Writing a good blog post

Jul 08, 2008

I was preparing a quote for a new blogging assignment and while preparing the quote I was explaining to the client who intends to hire me what makes a good blog post. At that point I thought will also share my thoughts on this on my blog. So here are a few things that make your blog post a good blog post (the opinion may differ from blog to blog but it can be generally acceptable):

Make your blog post interesting and topical

I think this goes without saying. People are not going to read your blog posts if they are not interested and they will only be interested if you can offer something interesting. By “interesting” I mean something that is highly relevant, that is current, that is useful, that is realistically useful, and that is topical. Current topics, garnished with your own personal opinion, are generally great in bringing more and more people to your blog. I will quickly like to add here that more people reading your blog post does not make your blog post good; the entire goodness exists in the relevancy of your blog post.

Pay attention to the title and headings

Titles and headings make it easier for the reader to quickly go through your blog post. After all one has to visit scores of blogs in a day and a post that goes on and on and on quickly sends the less interested visitors away. A good way of keeping them hooked to your current blog post is highlighting the relevant portions and expressions with the help of headings. The title is what gets them initially interested and the headings keep them reading your blog post. A well-defined title can get you good rankings on the search engine result pages. Your headings are like orientation tools. Once you know what is there in the paragraph you can read that paragraph faster. Therefore if there is heading over a paragraph it is a lot easier to read that paragraph or at least skim through it.

Keep your blog posts short if possible

Although personally I have nothing against long blog posts — in fact sometimes even I write pretty long blog posts – keep the length of your blog post as much as there is requirement. Don’t unnecessarily increase the length of your blog posts because your readers are intelligent enough to see through if you have got nothing solid to say.

Organize your main thoughts in bulleted lists

It seems everybody loves bulleted lists on the Internet and they come highly recommended. In fact the bulleted lists are so relevant that even search engines take them into consideration while ranking your web pages and blog posts according to the related keywords. So if you think that you can write your thoughts in bulleted lists instead of a paragraph then use bulleted lists. They not only reduce the size of your blog post they also make it easier to read.

Stick to your fundamental theme

Don’t try to cover everything under the sun; people come to your blog to read on a particular topic and preferably on a topic you specialize in. So if you are a web designer it is better that your blog posts deal with web designing rather than cooking macaroni, although sometimes you can do that to keep things interesting.

Instill passion into your blog posts

This is a must; write only if you believe in it and if you believe in it then people will be able to perceive the underlying passion and passion is always powerful.

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5 Responses to “Writing a good blog post”

Rachel Lyle
July 15th, 2008 at 4:28 am
Yeah the last one for me is one of vital ingredients on writing a good content,because without this your article is none sense.
Copywriting Team Reading List 7.15.08 » (EMP) E-Marketing Performance
July 15th, 2008 at 11:39 am
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Katherine
July 24th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
These are some very good tips. Thanks for posting it! I agree about keeping them short. I know when I read blog posts, if they’re too long I tend to skim.
renantech
January 5th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
Thanks for this useful tips. Blog content is most important and make sure blog content is not a duplicate..
Baby name meaning and origin for Lyle
February 12th, 2009 at 10:03 pm
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