Give Readers a Compelling Reason to Stick Around

At this point, you should have determined the style and topic of your blog, as well as validated the existence of a sizable potential audience. Now you can start thinking about how to answer a question that many of your visitors will ask themselves: Why should I subscribe to this blog?

I phrased that question to intentionally imply a subscription to your upcoming posts via email or feed, the latter being less common these days but still used to a degree among a technical readership. Another way of phrasing the question would be to inquire why people should come back to your blog.

Whatever the exact question you ask, you need a convincing answer. What’s the reason why your blog exists? Why did you start it in the first place? What’s your compelling story? Answer these questions and you’ll have a much clearer picture of what your blog is really about and why visitors will want to return.

The Elevator Pitch

The business world has a concept called the elevator pitch. Its name derives from the hypothetical scenario of finding yourself in an elevator with a potential investor. In such a context, you only get between thirty and ninety seconds to summarize what your product or company is all about before the doors of the fictional elevator spring open. While you don’t need to raise money for your blog, considering your pitch is still a worthwhile exercise.

Your elevator pitch should quickly summarize the essence of your product or company. Why does it exist? What problem does it solve? What is its value proposition?

We are dealing with a blog here, but the same principle applies. Characterize your blog in one or two sentences at most and give people a reason why they should come back and visit again.

Case Study: Popular Tech Blogs

To help you with this task, let’s look briefly at a few blogs (listed by URL) and analyze the compelling reasons for their existence.

• https://daringfireball.net: News and opinions about Apple by an unrepentant advocate of Apple products. Reason to read it: It provides fresh insight, interesting controversy, and news about Apple and its competitors delivered by an established community pundit.

• https://thedailywtf.com: Daily examples of bad programming. Reason to read it: To learn more about antipatterns in programming and for amusement.

• https://troyhunt.com: The personal blog of security expert Troy Hunt. Reason to read it: To learn more about security and the latest threats.

• https://seths.blog: The personal blog of marketing expert Seth Godin. Reason to read it: To improve your marketing skills with the aid of a leader in the marketing world via thought-provoking ideas and bite-sized insight.

• https://techcrunch.com: News about startups and technology. Reason to read it: To stay up-to-date with the world of technology and startups.

• https://engadget.com: News about gadgets. Reason to read it: To stay abreast of the latest gadgets.

• https://flowingdata.com: A visualization and statistics blog. Reason to read it: To learn, in the blog’s words, “how designers, programmers, and statisticians are putting data to good use.” It’s a must for those interested in data visualization and statistics.

In each example above, the reason why you should follow these blogs is pretty obvious and can be stated in a single sentence.

Come Up with Your Blog’s Reason for Being

Your goal is to make it just as obvious, to yourself first and then to your readers, why your blog is worth following. Remember the elevator pitch we discussed earlier. You only have from a few seconds (most commonly) to a few minutes (rarely and at the very most) to effectively win your readers over. You want to state your blog’s intent through your title, tagline/motto, “about” blurb in the sidebar, and on the About page. Be as direct as possible: don’t be subtle about stating what your blog is about and who it’s for.

In the example of the TypeScript niche, we could set our sights on becoming a one-stop resource for folks who are interested in TypeScript news. Alternatively, we could make the blog about tutorials on how to accomplish various tasks or, again, create a blog that’s dedicated solely to converting from JavaScript to TypeScript programming. What about one that is devoted to documenting your journey as you try to become proficient in TypeScript and related frameworks (e.g., Angular)?

Pick the idea that suits you best for your own subject; pretty much any will do as long as you give it an angle and clearly communicate the point of your blog to your visitors.

Over time you’ll find that many other elements corroborate with your effort to make your blog compelling for your readers. These include the quality and usefulness of your articles, the type of visitors and comments that your blog attracts, the design of your site, and even how catchy your headlines are. We’ll examine each of these points in further detail in the coming chapters.