7 Tips for Great Blog Posts
Blogging is a great way to showcase your expertise and share your knowledge with a larger audience.
Keep these tips in mind when writing your posts:
Write about things people actually want to read
Think about the questions you already get asked and answer those questions. Jot them down as you think of them, and you’ll have a list of topics ready to pick from the next time you get a chance to write.
Create your own original content
Readers will look to you as a source of new information, not as a regurgitation of what they read elsewhere. Write your own content from what you know as a subject matter expert. Yes, you may have to do some additional research, and that’s fine. Just don’t copy other people’s content for your own purposes, and make sure to give credit where credit is due by citing your sources when appropriate.
Be yourself
Blogging is a way for people to connect with other people. People reading your blog are more apt to stick around if they like you and your style. So be yourself and let your own personality shine through.
Be generous: Give away your knowledge
Just like our mothers always taught us, sharing is caring. Share your knowledge with your readers. Don’t hold back or force them to register to get to the real juicy stuff. Your readers will appreciate your generosity of spirit and they will see you as the expert you are.
Keep it short
Our attention spans are shot. And we fit our information in whenever and wherever we can. Keep your posts short and succinct – on average 300-500 words but no more than 1000. If you have more than that to say, then break the post into a series of posts so you can give each part the attention it needs.
Write for scannability
Many of us rarely read every blog post from start to finish but we do scan for key points. It doesn’t mean we value the content any less, we’ve just been conditioned to consume as much as we can as fast as we can and move on. So help your readers out by formatting your posts for scannability.
- Use section headers and format them differently than the body of your post.
- Use bullet points and numbered lists whenever it makes sense.
- And keep your paragraphs short and sweet.
Grammar and spell check everything
Nothing hurts your credibility faster than having a post full of spelling and grammatical errors. Reread everything you write for spelling and grammatical errors or have a friend check it over before you post. If spelling and grammar aren’t your forte, at least run your post through an automatic checker like that found in Microsoft Word. It won’t catch everything, but it’s certainly better than nothing.
