11 How Do I Write Blogs?
Benny didn’t mind the longer assignments he wrote for his content company. Those longer assignments, writing evergreen educational content for the company’s website owners, paid the bills. But Benny relished writing the monthly blogs. The blog subjects were always current, topical, accessible, and interesting. That’s why the website owners and writing company editors chose them, to capture and hold web surfers’ attention. Yet Benny enjoyed not just the brief research each blog required but also the crafting of the blogs themselves. Each time, Benny would try to imagine what might pique a web surfer’s interest and then try to capture that interest with especially jaunty writing. Benny wasn’t sure if he was really any good at writing blogs. Blogs came and went so quickly, and were so shallow and topical, that it was hard to tell a good blog from a bad one. But that was part of Benny’s fun, too, to try something new and different whenever it occurred to him and he thought that it might pass the editors’ muster.
Blogs
Blogs are a great place for a budding writer to cut teeth. Content companies and their clients will pay good money to writers who produce quality blogs. Websites use blogs to attract readers, where readers may discover other educational and marketing content. Websites often publish or prominently link blogs on their main landing pages, due to a blog’s topicality and capacity to capture and hold readers. The term blog is shorthand for weblog, referring to a continuously updated online journal or informational website. Websites traditionally offer evergreen text with no particular expiration date. Blogs, by contrast, freshen a website’s evergreen text with summaries of and commentary on the latest developments related to the website’s subject. Blogs thus have specific purposes to inform readers about latest events related to the blog site’s subject, to encourage readers to investigate the site further and return to the site frequently for additional updates.
Marketing
Some website owners expect their blogs to have specific marketing purposes. Some blogs thus have specific calls to action bracketing their topical news, commentary, and information. Calls to action are part of the blogging craft. Don’t hesitate to craft a direct call to action, like call now, if your assignment calls for it. Website readers may fully expect it, even welcome it insofar as they may be searching for the goods or services that your call to action pitches. Other website owners prefer blogs to simply inform the reader in a topical manner, while implicitly encouraging the reader to trust the currency and fitness of the website owner’s goods and services or other mission. And that’s the more-special aspect of the blogging craft, to be a reliable conveyor of current events and information, yet with a catchy, topical, attractive, and entertaining twist. Blogging is, in that respect, like sales talk, which doesn’t initially seek to pitch a product or service but instead engages the customer where the customer stands, anticipating the customer’s needs, desires, and interests. Keep your readers’ interests at the top of your mind as you draft your blogs. Blogs need to serve their specific or general marketing purpose.
Topics
Your writing client or company may assign you blog topics, in which case you will write what they suggest or direct. You may, though, have the opportunity to choose or suggest your own topics when writing for a company or client, or writing your own blogs for your own purposes. Generally, blog topics need first to fit the interests of the readers you wish to attract and then to attract them. Blog topics, in other words, need to be reader relevant and reader interesting. Within those two relatively broad parameters, your topic choice may tip either way. You may, for instance, find a topic that you know your readers should value, even if the topic is not especially entertaining, catchy, or sexy. On the other hand, you may find a topic that is so weird and wonderful that you know it will draw readers, even if the topic is only marginally relevant. You’ve got a sure winner if you find a topic that is both valuable and catchy.
Titling
Once you land on a suitable topic, your blog title needs to convey both its relevance and interest. The title you choose for your blog can be especially important to capturing the interest of a blog reader. Your title needs on the one hand to alert the reader to your article’s connection with the reader’s field or other interest, and on the other hand to pique the reader’s interest. Catchy titles definitely grab readers, whether the catchiness involves alliteration, rhyming, or peculiar words, references famous events or figures, hints at astounding, strange, or extraordinarily valuable content, or triggers some other pull on reader interest. Avoid click-bait titles, though. Do not misrepresent your blog’s content. Focus instead on value and curiosity. The title should in essence say reading me will be fun and valuable, well worth the reader’s little time and trouble. As already suggested in a prior chapter, come up with a title as soon as you open a new file to start your blog. Then, as you work on your blog, you can revise and improve the title if your first effort reads too clunky.
Optimization
Your blog’s title also implicates the role that search engine optimization (SEO) plays in generating blog readership. Readers often discover blogs through the algorithms that surface and link them. A reader may land on a website and fortuitously discover your excellent blog there. Far more likely, the reader will have typed a search term into a web browser that linked to it. Or your reader will have stumbled upon your blog when the algorithm fed it into a news or social media feed programmed to the reader’s interests. Your title thus needs to tickle the algorithms that process popular search terms or that slip content into social media users’ content feeds. Your frequent use of key words and phrases, especially in your title, headings, and subheadings, are a huge part of search engine optimization. Generally, the more times that you use key words and phrases in the more-prominent parts of your original writing, the more likely that algorithms will link to it. Algorithms can focus on dozens of different kinds of keywords including those that are navigational, informational, transactional, commercial, branded, local, geo-targeting, customer defining, and product defining. When writing blogs, be especially conscious of search engine optimization. You’re not just attracting readers. You’re also attracting algorithms.
Structure
Blogs may take different forms but can have a common basic structure. A blog should generally begin with a brief introduction that both frames the event, development, or issue that the blog addresses and hooks the reader. A first sentence of the opening paragraph might capture the essence of the event or issue that the blog addresses. A second sentence might suggest the implications to the reader of the event or issue. And a third sentence might share a call to action or other appropriate response to the issue. A second paragraph would then generally describe the event or issue in greater detail, ensuring that the reader trusts the account. A third paragraph would share greater detail on the implications. And a concluding paragraph would elaborate the suggested response including the call to action. Voila. You’ve got a solid structure for your blog. Ensure that you’ve given a clear heading to each paragraph. Use bullet points for any list. Consider appropriate graphic images. And otherwise ensure that the blog appears simple in structure and readily accessible.
Paragraphs
Blog paragraphs should generally be shorter than for essays, articles, or books. Try the discipline of keeping blog paragraphs to just three sentences each. A first sentence would state the paragraph’s topic, a second sentence would elaborate the topic, and a third sentence would summarize or qualify the paragraph’s topic. If you find that your paragraphs run to greater length, then break them up, while ensuring that each paragraph still conveys a full thought. Instead of a six-sentence single paragraph, make two three-sentence paragraphs, finding a way to divide the bigger paragraph’s topic into two smaller topics, each to its own paragraph. Writing a topical, accessible, easy to follow blog feels more like journalism than article or book writing. Newspaper or topical magazine copy can be a good way to think about blogging. Don’t imagine your readers seated comfortably in an office behind a large computer screen, poring over thick text. Instead, picture your readers thumbing across their cellphone screen to read your blog as they stand in line at the coffee shop. Short paragraphs promise readers that they can look away from your blog to attend to other business at any moment, and return easily to pick up your blog’s thread. Keep your blog paragraphs short, or you’ll lose readers.
Headings
For a blog, the rule is generally the more headings, the better. As just suggested above, a heading for each short paragraph or two wouldn’t be too far fetched. Remember that blog readers may be following your thread on their cellphones, while walking, waiting in line, riding public transportation, brushing their teeth, heating water in the microwave for their morning hot tea, watching their child play, or otherwise semi-engaged in other activities. Headings are not only hooks and guides. They are also permission for the reader to look away from your blog to attend to other matters, knowing that the heading is the place to which to return. Headings should also lead the reader logically through your blog. As a paragraph above already suggested, a first heading might essentially say here’s what happened, while a second heading would then say here’s why it matters to you, followed by a final heading saying and here’s what to do about it. For a slightly longer blog, you could add parallel headings elaborating any one of those three topics, as in here’s what happened next, here’s another reason it matters to you, and here’s what else you can do about it.
Conclusion
Blogs, like other writings, need a conclusion. Trailing off with your writing, without giving the reader a clear conclusion, might work in a romance novel where you want to leave the reader hanging and imagining. But trailing off with a blog will generally leave the reader feeling so what’s the point? Blogs need a point. A call to action is a logical point on which to conclude. Calls to action for marketing pieces may be very specific, as in call our toll-free number (###) ###-####. Calls to action, though, don’t have to solicit a commercial transaction. A call to action might instead simply warn the reader to avoid the certain practice that produced the catastrophe that your blog just addressed. If you can’t come up with some form of encouragement, advice, or direction for your reader, then you’ve probably not treated your blog topic appropriately. Blogs generally don’t just convey information. They tend instead to let the reader know that the reader made a good choice in reading the blog. Give your readers the value that they expect. Send them off with a confirming, encouraging, warning, correcting, or admonishing conclusion.
Links
Blogs commonly include links to other online sites and materials. How you use links and what links you use can be critical to the effectiveness of your blog. If, for instance, your blog is marketing a specific company’s goods or services, your blog must not link to anything highlighting a competitor’s goods or services. Doing so would be counterproductive, infuriating the company for which you write. Yet if your blog refers to a recent event about which the reader might want to learn more, then your blog would generally appropriately link to a reliable news or government site providing that greater detail about the event. Again, choose your linked site wisely so as not to offend the sensibility or affinities of either your writing client or your readers. You would generally not, for instance, link to a left-wing news site for right-wing readers or vice versa. The company or client contracting for your blog might also request or welcome internal links from within your blog to other pages on the same website. Internal links can be a good way of inviting readers to further explore the website. Consider the same, of course, for any blog that you write for your own website, linking to your other writings that might further inform readers.
Tone
The biggest thing to keep in mind when blogging may be the tone that you set and maintain for readers. Blog sites can each have their own tone. So can individual bloggers. Some bloggers, for instance, exhibit outrageous humor, while other bloggers exhibit outrageous opinions or outrageous predictions. Other bloggers or blog sites, especially in professional spheres, might instead keep things strictly buttoned down, never venturing anything controversial because of the balanced reputation and neutral view they wish to maintain. Know your client, your audience, and yourself. If you wish to develop a specific persona and reputation as a blogger, then write consistently within that persona. Don’t shift personas back and forth, losing the confidence and interest of your readers. And do the same for any clients for whom you write. Maintain the tone in your blogs that your clients and their readers desire and expect. You don’t need much more than a single ill-considered thought to spoil not only a blog but also the reputation of a blogger and blog site.
Reflection
On a scale from one to ten, how comfortable do you feel with the blog format? Do you write blogs for your own purposes or for a client having marketing purposes? If you write marketing blogs, do you include clear calls to action at the beginning and conclusion of your blogs? Who chooses your blog topics, you or a client? Are your blog topics timely, relevant, and valuable to the readers your blog seeks? Do you title your blogs both for reader interest and SEO purposes? How skilled are you at keyword identification and use for SEO purposes? Do you need to research best SEO practices to improve your efforts? Are your blogs well structured? Do your blogs show the reader potential impacts of the issue or event your blog describes? Do you keep your blog paragraphs short and your sentences simpler, for accessibility? Do your blogs use liberal headings? Do your headings help lead the reader through your blog in a progressive manner? Do you conclude your blogs with a call to action? Do you make proper use of links in your blogs, consistent with your goals or the goals of your client? Do you have a blogging persona that your tone consistently reflects and that serves the blog’s website and readers well?
Key Points
Blogs are popular, current, topical writings to attract website readers.
Blogs may have marketing purposes requiring specific calls to action.
Make your blog topics relevant, timely, and valuable to readers.
Title your blogs both to capture reader attention and for SEO purposes.
Use keywords throughout your blogs for search engine optimization.
Structure blogs first with engagement, then impact, then action.
Keep blog paragraphs short, to just three or so sentences.
Use headings liberally, describing progressive paragraph content.
Conclude your blog with a summary of the subject and call to action.
Link your blog internally or to reliable, neutral, non-competitor sites.
Maintain an appropriate blog tone, consistent with audience interests.