.g. business voice versus customer voice.
4. Guest posts: Write for someone else OR Get someone to write for you
5. A blog series — 6 posts on XYZ
6. Reports
7. Poll or Survey and then a Report
8. Collated Stats
9. The How-To tutorial
10. Reflection on an experience
11. The review
12. The comparison review
13. Three things I learned from an experience/an interview
14. Gallery/Album
15. Quote
16. Video and commentary or show notes
17. Audio/podcast and commentary or show notes
18. Lists and Listicles
19. Link Lists: Curated lists of other peoples’ content
20. Cheat sheets
21. Checklists
22. Why everyone else is wrong about something
23. Infographic
24. Roundups
25. Breaking News & why it matters to your audience
26. Case Studies
27. Profile Post
28. Behind the Scenes
29. The problem and the solution
30. Curate social commentary. e.g. how twitter reacted to . . .
31. Questions to ask when/who
32. FAQ
33. Contests
34. Screencasts and Webinars
35. Thinking out loud/working out loud/learning out loud
36. Rants, open letters and criticisms
37. Complete Beginners Guide to . . .
38. My favourite tools/apps/etc.
39. Metrics to measure
40. Myth-busting
41. Previews
42. Curate a niche topic or a person’s work
43. Shout-outs and Thank you
44. A personal story with a meaning.
45. Glossary or jargon-buster
46. Folks I rate to follow
47. History of your product, service or company
48. Roundups
49. Handover to charity. Give your platform to a worthy cause.
50. Definitions
51. Research about something, step by step
52. What if? A thought piece to encourage conversations
53. Debate — two sides of a story
54. Examples — of say, customer service moments — not a case study
55. E-book — possibly crowdsourced
56. Collab project with other bloggers
57. Ask me Anything — or Open for Questions
