Wednesday, 30 May - 10:54 Category: Content

The 7 Secrets of Writing Successful Blog Posts

SYNOPSIS: The 7 Secrets of Writing Great Blog Entries: Have an opinion, stay relevant, don’t write a diary, be consistent, be humorous, develop a good writing style, link out.

Writing an informative, interesting and engaging blog is a tricky thing to do especially if you're writing on behalf of a business. Some of the most successful blogs have been written by 'enthusiasts' who enjoy nothing better than to rant and rave about whatever takes their fancy. Very often these bloggers are afforded a level of freedom in their language because they are writing as individuals as part of the community and not for an underlying business purpose. Suddenly, writing a blog under a commercial banner becomes a tougher proposition; you can't to be impartial, you can't pick faults in the competition (very bad form), you can't always express your true feelings and you can't swear (a restriction I find almost impossible to overcome).

Well, with that litany of things you can't do what can you do to make your blog not so much consumed as devoured? Here are a few tips to help you along...

Tip #1 Have an Opinion

Towing the corporate line, whilst necessary, can leave your writing tame and a bit dull so it helps if you can find an edge to your commentary. This is especially the case if you find that what you really wanted to say has been watered down by corporate language. Don't be afraid to tell it how it is - you’ll get much more respect from your audience.

Tip #2 Stay Relevant

If your blog wanders wildly off topic your readership will quickly dissipate. Therefore, establish exactly what the parameters of your blog really are. Keeping relevance is vitally important if you have more than one contributor to the blog. In this situation it pays to have a Blog Bible which describes the objectives, target audience, writing style guide, example content, competing/allied blogs and so forth.

Tip #3 Don't Write a Diary

Because blogs are organised in a chronological format it's easy for them to turn into corporate diaries. The problem with this technique is that few of your readers will be that interested in a list of things you've done. (The real unravelling of this approach is that most blogs are organised with the most recent entry first. Consequently, you end up reading things backwards and lose the natural flow of one thing leading to another.) Think of your blog as an information store which your readership can access and obtain rich, useful and valuable information. Ask the question "how is this helping the reader?".

Tip #4 Be Consistent

Most bloggers start with the best of intentions. Their enthusiasm produces lots of writing but then, over time as the enthusiasm wanes, the number of posts drop-off. Everyone is guilty of this (me included) save the most committed. Set yourself a minimum number of posts per month and stick to it. My threshold is 2. Not many, I know, but I would rather write two good quality articles than 10 naff ones!

Tip #5 Be Humorous

When writing to the corporate arena it's incredibly easy to become rigid and overly businesslike. Finding a humorous note (and I don't mean dodgy cartoons and jokes) can bring some humanity into your writing and create that personal connection which is so critical to your readership. Actually, I should take my own advice on this but as I write these entries at 7 o'clock in the morning it's hard to find anything humorous to say!

Tip #6 Develop a Good Writing Style

Obvious things like checking spelling and grammar are, erm, obvious but you can also help the readability of your posts by using:

Tip #7 Link Out

We all want links into our website because it helps our ranking with the Search Engines. However, it also pays to be generous with your links out. Find interesting articles, websites, other blogs and so on and link to them. (It’s also a great way of generating content if you’re under a deadline.) Don’t forget to credit your sources if you do incorporate someone else’s work into your post.

Got any more? Send them over to me at jed@morganwylie.co.uk

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Posted By:Jed Wylie on Fri, May 30th 2008, 10:54