‘In order to bait a link, you need a hook. Hooks come in variety of flavors, some of the more popular would include:

* News hook
* Contrary Hook
* Attack Hook
* Resource Hook
* Humour Hook’

He goes on later in the post to expand upon each of them - with some excellent advice. I’ve especially found the ‘resource’ and ‘news’ hooks to be very powerful in the building of my own blogs.

I would give a word of warning though with the ‘attack’ hook (and even the ‘contrary’ one).

Over my time of blogging I’ve noticed a lot of blogs attempt to build their profile through ‘contrary’ and ‘attack’ posts. The strategy can work well at getting attention of others in your niche if you write in this way in the short term - but in my experience this approach can have some pretty negative consequences if you’re not careful.

While it may well bring you links (both from those you attack and others in your niche) it can also bring down your own reputation unless you either:

• are a brilliant writer who knows what you’re talking about
• already have a profile and the respect of others in your niche
• have the ability to not only attack the weaknesses of others but the ability to provide positive and constructive alternatives

It is this last point that I feel is most crucial. It is pretty easy to attack another blogger’s opinions and ideas - but it’s another matter to provide an valid alternative. If you’re trying to build your profile in an industry the last thing you’ll want to be known as is ‘the grump’ who is always tearing down others and their ideas. When I look at most industry leaders I see that most of them tend to be visionary types who are often extreme optimists, dreamers and visionaries. While they have a healthy view of what doesn’t work in their industry they are always pushing the boundaries and are more known for what they’ve built than what they’ve torn down.

I think it’s very dangerous to build a blog solely upon a negative vibe. While a few bloggers do the angry cynical thing quite well - it’s difficult to build a popular and sustainable blog on this type of approach. I’ve seen quite a few of these blogs come and go and suspect that they don’t tend to last for one of two reasons (or some combination of the two).

Firstly I suspect that most people just don’t like to hang around with (in the long term) angry, negative and bitter people. I know people in real life like this and while I appreciate their honesty and ‘what you see is what you get’ type attitude I don’t gravitate towards them on a regular basis. Life’s too short to hang around with grumps. Most blog readers seem to get a bit over the negative approach of the attacking blogger if this is all they do and will move on.

Secondly I suspect that most bloggers themselves don’t have what it takes to always be negative. While the initial exhilaration of writing something that gets others stirred up and brings some traffic might be fun - I’m not sure how many people are wired in a way that allows them to always be negative and at the centre of controversy. Perhaps it’s just me - but I find even after 24 hours of getting into a ‘blog fight’ (I rarely allow myself to be drawn into one these days) I’m ready to move on to something else - I don’t like what it does to me and think it would take it’s toll on my emotional well being to be that way all the time.

So if you’re considering using the ‘attack hook’ approach to build your blog (and I do think there are valid times and places for these types of posts) I would always advise considering how to balance it. You might want to do this through providing a positive alternative, attempting to attack in a dialogical /conversational way with the one you’re critiquing or by balancing it with other posts of a more positive nature. I personally keep ‘attack’ posts to a minimum - they are something to season your blog with rather than dominate it with - but then again I’m constantly told I’m ‘too nice’ so what would I know?

What is Good Content?

Ultimately defining what is ‘good content’ is a subjective exercise (perhaps in a similar way to defining what is a ‘good book’ or a ‘good movie’) and so a post like this one is likely to cause a little debate as each person will define it differently depending upon their personality, their needs, the topic that they are talking about and perhaps even their ethics. Not only will bloggers themselves each have a different view on what is ‘good’ content - but readers tend to also. I know that every time I ask for feedback on ProBlogger and what I write more about I get a real spectrum of responses.

Future posts in this series is an attempt to unpack some of the elements of content that might go towards making it good - or not. At most points along the way there will be debate but hopefully out of it readers will be able to mix and match the elements and identify what works for them.

So without any more introductory remarks, lets get into it with the first element of writing quality content:

Usefulness and Uniqueness - As this post is a part of a series of posts that get back to the basics of blogging and so I will start unpacking the topic of ‘writing good content’ with perhaps the most basic and obvious point of all:

‘for a blog to be successful your content needs to be useful and unique to your readers’

As I say - it’s not rocket science but it’s a factor that I think bloggers need to continually be asking themselves about as they review their blogging. Is your blog useful?

Back in the days when I studied marketing I remember sitting in lecture after lecture getting more and more frustrated as I heard my lecturers drum into us the same thing time after time. Although they said it in different ways, the lessons that they communicated was largely the same in every instance and boiled down to this:

‘Start with the customer - find out what they want and give it to them.’

This is a good lesson for bloggers also.

While I would also recommend that you start with yourself as a blogger and blog out of your own passions, experiences and knowledge - it is essential that you are aware of your reader and that you create content that will add something to their lives. Give them something useful.

What is ‘useful’ content?

Of course ‘useful content’ to me is different from what it is to you, but could be any of the following:

- Entertainment - increasingly blogs are being used as entertainment. People are going to them for laughs, for gossip and for fun conversation.
- Education - some blog readers are primarily interested in learning something about a given topic.
- Information - many successful blogs are built on the thirst that some have to be informed on an issue, product or topic
- Debate - some blog readers want a place that they can have a good old fashioned dialogue, debate or even a fight over an issue
- News - many blog readers just want to be kept up to date in a field
- Community - I’m aware of some very successful blogs that tap into the need that people have to connect and belong. Quite often the topic is secondary to these connections.

This list could of course be a lot longer (feel free to add to it in comments). Each blog has the potential to be ‘useful’ in a different way and it would probably be unwise to start a blog that tried to be all of these things at once (although many blogs do do a variety of these things at once).

Research your Readership

Perhaps the best advice that I could give on developing useful content is to research your readership (or potential readership). If you already have a blog do this by surveying your readers (either formally or informally) or by asking for feedback. I regularly seek out the opinion of my blog readers to find out what their needs and desires are in the topic I’m talking about. If you don’t have a blog already then you’ll need to work a little harder to research your potential readers. I tend to survey friends, look a lot at other people’s blogs on a topic (especially their comments section to see what types of questions people are asking) and particularly look hard in forums and discussion groups on topics where there is usually a lot of question asking going on. As you do this you’ll begin to put your finger on what people are wanting and what you might be able to provide to meet these needs.

Unique Content

Another factor to consider when thinking about ‘good content’ is whether it is ‘unique’.

With a blog being created every second and with blogs on virtually every topic you can think of, the challenge for bloggers is to build a blog that stands out from the crowd. I see blogs every day that provide ‘useful’ content that have no readers simply because people are finding that information in other places.

Distinguish yourself

My advice to new bloggers trying to break into a topic where others are already blogging is to take a surf through the other blogs and websites in your niche and do some analysis upon what sort of content that they are producing. In most niches you’ll find that sites are all presenting very similar information in pretty much the same voice, tone and style. As a new blogger on the topic you have a choice - you can either replicate what they are doing and try to do it better (difficult as they will already have loyal readers and unless you’re brilliant at it you’re unlikely to convert these readers over to you) OR you can distinguish yourself in someway from what others are doing.

Bring together the elements of both Useful and Unique content and you will be one step closer to a successful blog.

Original Content - You will notice that I have chosen the world ‘unique’ instead of ‘original’ in this post. There is mixed opinion in blogging circles on whether original content is always best. Regular readers of this blog know that not all my posts here are completely ‘original’. There are some posts where I use short excerpts (quotes) from other blogs as part of my blog entries. For example in a earlier post in this series on ‘what is a blog‘ I used a number of quotes from other bloggers as part of the post. As a result that post might not be classified as ‘original’ as such - but it is somewhat ‘unique’ (and hopefully useful) as I put them together in a way that they had not been used before (side by side) and then added my own comments to them.

My main advice on ‘orginal’ content is that writing is generally best as it won’t be found anywhere else in that form - however clever and fair use of other people’s content (always giving credit for it and using it within a ‘fair use’ way - ie only using short quotes’) CAN be worth doing IF you use it in a way that is useful to your readers.