Blogs live and grow through quality content. Writing a blog post is not a big deal if you have low expectations, but writing a post that will attract community reactions, traffic, social media love, links and new readers is definitely not that easy. It implies a creative writing style, engaging phrases, catchy headings and a good, logical and easy to follow article structure.
Here are five blog writing tips to help you give a better shape to your wonderful content ideas!
Expect unexpected ideas
If you ask me, writing is more about imagination than rules. It’s definitely not math. The harder you look for content ideas, the harder they’ll come to you, or come in the most appropriate shape. Keep an open mind and expect new ideas in everything you do, every comment or post you read, every movie you watch, every discussion with your friends.
It’s said that good journalists see a news story where other people notice nothing. That’s no different when it comes to blogging.
Start big and finish bigger
A great opening paragraph is decisive for making your visitor read the whole story. It helps build interest and a higher level of patience. But as soon as you fail to maintain that interest high, that great opening paragraph will only be a waste of good content ideas.
Focus on ending your story with at least the same quality level as the opening paragraph. Not only you’ll have a happy reader, but most probably one that will come back to read more each time you publish.
Be familiar with what you’re writing about
In that crazy search for “what’s hot”, bloggers tend to approach topics that they’re not familiar with. Sure, there’s a good side to this, you’ll get a few more hundred words as content on your blog, but where’s the value in that?
Where’s the value in writing something that you or your readers cannot relate to? Why write if you cannot add a personal view on the matter or expend what already got posted by people more into the topic than you? In the end, it all turns out to be a poor time investment.
Pay attention to details
Writing is a form of art, and as any other form of art, details turn a piece of work into a masterpiece. A shallow view does not add any kind of value to your articles. Spice up your writing with enough information to turn your idea into good content.
If you are the “opinion blogger” type, make sure you add your own views and suggestions on the topic. If you are more of the “advice blogger” type, think of writing as a form of building. Add pieces of relevant information to build upon your topic foundation.
Maintain a balance between form and foundation
The foundation of your articles are topics. The form is represented by the way you explore and expose those topics.
I’m sure you’ve all heard about the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) concept, but what you should be aware of is that certain topics require certain levels of depth and a certain type of language. If you’re topic does not require complex words and phrases, don’t use them. They’ll only be a waste of time as readers will make sure to skip them or worst, not understand them. It’s all about balancing content and ideas.
Blog writing tips are not rules
I’ve always said that the best you can do is to experiment. That’s why I’m offering blog writing tips and not writing rules. There are no rules when it comes to writing, but rather principles and personal guidelines that one should consider in order to find his own writing style.
More on this from Blogsessive:
- Blog Topic Research Resources
- Blog Topic Research Tips
Photo credits to Chris Greene.