Trish Bradley – Sr. Digital Strategist
Guilty pleasure confession – I (sometimes) love bad movies. There is something oddly satisfying about watching a terrible film and being amused by poorly scripted plots, melodramatic acting, and budget CGI effects. There are some movies that are so ridiculous, so over-the-top, so bad that they’re good. And there are some people (myself included) that don’t mind reclining with some popcorn and watching a town get overtaken by a tornado of sharks.
Did I just watch Kelly Ripa curb-stomp a hammerhead in a pair of high heels? No wonder they made six of these movies.
Unfortunately, there isn’t an audience for bad blogs. If you are not taking the necessary steps to connect with your audience in a meaningful way, you’re not going to become some cult classic – your content just won’t be read.
But if you’re trying to create a new, niche audience for bad blogs, here’s some blogging advice that you may find helpful:
1. Remember, and then completely disregard, your target audience
Sure, you’ve already spent time considering your business’ buyer personas and the best kind of voice that will resonate with your audience. Now throw all of that research out the window! Make sure that your content is purposeless, without any regard to the solutions that you offer or the problems that you can fix. Keep your content dull, humorless, and unoriginal; you want to make sure that you’re not offering anything new to the conversation. Be sure to avoid catchy headlines, enticing content topics, or clear calls to action.
2. Don’t waste your time with editing your blog
There are several practical ways to enhance your reader’s experience while on your blog, including improving the readability of your copy or optimizing technical SEO. But that sounds like a lot of work and you don’t have time for that!
Don’t concern yourself with “trivial” matters like page loading speeds, font consistency, or whether your website is mobile-optimized. Sure, it might be more engaging to have a blog post that is divided up with images, infographics, quotes, or bullet point lists, but if you’re trying to create a terrible blog post, be sure to put your content in bulky, never-ending paragraphs. And skip that spell check.
Make sure that your blog has the readability aesthetic of a Tolkien novel.
3. Avoid any hyperlinks
Blogs are a great outlet for linking readers to additional valuable and relevant content found elsewhere on your website, but remember – we’re going for terrible, not great! Keep your blog free of any links to social media channels, previous posts, applicable webpages, or downloadable content. You could use your blogpost as an opportunity to better establish yourself as a thought leader in your field, but don’t believe the hype – earned media is so overrated. Extra tip: be sure to turn off comments on your blog so that readers are unable to engage with you or give feedback.
4. Make it all about you
One guaranteed way to chase away your readers is to bombard them with aggressive and shameless promotions of your services. Each blog post is just another opportunity to make a long-winded ad for your company, and who doesn’t see enough ads in their lives? Stay away from posts that highlight your employees, your mission, your company’s culture, or ways that your company contributes to the community. You also want to avoid highlighting any partners that you work with – make those blog posts all about you!
Follow these easy steps (and I hope you don’t!) and you’re on your way to a terrible blog post.
