4 Features Every Blog Post Should Have

There are certain features every blog post should have in order to both be seen as a quality article by your audience and work to help build your readership.

There are some elements that put certain blogs in a category above the rest. While some of the better blogs out there are very different from one another, each post has certain features that every blog post should have. These features are what add to the overall high quality of the blog, and for yours to reach that same level, you should be incorporating these features that every blog post should have.

Though there are certain elements unique to one post or another, the four elements below should always find their way into each of your posts.

Shareability

You want your content to reach as many people as possible, right? Well then you should include means through which your audience can share it!

Adding share buttons to your blog should be one of the first things you do once you get started. The easier it is to share your great content, the faster your audience and reader loyalty will grow!

Images

Sure, images look great and add a visual aspect to your posts, but including an image with the proper alt tags is an excellent way to get found. It is important to optimize your blog for search engines in every way possible, and properly tagged images are one way to do that.

The presence of an image or two also means that Pinterest now becomes a player in the social sharing game. Recently, the photo pinning network surpassed Twitter as one of the top sources for social referral traffic and it shows no signs of stopping. So add images to your blog posts – they are far more valuable than you might think.

Questions

Get the conversation started and engage your audience every time you post. End your article with a question, or ask your audience for their thoughts. You might have a group of readers that want to take part in the conversation but still need that extra push to get involved, so give it to them!

Succinctness

You are not writing a novel. The poetics and imagery are not nearly as important as the substance. (Unless of course you are writing a blog about poetics and imagery.)

Online attention spans are not very long – only a few seconds, actually. You need to grab your audience’s attention fast and share what you need to quickly. Filling an article with fluff will mean a higher bounce rate. But if you are clear and concise you can surely expect reader to come back for more.

These are just a few features every blog post should have. There are certainly more, but these are among the most important – no matter what type of blog you are writing.

What other features have you found to be important when it comes to successful blogging? Tell us in the comments below or on Twitter!