If you think you have what it takes to be a better or more successful blogger, are that rare person who is willing to work long hours, be creative, patient, is willing to accept constructive criticism, able to learn by their mistakes, follow best Internet practices and protocol, not take shortcuts or use spam, be observant and above all tenacious as hell. Now, if you are still with me after all that, you might have a shot. Read on.
In addition to the above you must be at least a competent writer, know basic language skills, punctuation and the like and be totally unafraid to face deadlines every day because if you don’t post original and engaging content on a regular basis nobody will read what you have to say and the search engines will ignore you. If your goal is to make money online or promote a business with your blog that cannot be allowed to happen.
You don’t have to be a writer with the skills and style of John Grisham to write for a blog but only the very best bloggers can get away with misuse of language, or worse, spelling and grammatical errors but only because what they have to say is that important.
You also do not want your posts to be too long, people have little time to read overlong blocks of text, as you get better at blogging you will find that you can say what you need to say in 500-1000 words max.
With all the information that’s out there on the World Wide Web we (out of necessity) have become article skimmers looking for the gist of a post within the first few sentences, eyes drawn to bold sub-headers and bullet points. There is so much good stuff out there and only so much time in a day and we could easily become bogged down reading word for word.
Tips To Better Blogging
Engage The Reader
Be personable, not too flippant or overly personal when writing unless your name is Dave Barry. Blogging is full of life and feeling, write what you care about. You want to engage the reader and make them want to comment on what you have to say. Then when they do comment back, always respond, this may be the start of a dialog between you and another blogger which opens the door for future relationship building and that is structured to be mutually beneficial.
You must take the point on relationship building by not only commenting on other peoples blogs but by hanging it all out there and guest posting on other blogs whenever possible. Ask your favorite blogger if you can guest post on their blog about a particular topic. This gives you credibility as a blogger and creates backlinks as well.
Don’t Write Garbage
When we say garbage, we mean the kind of rot we are seeing on Facebook and Twitter these days where someone went to the gym, had a great workout, walked FiFi in the sunshine and now is looking forward to another beautiful day! Ugh, that’s just useless crap, not what social media is all about and worse, it’s a death sentence to any blog that hopes to accomplish anything.
The content you post on a blog must be original, having never appeared anywhere else online. Do not copy and paste press releases, magazine articles or anything else that you did not write unless you are referencing another writer/blogger and you give them credit for it, otherwise the search engines, especially Google, will bitch slap you for it.
Stuffing a blog with useless information or other peoples work just for the sake of content does not make for an engaging blog or an ethical one.
Utilize Headings
We try to use H2 sub headers which are html tags that bold the headline. The thing about these is that it’s very important to keep the text of them as relevant to the blogs theme as possible. This is not difficult: click your html button in your blog editor while posting and put these tags into the beginning and end of your sub-header text: <h2></h2>
Use bold text and italics everywhere else sparingly, instead breaking up your posts with tagged sub headers, bullet points, links, images and video. Your readers will appreciate the ease of how quickly they get to your point.
Use Excerpts
The Excerpt has two main uses: First, it replaces the full content in RSS feeds when the option to display summaries is selected in Dashboard > Settings >Reading. Second, depending on the WordPress theme, it can be displayed in places where quick summaries are preferable to full content (archives.)
If a post has no custom Excerpt, WordPress generates automatically an excerpt by selecting the first 55 words of the post. Meaning, it will cut off sentences, and it closes the Excerpt with […] It doesn’t show any video, so posts starting with an embedded video will have a blank Excerpt.
If you add your own Excerpt manually, you have control over the content and length of the Excerpt, resulting in better archives. To add an excerpt to a post, simply write one in the Excerpt field under the post edit box. An excerpt can be as short or as long as you wish. Usually, given its purpose, a couple of sentences is fine.
Have A Plan
Make notes when you are reading articles by other bloggers that write about things you are interested in. Perhaps you have a different perspective on what that person is saying or some unique approach that offers a new idea on an existing theme.
Outline a simple beginning, middle and conclusion to your posts, underlining where you might want to insert an in-text link to add value.
Give your posts the overnight test before hitting the “publish” button, save them as drafts and if they read well the next day you generally have a winner. Make sure to give credit where credit is due when incorporating other bloggers into your own original content.
K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple, Stupid!
Learning how to write for a blog does not happen overnight. It’s something that you “get” after a billion or so keystrokes. Social media, especially Twitter can teach you a lot about how to write for a blog with their 140 character limit approach. That’s characters, not words. That’s why Twitter is sometimes described as a micro-blog.
Keeping your posts simple, relevant and short usually does the trick both for the reader and the blogger but don’t hesitate to go long if you need to. We are believers in quality vs quantity and we know that lengthy but interesting posts are much more readable with sub-headers, images, video, etc to break them up.
Write As If You Were Speaking To A Friend
And that means being able to do that in a conversational tone, just as if that person was in the same room. You don’t have to be a professional writer to come across as an authority with a blog, just an interesting one.
A conversational tone helps achieve that personable connection and so does a good dose of humility and self deprecating humor. Do not rant, or curse or write all in caps like you were shouting but write as though you were speaking to a friend. Make your readers want to know you better through your words.
Offer More To The Reader
Than just blah, blah, blah. Your posts should offer more value to your reader than blocks of boring text no matter how knowledgeable you are about something. Link to resources that support what you are discussing and be receptive to constructive criticism. Bloggers need to have thick skins sometimes but other bloggers are always willing to help. And when they do, make sure you thank them by commenting on a post of theirs, pop em a re-tweet or a vote, it all counts!
Simply put, when you make your blog the best it can be for your readers, good things will come.
Build Relationships
Comment on other blogs. Comment to particular posts and join the discussion. Syndicate your posts to social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Digg. You may write like Hemingway but if no one sees it, it just becomes so much fluff.
Find those people on social media sites that have the same interests as you and follow them. Tweet or post to them often but avoid over self-promotion because it’s a turn off. Give as good as you get with info your followers will find interesting.
Utilize Forums For Self-Promotion
Build a profile for yourself in the forum that seems to rule your subject. The object of joining a forum is to get noticed. You should answer forum members questions, ask your own questions, offer a free service to review a post or a website. You need to get in there and mix it up. If your forum has a signature put your site’s links in it. Add a unique photo, something that will cause people to remember you. Make sure to fill out your profile completely. Post threads that will get a lot of views. Don’t be afraid to be controversial but play fair and play by the rules of the forum.
