The other day I wrote about the importance of writing correct language in your blog posts. Once you have tackled the issue of language correctness; it is time to learn further and focus on your style of writing. I have already said in my previous posts that it does not matter which language you use for writing your blog posts -but your language should be correct and your style should be suitable for your blog.
Different types of blogs require a different style of writing. If you’re writing about news, your style would that be of reporting; if you’re writing tutorials and instructional posts (e.g. I do on TechWelkin) your style needs to be more interactive. If you write posts on fiction work, you would do better with more creative style. Therefore, it depends on the kind of blog. If you’re serious about blogging, language style is one of the most critical cog in your success. I will explain this topic further taking TechWelkin as an example. TechWelkin contains articles that are instructional in nature.
Interact With Your Reader
When you write, it is always better to use a conversational style. It helps your reader to connect with you and also, no doubt, conversational writing is more interesting to read. Ask questions, direct statements at your readers, greet them, invite opinions and bring other similar elements in your posts. Make your posts more like a lecture wherein you’re the main speaker but you discuss various points with your audience.
Short is Better
It is advisable that you write short and crisp sentences. Long sentences are boring and also prone to be misinterpreted by the reader. In my very early days of blogging, I used to deliberately write longer sentences to increase the amount of material in my posts. From this, although I learnt the art of stretching things unnecessarily (trust me it is important in diplomacy!) but as a side-effect, my posts became too verbose. I was using 50 words for saying the the same thing I could have said in 10 words.
I learnt my lessons on my own. And you don’t need to reinvent the wheel. Write as crisp posts as possible given your style of writing.
Blog Posts Need Not be Literary
This point connects to the previous one. On tutorial or news related blogs, for example, you don’t write a novel; so your language does not need to be very creative and full of idioms, metaphors and analogies. The main aim of your posts is to deliver information which could be of use for your readers. Plain and clear information delivery is the objective.
This, however, does not mean that you make your writing boring. I would suggest that you write in your natural flow -just curb it a bit only when you deviate too much from your main goal of delivering information. Natural conversational style makes writing fun and is also and interesting read for readers.
Optimize Your Content for Search Engines
Novels are read by humans -but blog posts need to cater not only to humans but also to computers (e.g. search engines and blog aggregaters). Therefore, this can not be overstated that the structure of your post should also be search engine optimized. You need to fulfill a few criteria for search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo! so that these machines can understand and rank your post properly.
I will discuss this section in details in another post. Stay connected with me!