The whole is greater than the sum of the parts
I have recently been setting up several different self-hosted WordPress blogs, covering many different topic matters. All those blogs are being maintained and content edited by people who are not me, and I have noticed that several of those the content editors do not have much experience in writing for online audiences. That is ok. No one has experience until they’ve done it.
However, there are a couple of quick wins one can do for the articles per se, to make them easier to read and more entertaining for the reader, and I shall, completely non-scientifically, go through a few things I appreciate with other blogs out there. This also means this will turn into a blog post about blog posts, a thing I said a few years ago I would never do (because there are enough of them out there already), but I shall make this one exception to that rule in an attempt to be kind to colleagues and friends.
The basics
WordPress
Firstly, we are using WordPress, The Premium Blog Tool On Planet Earth. Get over it. Get used to it. I don’t care if your cousin swears by blogger.com nor do I care if your old colleagues neighbours middle son is claiming he can build you a system for a pack of cigarettes. A large percentage of the leading blogs out there run WordPress. Now your blog is as well. Great eh?
And, for sake of clarification, seeing as my work require both .NET(C#), PHP and other technologies: even if you were to write about Microsoft Sharepoint only, your blog does not need to run on Microsoft Sharepoint. In fact, I would challenge you to point me to any single .NET blog engine that is as comprehensive and competent as WordPress. Your blog and its underlying technology should quite possibly not be the topic of your blog articles in any case. Don’t confuse those two separate things, use the right tool for the right problem. Moving on…
WPtouch
One of the main benefits with a WordPress blog that you run on your own server is the vast amount of plug-ins you can install (7144 at the time of writing this). There are literally millions of really clever people out there with far too much time on their hands. There are a few not-so-clever-ones as well, but let’s focus on the good ones here. Quite a bunch of those are trying to still their create-wordpress-plugins-fetish. Guess what? You are the winner. Most of them give away their hard labor for free, to you.
Enjoy, but most importantly, don’t let their hard work be for nothing. Try stuff out. Use the plugins I have installed, they are not only really good, they are also very helpful for you and your creative writing vein. You can also install various apps and extensions on your Firefox browser and in your iPhones to enable you to type and write more effectively.
How to write
Target well
The most important thing: Remember who you are writing for. Who is your target audience? What tone are they expecting from you? If you don’t know your intended audience, how would you like them to get to know you? After you have decided on that, stick to it, at every point within your blog and your articles where you interface with your audience, which should be pretty much everywhere unless you are doing this as an ego trip only.
Blogs are personal, even if there are several contributors on the blog. If you start sounding like a machine people will not talk back, at least not nicely. If you sound like a massive corporation the only ones who will talk to you are probably going to say things you don’t want to hear. Be nice. Be personal. Be relative. Be conversational. That is, after all, what you are trying to achieve with a blog. If you want to burp out marketing messages there are other, better, ways to communicate.
You are trying to make people comment and to enable them to create a dialogue with you. Hopefully that dialogue is interesting to others, who also will become regular readers and in time will contribute with comments, you will perhaps even get to know new people, possibly even gain new friends.
Final Verdict Not Needed
Not needed?
If you read up on the “pro” bloggers out there you will notice that their success rarely is accidental. They plan their blog posts, often quite carefully, and you can often figure out their post patterns by viewing their older posts. It goes something like this:
- Some posts have news value. Time is of the essence, as you want to be perceived as one of the first ones to blog about your particular topic. That means that you will end up quite high on the search ranking when the rest of the world start to figure out what you figured out a full 3 days ago. These posts you should type as quickly as you hear someone sneeze it. It is more important to be quick than right with these ones, though if you get it wrong enough times people might actually think you are not all that clever after all, so moderation could be a good lead word here, and some fact finding would be recommended. Another common practice is to play it somewhat safe and let a known expert do all the hard thinking and to only contribute with a “me too” post, though again, people will in time see through this, and the benefit of awesome “googlability” gets somewhat diluted.
- Other posts have longevity. They are not news, usually because they will always be true. This very post fits into this category. This also includes comments on various topics, or insights, which may or may not be triggered by something news worthy (cunning trick to sort of fit into point 1 above as well). Regardless, it is the insight that is of importance, and the “Pro’s” often create series of these articles to make you come back for the entire series. This type of posts you can type in “Draft mode” for forever. Type a little bit every day. Stock them up, and publish them when you are feeling a bit off on your news finding skills.
- Even better with this type of articles is that you have a reason to expand on it at a later date, and link back to your original post when the insight, or key elements of it, have changed. People will read both your articles to ensure they have understood your initial point and how it now has changed.
- There are lots of lists out there. “My Top 10 iPhone apps” has a lot of keywords in it that loads of people will click on. “The 5 best ways to use Twitter” is another given crowd magnet. The good thing with lists is that they will not be relevant in 6 months time, which means you can repeat the topic in regular intervals.
- Some people, depending on the topic of their blog, mix it up with something rather personal. Others avoid the actual mixing up of things, often because they have a separate blog for that very purpose. I leave it for you to decide, but I have noted it more common than I thought it would be when I looked around. Perhaps I saw more of it because I looked for it, much like I now have a pregnant wife and therefore mainly think every woman out there also is pregnant, as that is what I see.
- You do not have to reach a conclusion. The idea with a blog is that it starts a conversation with the reader. Feel free to post articles where you haven’t actually come to a revelation or a revolutionary insight, you can always go back and edit the original post, reply to comments on your post or to re-post your new insights in two weeks time. This is often a massive barrier to people (included yours truly), where they/we think we have to present a final exam result.It is not needed, and people love to shine with their brilliance in the comments, telling you how it really is. If you think this is wrong please say so in the comments below.
- Despite point 5, it is good if you have something to say.
I could go on, but in the true spirit of presenting sooner and looser rather than full-on insight I realise this will have to be a two-part post after all. If you have any comments so far, type away below.
