5 Reasons to Stay on Topic on Your Blog

Blogs are a terrific outlet for expressing yourself in a public forum, and the blogosphere offers many opportunities for connecting with likeminded individuals and sharing different viewpoints. As you begin to blog regularly you may gain a faithful audience that looks forward to the updates you provide on various topics, and over time you will inevitably develop a niche that is specific to your blog. Your audience will begin to have expectations for the type of material you cover and trust you to provide quality content that is on point and well-written. However sometimes it’s easy to get way off track when you’re writing and what may start out as an article about one topic can quickly morph into something else if you aren’t careful. This type of writing is confusing for readers and can discourage them from coming back on a regular basis, making it important to stay on topic as you write.

Here are five reasons to stay on topic on your blog:

1. Staying focused will help you make your point quickly and help retain readers. If you tend to go off on tangents, the meaning you are trying to convey can grow muddled and people may lose interest halfway through the article. This means you should not write and then simply hit the publish button on your site. Read over your material and refine it as needed. Concise sentences and paragraphs relating clearly to your points generally work best.
2. Your readers will enjoy your writing more when it is to the point. If you have a topic, but then decide that it is time to introduce an unrelated element, you are making your audience take a leap into your stream of consciousness. If readers do not see the connection, you may have more puzzled comments left as a reaction to your post, and fewer comments addressing the point you tried to make.
3. Clear writing can avoid an online conversation that is unrelated to your topic. While you may want a lively conversation with your audience, you also probably want them to be engaged in the topics you are addressing. An unfocused blog with unclear writing could inspire a few commenters to poke holes into the entire premise of your work, leading your readers down a negative feedback path in the comments section.
4. Sticking with what you know prevents lapsing into things you do not know. Some bloggers wander into issues in which they have little expertise, which can end up taking the blogger down a slippery slope that leads readers to distrust the information being provided to them. Misinformation introduced in this realm can soon lead to questions about any information presented after that by the writer. To build credibility and a regular core audience, keep your blog topics centered on issues you can speak to with authority. You soon may become a point of reference for other blogs as an expert on a particular topic, further building your online readership.
5. Your readers have a better chance of reading your work to the end if the topic is clear. When the topic guides all of your content’s flow, then your readers will have fewer reasons to become distracted and leave your page. The audience will come to expect your voice of authority on a subject. Readers will want to see how you bring the issue full circle as you keep them engaged in the journey.

To help you stay on track with your blog topic, remember that you can use a story outline as a framework to guide your writing. Set up an introductory paragraph highlighting the main point you want to make, and refer back to it often as you write. Before you publish anything, be sure to proof read through your post several times to ensure that it makes sense and that it’s on point. Having well-written, insightful posts that stay on topic will encourage readers to regularly come back to your blog, which is the best way to build a steady, faithful readership.

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