Do You Answer The Question?

blog cover image
29
2.2K followers

Yes, now I do.

Do you read your posts after you publish them? Do you also let others read your posts? It's great when you got someone that can do this on a regular basis for you, especially when they can also give you feedback on your content.

After Publishing - Assess Your Content

While driving to a car repair appointment yesterday, me and my wife were discussing my websites. She often reads through my last posts to see if there is anything to improve. She also wonders about the progress on the sales side of things. It's great to be able to talk together about these things. We are both creative writers - she is writing a book and I am writing blogs, so it is nice to be able to support each other.

Anyway, yesterday she did read some of my recent blogs of both my cat niche site and my bootcamp site. Although she has little interest in my bootcamp site, she wants to read it from a review point of view whether she is able to understand my content.

What followed out of this review, is that I managed to write a bunch of blog posts the past weeks without answering the question that was in the blog title. Not once!

Clarify Your Message

It is very important to be clear in your communication. It is easy to ramble on about a lot of stuff without actually getting your message through. For some informational blog it isn't that important perhaps, but if you are actually trying to sell stuff, you are losing lots of potential buyers.

Worse is when people cannot clarify their message through marketing campaigns. It is costing them first many thousands of dollars to create bad marketing material and then it is costing them thousands if not millions in missed sales.

Even for a normal blog-type of website you are losing if you don't clarify your message. This is perhaps not directly translated into money, but you will be able to keep readers on your site longer if you write the stuff they want answers upon.

Recently I have been studying on how to clarify your message better and to avoid noise. I will link that here sometime later through another blog.

Noise

Noise is difficult to understand for anyone. Noise is making your message or communication unclear and fuzzy. Noise is what we refer to as the static that was seen on TV-screens when there was no broadcast available.

In my blogs I have been adding more noise.

Especially my cat niche website is suffering from that mistake. Quite a lot of my articles are of the type: Why?, What?, Where? and How?.

So I wrote an article about cats sleeping: "Why Do Cats Always Sleep?"

and NOT ONCE did I answer the question! Amazing!

I added a lot of other not directly related stuff to the article. Yes, I managed to write a bunch of words for that article. I made it so far as to tell about what cats do when they do not sleep.

Wait a second... what was the title again? Why do cats always sleep? Wasn't I supposed to answer that question?

Keep Readers Interested From The Start

I am not entirely bad. There are actually articles where I did answer the question.

Where did I answer the question? Not in the first minute of reading, but soemwhere along the 1500 words of content.

Unfortunately I had already bored some people away in the first paragraph of my long text. They left my website and went most likely to a competitor that managed to answer quicker.

My wife suggested that I should answer the question in the first paragraph of my text. If that answer is multiple answers, then name them all in the first paragraph. The rest of your content should then use each of the mentioned answers or part answers as their own header and paragraph.

My wife said: Answer the question immediately and deepen it out in the rest of your blog.That way, those who have gotten interested to read more about my answer, can read more in the article below.

I have always felt that I should try to keep my readers reading the entire article, by providing the answer somewhere within the many words on paper. Who says they will actually read the entire article? No one. I should know better. I know very well about the TLDR type of term on the internet.

When I research the internet for answers on my questions or reviews for the product I want to buy, I also want the answer very quick. I certainly do not want to read an entire article to find my answer and definitely do not want to use my brain to understand the answer.

Simple Beings

We are very simple beings and from Stone Age Time do want to save energy where possible. This is why the writing style is so important in your article. If the answer is difficult to find or people have to use their brain to figure out the answer, you have lost them.

You do not only need to understand the customer buying cycle, but also the way that humans think, work and function to write sales copy that converts.

This is definitely a big area for improvement for myself. I need to write stuff way simpler so that people can understand what I am talking about without having to think (too much).

Answer The Question

So from now on (if you didn't already), answer the question as soon as possible and deepen out your answer in the rest of your article. That way you answer the need of your audience immediately, while also providing more explanation to why that answer is the right one below it.

You immediately get the attention from your audience and the interested people will stay around to listen what else you have got to say about it.

Don't forget to complement the article with images (and perhaps a video) that directly relate to the subject. Add a couple of internal and external links that relate to the content and give the article a strong Call-To-Action to get your audience to buy something, subscribe to your newsletter or read another awesome post.

Login
Create Your Free Wealthy Affiliate Account Today!
icon
4-Steps to Success Class
icon
One Profit Ready Website
icon
Market Research & Analysis Tools
icon
Millionaire Mentorship
icon
Core “Business Start Up” Training

Recent Comments

18


I would answer the big question in a catchy title which will attract visitors. That is the place they start.
If you don't mind here is an article I learned a lot how to write effective blogs. Anusuya

yeah that is a nice tutorial by Loes, but I still feel that doesn't answer a question. It simply catches a reader and says that the answer will be found somewhere within the article.

Most people will then try to scan the article for the answers, but a lot of people will simply click away - not bothered with the slur of having to go through the entire post.

That's why I try to answer as much as possible within the first paragraph. The title is usually just the question or statement.

Steven

Thanks for sharing.

You are in a lucky situation with a wife who's also a writer and can critique your posts. Thanks for the great info in your post.
Grant

Very true Grant, very true. Behind every great man is a great wife/woman. :) I am pretty sure it also goes for women having a great man behind them.

Steven

Great topic and solutions Steve. It is very important that we be clear and concise if we expect to retain returning and new visitors to our sites.
Jerome

Indeed Jerome, we need to clear the clutter and make room for what the visitor is looking for.

So true, thank you learned alot from your post.

well said. Thanks

Great point and reminder. We have to give readers what they expect or they they will click away and not return. :)

This is a great point that I have not seen discussed here before Steven! Your wife is right I think.

I don't like the super long posts some recommend here and the "if you want to find out the answer to XYZ, keep reading", then another paragraph down, "keep reading to see what I recommend", and so on and so on!

I tried that a few times and it just felt so awkward! I am so glad to see your post here and this refreshing advice!

I often find myself going to the bottom of a post to find the answer and then skimming back up to the top! I just found myself doing this on your post!! I am so used to not finding the answer until the end. I agree people want answers, so we should give them answers quickly. If they want to read more they can.

Thanks,
J.

Haha Jessica, that's an amazing point of view. I just realised that is what I always get so annoyed with on those blogs too. Have seen it a lot on health related sites, but also on Make money online sites where we get pushed and keep on getting pushed to read further more and more of their BLABLA.. to get an answer.

In some cases they postpone their answer through several blogs or through a sign up here wall.

Really, if I as a visitor get the answer straight away I can choose myself whether I want to read more or not. I think this is definitely an important thing to think about and I will take it into another blog soon to make that point even more clear.

Fair enough 3000 word posts are important, but that is not really what audience is looking for always. Sometimes you just look for an answer and want to get that with as little energy used as possible.

Steven

I have gone back and reordered my posts and in the very first post, I now offer links in the first three paragraphs to my recommended products.
I did an analysis (google analytics) and found that I had 14 hits this past week. 10 of those hits dropped off at the first page and the remaining 4 continued on.
So, I reordered my posts so that I can get the 10 hits that dropped off to at least see the post that my links are on.
Hoping my metrics will change this next week.

Interesting approach. I am looking forward to hear how it played out for you!

Steven

Hi Steven,
Got my Monthly report from Analytics. My traffic is growing, referral rate is up by 2%, but my bounce rate went down. Still wondering what else I can do but have recognized that I will have to work on my referral rate by further developing my social media presence. Pinterest primarily.

bounce rate should be low actually. It's a hard metric to get down, but it's best when people actually visit your site instead of clicking away again straight away.

Do follow Jay's guide on ranking:
- keyword in the title, first paragraph, meta title, meta description, alt of image
- internal link
- external link
- youtube video
- get comment(s)

To keep people on the page:
- youtube video
- interesting content.

Steven

Your wife is an astute observer. You have raised a point here that is going to help many of us streamline our approach.

I often wonder whether I am beginning to ramble on when piecing content together. I know that Google not only prioritizes quality of content but they also like a bit of volume.

The point that you're making is that we need to get to the point and compel the reader to continue reading irrespective of how long the post is. Get them engaged from the start.

Thank you,

Brian

Hi Brian!

Quite so yes. First of all it is great to give an answer early on to the initial question or problem. It is no problem to deepen out the situation a little further below, but while we try to be complete in our answer, we do want to make sure we are not just bringing a lot of noise to the reader.

Steven

See more comments

Login
Create Your Free Wealthy Affiliate Account Today!
icon
4-Steps to Success Class
icon
One Profit Ready Website
icon
Market Research & Analysis Tools
icon
Millionaire Mentorship
icon
Core “Business Start Up” Training