PB028: Write a Review Post [Day 28 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog]

How to Write a Review Post Today's episode is about how to write a review post. Reviews are used many millions of times every day by people looking to make sense of the array of choices that they have, and to help them to make a decision. Writing reviews can help you to help those people, but also help you to grow your blog. Decision by Alan Crosthwaite on 500px In this Episode You can listen to today's episode above or in iTunes or Stitcher (where we'd also LOVE to get your reviews on those platforms if you have a moment). Today we talk about: Why writing reviews can grow your blog How to choose what to review How to write a review so that it is useful and interesting 6 questions every review should answer How to increase the lifespan of your review posts Further reading Further Reading: How to Write a Must-Read Product Review How to Write Amazing Product Reviews How to Write Genuinely Useful Reviews Online: Lifehacker Tips for Travel Writing: The Guardian 7 Tips for Writing Good Online Reviews: Better Business Bureau Full Transcript Expand to view full transcript Compress to smaller transcript view Welcome to day 28 of 31 days to build a better blog and the 28th episode of the ProBlogger Podcast. My name is Darren Rowse and today, I'm issuing you with a challenge to write a review on your blog. Some of you will be struggling already to think about how you could write a review in your blog, but don't worry, I'm going to suggest a whole heap of different types of reviews that you could write on your blog today and give you some really good tips on how to write that review. I've also got some examples of reviews that you can check out at today's show notes at problogger.com/podcast/28. Hi. It's Darren from ProBlogger. Welcome to day 28 of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. Today, we have our very last writing challenge of the 31 days. Today, I want to challenge you to write a review post. For some of you, this won't be a massive challenge as you may regularly write them already. I know some of you probably have blogs that are just purely reviews, so today, it's business as usual for you. For many others, this will be something quite new. I keep coming across bloggers who've never written a review, even though it would be a legitimate type of posts for their blog. Let's just briefly talk about why review posts are something to consider for your blog. The main reason is that the web is used every day by millions of people looking to make decisions, choose between options, seek advice about buying something or using something. They use the web to make sense of the array of choices that they've got in front of them. This is just what we do all day every day on Google. I suspect there's a large percentage of searches that are really searches for reviews or people's opinions on the sorts of choices and decisions that we make every day, so writing a review on your blog positions you to be found at the end of those searches. Reviews are also great places for you to insert your opinions, which we found on day 19, which is something that can be really good for your blog. It sets you apart and makes you distinct.  There's also an opportunity with reviews to monetize your blog, whether that be through promoting products as an affiliate or working with brands who want to reach audiences who are in a buying- or decision-making mode. If you're writing reviews on your blog for people who are making purchase decisions, you're going to find advertisers wanting to align themselves with you more and more. This is how I’ve made my first commercial blog. It was a camera review blog, I wrote reviews and I aggregated other people's reviews from around the web. My two sources of income on that blog were advertising revenue, both through ad networks like AdSense and Chitika,