Anyone who can use the internet can technically write a blog post; however, as we all know, all content is not created equal.
The vast majority of content online is poorly written. Most articles are rushed, have not been researched thoroughly, do not convey a message, and do not cite sources.
One mistake that people often make whenever they write content for a blog or company is that they overwrite. If you can get your point across in fewer words, then do it. Never use 40 words to explain something that could be said in 20.
There is a myth that I frequently encounter that you are either a good writer or a bad writer. I do not believe this to be true. I am living proof that someone can vastly improve their writing quality if they work hard at it. My writing skills only started to improve when I began to blog every day. This got me into the habit of writing and, perhaps more importantly, reviewing my writing more. To this day, I continue to review my writing and improve upon what I consider to be my weaknesses.
In this article, I would like to share my experience and advise how you can all improve your writing skills when you are into blogging. I hope you find them useful.
Here are 20 tips.
- Evaluate your passions and skills. If you are interested in blogging, it’s important to ask yourself what you’re passionate about. Comedy, Cooking, movies Have you found your passion? If so, whatever it is, write about that. If not, then you must first find your passion.
Also, don’t just choose a niche because you’re “interested” in it; to be sustainable, it should ideally be something you can see yourself being passionate about for at least 5 years.
It can be something you love to do in your free time, or that you’d do even if you weren’t getting paid for it. This could be a great option for your niche. It’s also important to think about the areas you have special skills or experience in. What do people regularly tell you you’re good at? What’s your training or education in? What special skills or knowledge have you developed through your work? Finding an area that you’re both knowledgeable about and that you love the sweet for identifying your niche
- Define Your Ideal Readers. Once you’ve found your niche, you need to know who will be reading your blog—the people to whom your blog would most appeal to. Most frequently, they represent a specific age group and interest or experiences. Still, in some cases, an ideal reader might represent a certain ethnicity, religious background, sexuality, or another identifying marker.
If you want to write about cooking, that’s wonderful: your ideal readers are probably your friends and family and women that want to learn how to cook. If you want to write about cars, that’s cool, too. Tailor your writing to your readers (whether it’s your family or local community, or whoever else will read your blog).
- Add Value. Your blog must add value to its readers’ lives. You want to help people solve problems (like how to cook various delicacies). This is the only way you will get great quality readers to your site (and keep them coming back).
Adding value is the only way to get someone’s long-term buy-in. We both learned this after a decade of leading and managing people in the corporate world. With everything you write, it’s worth asking: Is this adding value?
- Be Original. Yes, there are other blogs out there about the same thing you want to write about. Question: So why is your blog different? Answer: Because of you. You are what makes your blog different. It’s about your perspective, your creativity, the value you.
- Be Interesting. Write interesting blog posts, especially if you want people to share them with others. Let’s face it. For most of us, business blogging is hard. I know it is for me. Coming up with new ideas, doing the research, and doing the actual writing are all big pieces. It takes time, patience, strategy, consistency, and perseverance.
Then, of course, we want to make it interesting for our readers. We want them to keep coming back for more. And ultimately, we want them to become our clients.
On that note, here are a few ideas on how you can make your blog posts more interesting and readable.
- Avoid the ‘wall of text.’
- Use Examples
- Be You
- Use statistics
- Write about specific challenges or problems.
- Be Yourself. Every person is unique, and your story is an important one. The important part of storytelling, however, is removing the useless details that make the story uninteresting. A great storyteller removes 99% of what really happens, the absorptive details, and leaves the interesting 1% for the reader.
- Be Honest. Your blog needs to be authentic; it needs to feel real if you want people to read it. You can be your blog, or your blog can be you. That is, do you really embody the stuff you write about? If not, people will see through it.
“Be the change you want to see in the world,” Perhaps bloggers should build the blog they want to write for the world.
- Transparency. Being transparent is different from being honest. You needn’t share every detail about your life just for the sake of being honest.
Always be honest, and be transparent when it adds value to what you’re writing. The best way to increase your audience and build trust in the blogging community is by being completely transparent.
- Time. Once you’ve learned how to start a blog, you’ll learn that blogging takes a lot of time, especially if you’re neurotic.
That said, once you have your design set up, spend your time on your writing.
- Vision. If you are like most bloggers & businesses, you probably created your blog and started writing without really considering where you were going with your blog or where you wanted it to be in a year or two.
There are a few key reasons you need to craft a powerful Vision and Mission Statement for your blog. By doing so, you will clarify your blogging journey, solidify why you are blogging in the first place, and help you make blogging a full-time income. Once we had the vision, we worked hard to make that vision a reality.
- Find Your Voice. Over time, good writers discover their voice, and their writing tends to develop a certain flow, one that is appealing to their readers. Pretty much everything has already been written about. However, you still have something to offer that no one else has…Your unique blogging voice. Finding your voice makes your writing feel more alive and more real.
- Instead of You. Use the first-person plural when possible. Statements of we and our are more powerful than you and your, especially when talking about negative behaviors or tendencies. The first person comes off as far less accusatory. Think of it this way: we’re writing peer-to-peer—we are not gods.
- When to Post. Question: When is the best day and time to publish a blog post? Answer: It doesn’t really matter. We don’t adhere to a particular time-of-day schedule, but we advise you to publish at least once a week because consistency is important.
- Social Media. Yes, we recommend using Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to help you connect with your audience and other bloggers, but don’t get too caught up in it. Focus on the writing first and social media thereafter.
- Ignore Negative Criticism and Stupidity. We’ve all been there. You’ve slaved over a post—researching, writing, editing, and sharing it in your blogs. And then it happens (negative criticism). Whether it crops up in your blog comments section or social media, negative feedback can hurt, especially when your blog is based on your experience and opinions. You’ve got to be prepared with the worst of the worst trolls while still being open to getting feedback from your readers. If you want to make your blog even better, you’ll need to figure out how to deal with negative feedback and use it to make your blog even better.
We get many negative comments and stupid questions from ignorant people who aren’t really our readers. They fly in, crap on your site, and fly away. But we pay them no mind because we didn’t start our blog for them. Delete their comment and move on.
- Research. Spend time researching what you’re writing about. Learning to research a blog post and then actually writing it can be intimidating, especially if you’re starting your blogging adventure. That said, for many blogs, research is a necessity. Any post that includes specific factual claims relies on statistics or otherwise depends on outside information beyond common knowledge will require thorough and careful research. We can use so many helpful, relevant links in our articles that we put in the time to research our topics.
- Keep It Simple. This is where minimalism can be applied to starting any blog, irrespective of its genre—no need to place superfluous advertisements or widgets all over your site. Stick to the basics and remove anything you don’t need—remove anything that doesn’t add value.
- Picture. If you are writing about your personal life experience, you can picture yourself on your blog. The images you use in your blog posts tell a story as much as the words do. It’s crucial to include images and include the right images to help you craft and tell that story. Imagery should be an integral part of all blog posts.
- Comments. Blog comments are great social proof. The more you have, the more you get. Comments are an important part of a blog. When a blogger opts, through choice or necessity, to turn off commenting, the blogger loses some of what makes blogging such a dynamic, exciting medium: the interaction between blogger and readers.
But it’s not only the blogger who loses out when they remove comments: Most blog readers enjoy the comments left by others and often form a strong community feeling for fellow visitors, even interacting with each other within the comments.
- Live Life. Even if you’re starting a blog about your life (or about certain aspects of your life, at least), you still need to live your life. You should always put things before blogging: exercise, health, relationships, experiences, personal growth, and contribution. Simply put, live a life worth writing about.
