5 BLOG WRITING TIPS

 5 BLOG WRITING TIPS

By Michael Griffiths – “The Business Relationship Marketing Guru’
Get your free ‘Black Mask Marketing’ resources at www.mysmallbusinessmarketingguru.com.au

Blogs are great ways to promote products, services, or simply to relay thoughts about anything on the planet (and maybe even outside!). You have ease of writing, without focusing much on going over a word limit, or the cost of a column centimeter. Although a blog gives a writer some form of journalistic freedom, there are realities about blog writing that must not be ignored. It’s easy to write articles, but hard to sustain the interest of readers, if you are not aware of the proper ways to write blog articles. What good are your excellent content if you fail to entice visitors to read it?
Here are a few tips to get the attention and interest of the average reader:
Be sure your content provides value. Sure, writing about your latest love travails may seem interesting to the average teenager, but if your content does not really provide value to a lot of readers, then you might be better off writing for a kiddie magazine. Okay, maybe not, but most mature viewers visit blogs to get information and data that they will be able to use in their own lives. If all you do is rant, or relay personal stories, what exactly does that accomplish? Aim to give knowledge, make the visit to your page worthwhile. Make sure all the facts you put in your blog are not only relevant, but thoroughly researched, backed up by facts and figures, and not mere hunches or feelings. Think of it – for example, a reader researching on a particular subject matter uses your blog as her main research material for a school paper – but the facts you put in your content are untrue, unrealiable or worse – fiction? You not only bungle up your own reputation as a writer, you will manage to be the cause of this poor researcher’s failure! Back up your information with facts and thorough research.
Make sure your content is grammatically correct. Nothing is probably more irritating than reading a blog supposedly written by an expert, but can’t even correct the simplest of subject-verb agreements! Worse, sometimes, there are incorrectly-placed punctuation marks, or the complete lack of it – making the entire material hard or almost impossible to understand. There must be something every person must know. Not all intelligent people are good writers. Some of them speak well, and are extremely bright, but are not given a talent for writing. Do yourself a favor – if you know you are not a good writer, either ask someone to write for you, or shift to a different field, like public speaking.
Insert stories, anecdotes, or humor to discourage boredom. Personally, there is nothing more interesting than reading short anecdotes or true-to-life examples to help a reader to fully understand the facts you are relaying. Stories provide short respites from a lengthy list of facts and research material. Another tip: use pictures. Pictures not only visually entice the reader, they also help especially well in describing something. For example, it’s hard to guide a person to a place by mere words (turn left on first street, right on 3rd corner, straight until you reach the gate, etc), but a map of the location will quickly tell a person where a location is.
Try to make your blog short, but not too short. Reading a super long blog can be boring, especially when relaying sensitive information. Try to keep it short, and sweet. Use subtitles if you should, and bullets and multiple short paragraphs – all of these help give the impression that each bit of information is vital and nothing written is unnecessary.
Don’t write as though readers are looking at an encyclopedia. Reality check – a blog is not a formal book material. It is a log of information published over the internet. In short, don’t write as though Albert Einstein was your target reader. Write in a manner that is easy to comprehend. There is nothing bright about writing uber-complicated material. A real effective blog writer must be understandable – no reader must ever feel the need to whip out a thesaurus or a dictionary just to get what you are trying to say. The easier your content is to understand, the more effective it is.