Archive for January, 2009

Writing blog posts comes naturally to some people, but some struggle to write and convey their message effectively. Following some of the tips below, can improve your blog posts’ quality.

Get to the point, will you?

It’s very important that you get to the point in the first few sentences of your blog post. If you cannot do that (perhaps the topic is too broad) then at least give an abstract of what you will be talking first. This is to get the attention of the reader from the beginning, and to give them the idea on what the blog post will be all about.

So, don’t write few paragraphs building a base for your punchline in your post. Leaving the most important part of the post to the end is a bad idea. Unless you are some politician or celebrity, you want to grow your blog’s readership and reach, and by beating around the bush in your blog posts, you will only hinder your blog’s growth. Because new readers generally don’t read posts that they don’t know what it is talking about, and they don’t have the time to to figure out what it’s talking about by reading few paragraphs.

Use simple words

If your blog is about helping others or teaching them, or sharing your experiences so that they can benefit from it. Then you have to use simple words that everyone can understand. For example, if you have these two different words with a similar meaning to describe a man “sagacious” and “wise“. You should choose “wise man“.

You know what I am talking about right? Again, you don’t have to unnecessarily degrade your speech with primitive words. This is not meant by “using simple words”. It depends on your audience as well. But all else equal, you have to pick words that won’t confuse your readers or won’t make them think what the word means. Try your best to make your sentences flow smooth.

Format and structure your posts

If you are writing long posts (pillar articles) make sure that you structure your posts to make them easier to read. As described in the first point, have an intro part and then have other parts under their own sub-heading. Using headings will make it easier to scan your posts.

Formatting is important as well, whenever necessary

• use
• bullet
• points

It’s much better to scan bullet points, than say reading them all in one sentence separated by comma. Pointing out important parts of your blog post by bolding or highlighting does facilitate easy reading too. Increasing the space between the text lines using CSS can improve your article’s readability (here is a simple tutorial).

Picture says a thousand words

Most of the time it’s easier to describe things if you show a picture, a screenshot, an illustration or a diagram etc. Sometimes complex things can be described by one diagram or a screenshot. Therefore, whenever possible, incorporate visual materials in your blog posts.

Don’t write more than it needs to be written

If you can describe something in few sentences and done with it, then do that! Don’t go around trying to write a novel just to make your post longer. It’s better to have a concise, straight to the point blog post rather than a long but meaningless one.

This is related to the first point but it’s not the same. Here we are talking about the length of the blog post, but in point one we are talking about the importance of getting right to the point in the first paragraph no matter how long your blog post is.

Write descriptive headlines

Better headlines have more than one advantage, they will entice the user to read more of your article, and they will drive more traffic to your blog from search engines.

Here is how you can write better headlines: link and link.

Tip: Usually I write headlines for my readers and not for SEO, I use the post slug for SEO purposes.

Your opinion counts

Finally, as I always stress, it’s your opinion that is the most important thing in blogging. Your opinion (plus your personality) is your “brand” in the blogosphere. Your opinion is the thing that differentiates you from other bloggers. Therefore, don’t just be an invisible reporter who cuts-and-pastes other news reports online. Because if you want to be successful, you need to have that “about me” page on your blog (yes with the photo) and you need to start spreading your opinion and ideas in your blog posts.

Just look at successful blogs in the blogosphere, behind every successful blog there is a person. And most of the time, the blog is successful because of the author exclusively – his personality, his opinions, his ideas..etc.

Conclusion

I hope you found the tips useful. If there is anything you want to add, please do so in the comments section, so that others can benefit from it.

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