Writing Great Content for Your Blog
Posted on November 1, 2007 - Filed Under Writing Tips
The Benefits to having great content on your site, apart from consistent and improving traffic, is an increase in the number of subscribers to your site (which equates to higher advertising dollars if you do it right), recognition from peers in your online community, and business opportunities that may not necessary be associated with your blog. You can download the free eBook elaborating on these business opportunities from Brian Clark, founder of Copyblogger as an introduction to his introductory course on “Learn How to Create Premium Content That Sells With These Five Step-by-Step Training Courses”.
The common problem areas that tell you when you are looking at poor content are:
Lack of Focus. If you have no idea about what particular topic you want to focus your article on, the likelihood is that you’ll end up rambling on irrelevant points and have poor organization in your articles. If you find yourself constantly getting stuck while writing your article, constantly duplicating facts and events, and do not know which points to write on in your next paragraph, chances are you do not have a clear focus on what you want to write about for your article.
Poor Organization. Good organization is directly related to how focused your topic is. If you are experiencing problems with organizing the information you have with your article, your focus is probably too wide or you may need to do more research to support key facts. Having an angle or objective to your story will also help to make your article interesting, and help you decide how you want to order your paragraphs. You will be pleasantly surprised to find that with clear focus and good organization, writing the introduction and conclusion paragraphs to your article will be a breeze.
Expression. While all of us have a unique style to our writing (and you may vary it according to the genre of your article), the ability to bring your ideas and facts across in a clear and refreshing manner that will stick in your readers’ minds require practice and constant proofreading / edits. One of the great stumbling blocks to clear expression is long and badly constructed sentences. Watch your punctuation (read “Six Common Punctuation Errors that Bedevil Bloggers” by Daniel Sorocco), and replace bombastic words (or long and difficult words) with synonyms that contain fewer syllables. Use metaphors to explain concepts or diagrams, illustrations or pictures to highlight important points.
Passive Voice. You want readers to be excited about what you are writing. Most writers have the secret hope that our articles will impact readers’ lives in a way that will add value to their skills and knowledge, and even affect it in a positive way. Others want to be able to make money with our content. Both do not need to be mutually exclusive, but either way you will find that hard to achieve using a passive voice. You will find that using an active voice will also help you shorten sentences for greater expression. Look at some examples that differentiate a passive voice from an active one. MS Word has a language function that will help you to check passive sentences in your article and its readability index.
By consistently working on the points outlined above, they will become second nature to you with practice and you will find that the amount of time spent on editing your articles will lessen considerably. While working on your copy is hard work, the rewards and satisfaction of delivering a highly engaging and memorable post is most gratifying, and your traffic and blog subscriptions will reflect the time and effort you have invested in it. For my next post, I will be sharing on the blocks that a writer face, and the writing process / method that will help you overcome it and enjoy writing.
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5 Responses to “Writing Great Content for Your Blog”
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Thanks for the great tips Ivy! Someone gave one of my articles a a thumbs up yesterday and my visits went from about 40/day to 155 that day and then I am having some residual clicks today as well, though not nearly as many as yesterday. I am still a little confused on how all this works but your tips sure do help! Thanks!
Mislove
Great to hear that Mslove. Social networking is a great way to get your site known, and having good, focused content is what converts them from visitors to subscribers.
[…] don’t forget that you are writing for your audience and not for search engines. However, if your article is very specific and focused, you will find that embedding keywords into your titles, subheadings and content comes naturally. […]
[…] Writing Great Content for Your Blog. This article started out with me wanting to write my first “great” article for my blog. As I sat there asking what could I write that would make an impact, I thought why not write about HOW to write that great article? So I ended up writing on key tips that I have used to advice friends and colleagues on generating articles that are readable and impacting. This post was published on Nov 1, and earned me my very first stumble with 1 review and 6 votes on Nov 3. […]
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce