Is this the Perfect Blog Post?
If you are reading this, you are part of the 20% who read a headline and then read the blog. People who read blogs tend to read the first 3 words of a headline and the last 3 words of a headline—so I made the headline 6 total words.
Why is this a great subhead?
It is a great subhead because people tend to scan, not read. That makes headlines and subheads critically important. So I’ve included a nice subhead that is a question, which is proven to pull in readers.
Now, my blog cannot be longer than 300 words because that is approximately how much you can read in one minute. And if you are the One-Minute Marketer®, you have to keep it short. But research shows that blog post that are 1,500 words or more receive more shares. So write away.
Of the 100 top-performing blog posts:
- 92% have articles that have social buttons
- 75% allow comments
- 5% have embedded videos
- 22% contain quotes
- 45% used numbered lists as topics
- 35% were a tutorial, guide or how-to
- Contain 9.96 links in the blog
- Have an average of 3.2 images
I’m not sure this was the perfect blog, but it has a lot of the right bones. My thanks to Kevan Lee of Buffer for much of the inspiration for this blog. He has a great content marketing blog.
Mark Mathis
Mark wrote his first direct-mail fundraising letter in 1981 for the University of Iowa Center for Advancement. The effort raised a few million dollars in undiscovered wills and legacy gifts. From that day forward Mark discovered a love of the big idea that moves the needle.
After 12 years at KWWL, Mark became a business owner as a co-founder of ME&V — rebranded as AMPERAGE in 2015. After 25 years of leading creative teams in video production, graphic design, PR, writing and web development, Mark transitioned out of ownership in 2021. Today he serves in an employee role as special projects consultant.
He is creatively ambidextrous — son of an artist and engineer — and famous for distilling complex ideas down to a few words and a few visuals. Mark is a writer. When he found that many nonprofits struggled with complex branding puzzles, he wrote the book, “NonProfit-NonMarketing .” He also wrote a novel called “Reenactment.”
Mark is an active blogger OneMinuteMarketer® with nearly 1,000 readers each week on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. One of his most popular YouTube videos is on “How to Look Good on Zoom.”
One of Mark’s fondest business memories was being named to INC 500 two times and attending the INC 500 conference with other winners. Mark is considered by some a Civil War expert (and that explains his novel). Mark also served as an adjunct professor in the business and in the communications departments at Wartburg College.
Mark is a graduate of the University of Iowa and is currently vice president of the University of Iowa Journalism and Mass Communications Advisory Board.
Mark is married to state Sen. Liz Mathis, and the two love to travel, even when it means being trapped by a volcano in the Czech Republic for three weeks.