When I started this blog, one thing I wanted to do was to share my experience about blogging. I’ve been blogging since 2006 and I’ve made some pretty crap decisions, I’ve made some pretty good decisions and I’ve been lucky enough to have been able to carve a career change out of it and well, make money.
But one thing I didn’t want to do is to become all preachy. I didn’t want to tell people what to and what not to do because you know what? No one is an expert on blogging or social media – no one. We can share our experiences and opinions for sure but can we call ourselves gurus? I don’t think so.
So rather than this post being a “how not to blog” I wanted to share with you 5 reasons why your blog will turn me off (i.e. things that make me click the close button before even finishing the title…)
First of all I’d like to thank you for your wonderful comments on the blog, via facebook and on twitter about this series. It’s always a bit of a struggle writing “how to” posts because, like I said in part one, no one is an expert and we’re all just banging away to our own beat, we can only offer advice based on experience, which is what this series is all about.
Today’s post is all about constructing a good blog post. It’s something that I eternally struggle with because there are so many variables depending on what you blog about. If you’re a photography blog then photographs and lots of them are the order of the day, if you write about fashion and beauty, photographs mixed with reviews and commentary work well…it really does depend on your “niche”.
There are also some very valid arguments that it doesn’t matter how you package it up, if you’re creating great content then that’s the only thing that matters.
However, there are a few so called rules which I think help construct a good blog post…
The Opening…How you open sets the tone for the whole post. It’s also another ideal place to get your keywords in for SEO purposes. ProBlogger has done a post entitled 11 Ways to Open a Post where he gives advice on crafting that perfect opening paragraph. My favorite is…
Say Something Unexpected
The opening line of this post (where I tell about my wife getting my name wrong when we first met) breaks most of the techniques that I’ve stated above – but attempts to do something a little ‘different’ or ‘surprising’ to grab readers attention by sharing something personal and at a first glance ‘off topic’.
I don’t talk about my family often on ProBlogger – so this opening line is designed to break the pattern and encourage readers to take a second look.
I find that when I do this it seems to ‘snap’ readers out of the way that they normally approach your blog and take a little extra notice for a moment or two (which can be enough to hook them into reading your post).
Of course – the unexpected opening line should relate to your post’s topic on some level.
Have a plan…I know all too well how much you want to just get writing when you have that killer blog post idea. But without a point and without a structure, the post will just diminish in to unreadable ramblings. These days I like to just punch out my posts on evernote and then go back over them, editing them in to some form to structured post. I’m an old school girl, I rely on a notepad to build the bones of my posts so I know where I’m going and so I’m sure not to leave anything out.
I’ve been blogging since 2006 which means I get asked a lot about how to blog; how to get started, what to write about, which platform to use etc. Since time restraints mean that I often can’t respond to these questions individually (or at least not as in depth as I’d like) I thought a series on how to blog would work well. Eventually, I’d like to dip my toe in to vlogging so if you’ve got any blogging questions you’d like to ask then please email me.
How to start a blog…
First up let’s just start by saying that no one is a real expert in this field yet, sure there are people out there who can set you up, design your site, try to show you how to make money blogging etc but there are no hard and fast rules. Your blog is your blog, if you want to post once a week or every day that’s entirely up to you. This series of posts are based on my experience of how to create a blog, what I’ve done and tips that I find useful. They’re in no way preachy or a definitive guide of what’s right and wrong because it’s a constantly evolving process.
