Blogging Basics for Aspiring Authors: Lesson 5
Whether you write a blog or a book you must begin with a core idea. That idea also must be instilled with a sense of purpose that carries both the blog and the book along over time. If the content on your blog and in your book—or in your blogged book—reflects your core idea and purpose, your posts become fuel for the inner fire that keep your blogged book attracting new readers and remaining relevant to returning readers.
What is Core Content?
To accomplish this, you need to write core content. These are blog posts that discuss the core ideas of your blog or blogged book as well as the purpose of your blog or blogged book. The core idea is the subject or topic about which you are writing. Core content can be defined as blog posts that explain the basic idea, purpose, principles, ideas, concepts, etc., in your blogged book or that you discuss on your blog (if you aren’t blogging a book). You may have heard this type of blog content called “foundation posts,” “cornerstone content,” “evergreen content,” or “pillar posts.”
I stress honing your topic or subject early—before you begin writing or blogging—by writing a pitch. (Read more about that here.) It’s important to really know what you are writing about before you begin writing or blogging a book.
The purpose of your blog and book most likely follows closely with your own personal sense of mission—the reason you feel compelled to write a book or to blog on a particular topic. However, your book’s purpose also should align with the benefits it will provide to readers. You can think of the benefits as the promises you make to readers about what they will gain by reading your blogged book.
Get the Fire Going with Core Content
To start the internal fire of your blogged book, create 5-10 core content posts. Before you write them, make sure you actually know what your blog or blogged book is about. If you don’t:
- Write a pitch, if you haven’t already. This will help you hone your topic.
- Determine the purpose you want to fulfill by blogging a book (or blogging).
- Determine the purpose you want your book to fulfill.
Most blogging experts describe core content as “basic” articles, ones newbies to your site or to this subject matter need to read to understand what you are writing about. For this reason, often these posts are structured as:
- how-to
- definition
- theory or argument
- lists
- problem and solution
- question and answer
The reason core posts are also called “evergreen content” is that they never get outdated. Your blog site—and your readers—will always need them. That means they will remain just as relevant three years from now as they are today. Core content is created with posts your readers will want to bookmark or that will become your most popular posts.
If you periodically—or continuously—write core content that reflects your central blog and blogged book idea, you continue to stoke the internal fire on your site. This keeps your blogged book (or blog) warm—even hot—giving it a glow that draws readers. New readers will find it because of the great core content, and loyal readers will come back again and again to read posts they’ve read before and ones you’ve recently published. Each core content post you produce builds on the previous ones and supports subsequent ones, creating a larger and larger fire, a larger and larger foundation of material to attract more readers.
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