May 3, 2007 22:09
Category: Writing
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There seems no end to writing tips for blogs. Opinions vary as to whether the style of writing has to change for blogs, and if so what would it be to attract readership. From my experience, I'd say a person's writing style doesn't change much just because he's writing in a blog.
Having said that, there perhaps could be some specific writing tips to bring about an increased interest among readers of blogs. On the face of it, it has more to do how engaging a blog is. What may be the factors that can positively influence writing in blogs. Here are some steps that I follow:
Write Plenty
One of the writing tips that endears to me whether it is normal content writing or writing for blog is to be able to write aplenty. I strongly hold the view that it is the strength of website content that primarily drives visitors.
There are many examples to prove my point. The one that I cite often is how the mainstream media sites (like those of newspapers) consistently draw visitors. If not for continuous piling of fresh news reports and articles, these sites won't have had so much success to attract viewers.
Let me give an example of a blog that scores high on both Alexa ranking and PageRank. As of this writing (May 3, 2115 IST), Andrew Sullivan of The Daily Dish has already notched up an impressive 8 posts for the day, and it's still early in his part of the globe.
On May 2, he has written - hold your breadth - an astronomical 38 posts, and though I haven't counted for other days, it is possible that he writes near about that many posts everyday if not more.
When I checked Google's cache for his homepage I'm not surprised that his site is crawled by the search giant almost everyday, perhaps several times a day.
Andrew is a prolific writer, no doubt. If you ask him what his writing tips would be, I'm fairly confident he'll say: write plenty.
Make It Interesting
Once again, to take Andrew's example, blog posts ought to be such that they evoke curiosity among the readers. His posts are interspersed with pictures, videos and what not. Some posts are very brief, others fairly elaborate. Guess where he gets his inputs from!
Andrew is a prolific reader too. A look at his daily reads, and it's clear he has an almost endless supply of information to deal on in his blog.
So my second writing tips will be to religiously scout around the web for information that concern to your blog, and yes don't shy away from including images and videos wherever it seems feasible.
Style Of Writing
Look this is my third priority among the writing tips for blogs I mention here. Not without reason. The point is unless you've good amount of ongoing contents, anything else matters less and less.
Does that mean your style of article writing is not important? Is it that your posts can afford to have glaring grammatical mistakes or a monotonous narration in long paragraphs?
Of course not. If a person's quality is what matters most, so does his or her appearance even if to a lesser extent.
Talking about tips for writing well, think how you can make it more readable. The obvious answers are to write short sentences, break into small paragraphs, adopt a conversational tone, give lots of examples, and suchlike.
As you can see, the more easy it is for your readers to understand your writing, the more the chance of their repeat visit. After all, readers can come from any corner of globe, and it's not likely that they will all have equally good knowledge of your language.
Social Optimization
I would rather not consider this as one of my top favorites among writing tips for blogs. Know why? It's because social media optimization - as much as search engine optimization - by itself is not a sustained crowd-puller.
Don't get me wrong. What I intend saying is that out of the 2 writing tips I mention here, writing plenty and social optimization, it is the former that you need to pay more attention to.
Agreed, if you make the provisions for your post to be 'digg'ed or 'furl'ed, it stands good chance of attracting huge eyeballs. Do that by all means, but remember the sudden surge of traffic, if that happens, will just be temporary.
If you desire that at least some of that surge retain the urge to come back again on their own, your blog has to have the continuity of the charm that first attracted them.
In other words, have active content in plenty as a part of robust website building plan.
If you ask me, this must rank at the top of writing tips for blogs. Wish you all the success.
