How to Write a Series of Articles?

Do you want to write a series of articles? There are many kinds of series, whether monthly or weekly, that you can work your mind around. These can include news and other information in your niche, can be centered on a theme, a limited-time series with crucial insights into a topic, etc.

No matter what you write about, a series post is a great way to improve engagement.

11 steps to write a series post

Readers who are your followers will always check back on your newly published posts, while new visitors would likely read through several posts from a series. If you want to increase the visibility of these posts and gain higher engagement, you can also interlink these to your blogs, social media, and other platforms. However, the first is to write a good series post. So in this article, we look at what makes and breaks good posts and the steps you must follow. Let’s get started!  

Choose a topic for your series post.

The first and the most important step is to figure out and decide what kind of topic works best for your series. You need to find something that gives you in-depth insight or a how-to guide. Such topics are usually evergreen, which means that people will always keep coming back to it. Refrain from using anything that would make it look dated. You will obviously spend and invest more time writing series posts rather than the non-series posts.

If you are an experienced blogger, you would know by now that generally, blogs with thousands of words get read only by a few of your followers. So if you are writing a post that is too long, and can easily be broken down into several parts, then consider writing multiple posts around that topic.

Create a list

If you are an experienced blogger, you must have done this a thousand times before and cannot deny how beneficial this exercise is! When you have decided that a particular topic is big enough to give a jump start to your series, it is then time for a brainstorming session. The end result should leave you with a compilation of a list of the main points that would like to cover in your series posts.

When you sit down to create a list, remember that these should initially start as bullet point lists of keywords and phrases. These are keywords that are highly searched around your topic. Once you have a list of all the keyword, go back, and add a few descriptive sentences under each point. This will help give you an idea of what kind of tone can that keyword flow in. Needless to say, once you focus your mind on this, you can easily come up with a list of many ideas pretty easily and quickly.

Create an outline for each post

Now that you have chosen the topic that you want to work with create an outline for those that you will include in your series. You can start by writing separate outlines for the posts, which are quite general. This will give you a better idea of the points you would like to include and discard. Do you like you do not need to create an outline before composing a post? Well, no matter how experienced you are, when you plan to write a series, post consistency is key.

Remember that your goal here is to attract and engage with new audiences, so you must step-up your game. When you plan your posts, you would know exactly which topic covers the next, so there is a seamless continuation in picking it off!

Set a posting frequency target

Once you have established a good list of posts for your series and created outlines for each of these, it is time to set goals and establish boundaries. From the list and outlines, you can now easily figure out how many posts you will actually need to complete. And that, in turn, will tell you how many weeks or months will your series post run for.

Since this is the first series post you are working on, try to aim at letting it run for a week. However, at times you may have also noticed that there are post series that run over longer as well as shorter time frames. So it is safe and good to know what you are aiming for in advance as it gives you an idea of how many posts can be included, the frequency of the posts, the time frame over which it runs, and other such questions.

Saving up draft posts

Now that you have quite a fairer idea of what you are going to write about and have settled in details for each of the posts, you can save these ideas as drafts. Start by typing sentences and descriptions, as well as draft titles. Don’t worry about setting a permanent title, you can always change it until you feel satisfied.

So go ahead and create content for your posts that can be saved as drafts. When you leave them as drafts, you can keep editing them in the coming days as per your requirement.

Pick a compelling title.

The title that you set for your series is vital. It is what can make or break your efforts. So, you must give serious consideration to the title of your series post. Keep in mind your personal branding and then of how these series can be marketed. When you choose a title, it is reflected in search engines, email, as well as social media. Your title should ideally accurately reflect the content that follows. Try to use strong words, add value, and use visuals.

It is also vital that you optimize the title for your audience, search, and social parameters. A great way to do this is by adding keywords at the beginning of the title, keeping it 56 characters long (short enough for it to be retweeted), and includes challenges as well solutions wrapped in one.

Announce the series

Once you are ready to go live and share your content with your audience, you need to announce the series with a mind blowing introductory post. It is important to announce the series in order to create excitement among your audience and give them a hint of what to expect.

But where exactly should you make these announcements? Social media, of course! If you are new to social media or sharing your posts on social, then you don’t need to set up all the social media platforms – Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, etc. Simply pick one and focus on that. Choose the one that you would feel the most comfortable with or the one that will help you reach your audience easily.

Introduce the series

Right before you simply start publishing your posts, you need to create an introductory post that talks about the series, and will act as a hub to interlink all the posts that you create. You can put these up in the sidebar or create a ‘reader’s favorite’ section so that new visitors can find all of these with ease.

The introductory post needs to talk about what kind of topics you will be discussing or covering, the ideas or perspective that your posts will touch up, the frequency of the posts so that the readers will know when to come back for me, and so on. It is vital that you post this introduction a day before you start posting the actual series posts. Doing this tiny activity can give your series the maximum impact.

Start with one post a day.

If you are an experienced blogger or an avid follower of bloggers, you will notice that some bloggers write one article a day, while some write all the posts in advance and then schedule a publishing timer for a future date. However, when you are writing a series of posts, we recommend that you write one post a day. This helps keep your posts fresh. Your post will only take off once it has been published and engaged with your audience. When your audience engages with your post in the form of likes, shares, and comments, you get a better idea of what they are looking for or their perspective on your post.

If you write all your posts together and then set a future date for publishing them, you are not paying attention to your readers and their needs. You are losing an important opportunity here. When you write one article at a time, you have the opportunity to build around what you are writing and can give your reader an experience they expect.

Interlink your posts

It is very important that you interlink your posts. Your followers and regular readers are bound to keep visiting back to read updated posts. However, new readers land up on your posts from a search, and if you fail to interlink your posts, they might land upon a post in the middle of the series and would have a bad experience in searching for the rest of the posts in that series. You can interlink your posts in many ways.

Central page

Create a page that lists each post in the series. This is sort of like a ‘table of contents’ and makes it easy for your new as well as existing readers to find the article they wish to read.

At the beginning or end of the posts

Basically, you are linking each post in your series to the next post. You can have both a before and after posts linked in your post.

Finish with a bang

It is very important to finish your series. Readers love to have closure, and it is always great to finish a series with a summary of what has been written with some reflection on the writing process and your personal experience.

Another great way to end a series to encourage and invite readers to share their experience and perspective. By doing this, you not only get reader interaction but also develop a great series of posts as your readers go on adding their expertise and experience.

Conclusion

Everything comes with its own set of pros and cons. One such drawback of writing series posts is that if you publish too many of them, your reader might not interact as much. This is mainly because if you break a topic in multiple articles, it might seem like a gimmick, and also the information spread can be too thin.

Additionally, new readers would be quite lost in the sea of content.  It is quite clear that the success of your series posts comes from planning well ahead in time. So aim at getting fresh and relevant content on your page that will encourage readers – old and new – engage with you. So if you have some great ideas for your series post, follow this guide and get started today!