The How to Blog Blog

My “I Love Your Blog” award goes to the Fictionistas, a group of young adult authors (including Kristen Painter, Rhonda Stapleton, Mel Francis, Amanda Brice, Gwen Hayes, and Chrissy Olinger) that are funny, clever, and always fun to read. Even if you are not a young adult, I’d definitely recommend checking these ladies out. ;)

In light of our week about our favorite blogs, I stumbled across an interesting article about how to write a successful blog post that I thought I’d share. Here are the ten tips I found on ProBlogger on writing the perfect blog post:

1. Make your opinion known
People like blogs, they like blogs because they are written by people and not corporations. People want to know what people think, crazy as it sounds they want to know what you think. Tell them exactly what you think using the least amount of words possible.
(Totally agree with this one. My fav blog posts are ones that give me personal insight into the writer. I’m nosy that way.)

2. Link like crazy.
Support your post with links to other web pages that are contextual to your post.
(Not sure about this one. I get distracted easily, so tons of links steal my focus from content. But, maybe other people have better attention spans.)

3. Write Less
Give the maximum amount of information with the least amount of words. Time is finite and people are infinitely busy. Blast your knowledge into the reader at the speed of sound.
(I have to agree, I remember the short and sweet posts the most. Though, a series of mega short two liners posts makes me lose interest in a blog fast.)

4. 250 is enough
A long post is easier to forget and harder to get into. A short post is the opposite.
(Ditto above.)

5. Make Headlines snappy
Contain your whole argument in your headline. Check out National newspapers to see how they do it.
(I love cute headlines! Though, like book titles, I know how hard they ar to come up with.)

6. Include bullet point lists
We all love lists, it structures the info in an easily digestible format.
(Depends on what the list is. Top ten fav hot hunks… I’d be totally into those bullet points.)

7. Make your posts easy to scan
Every few paragraphs insert a sub heading. Make sentences and headlines short and to the point.
(I guess if you’re writing a post that’s more article-ish than personal narrative, it might work well.)

8. Be consistent with your style
People like to know what to expect, once you have settled on a style for your audience stick to it.
(Totally agree! I love that any day of the week here at KF, I know what sort of style to expect from the posts.)

9. Litter the post with Keywords.
Think about what keywords people would use to search for your post and include them in the body text and headers. make sure the keyword placement is natural and does not seem out of place.
(Again, if I were trying to get hits to a non-fiction sort of article, this makes sense.)

10. Edit your post
Good writing is in the editing. Before you hit the submit button, re-read your post and cut out the stuff that you don’t need.
(Very good advice. And now I’m going back to re-read this for any typos…)

So, anyone else have tips for good blogging?


~Trigger Happy Halliday