Many good writers get stuck when they decide to start blogging, mostly because they aren’t sure what their goal is in a quality blog post.

A good blog post has ONE “big goal” It has one key point to drive home, action to provoke, or concept to unpack. Sometimes a post, particularly a “list” post, will have many small points, but they should all lead back to the big goal.

Sometimes it’s tempting to throw more than one topic in a post, particularly if they’re related. However, this can hurt you in two ways.

• First, your readers have a set of expectations before they even start reading your post based on its title. If you add in other goals, you’re effectively asking readers to change their expectations, making them feel vaguely uncomfortable without knowing why.

• Secondly, it’s almost always the focused posts that search engines and other bloggers will send visitors to. They’re more likely to see focused posts as valuable resources on a specific topic, so don’t muddy the waters by adding unrelated (or even loosely-related) info.

Next, a good blog post is relevant to the target audience. This is more than just staying on topic—done well, it’s anticipating questions and needs and addressing them from an angle that makes sense to your ideal reader. This can sometimes be a gray area; for instance, if you’re an author, how much should you talk about the actual process of writing a book, and how much should you stick to the topic of your book (presumably the one your readers are interested in)?  If you can frame the writing process so that it helps your readers understand something better or consider a helpful concept, then I’d say go for it. Along the same lines, if you learned something really interesting as part of the research you did, then share it, with the writing process as context. If you find, though, that there’s no specific relevance, leave it out.

Lastly, good blog posts are personable. This doesn’t mean you have to be extremely casual if that’s not your style, but you want to let your humanity shine through. You’re more likely to garner long-term readers if you reveal a little personality in your posts. This is as simple as using relevant personal anecdotes, offering an opinion, and writing “I” instead of “we.”  Posts without these small personal touches tend to read like textbooks and don’t seem to do very well with readers or with search engines.  I understand that there are many more things that make a quality blog and will look to add a Part II soon.

AP.

Tags: blog writing, Bloggled, personable

This entry was posted on Monday, October 27th, 2008 at 8:19 am and is filed under Blogging, Bloggled, Bloggled tips, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.