Imperishable Inheritance

It amazes me how many blog­gers spent an inor­di­nate amount of time try­ing to improve their hits, com­ments, etc. that they for­get the most impor­tant ele­ment in hav­ing a good blog. If the con­tent is found lack­ing then often it doesn’t mat­ter how pretty your site is, or how often your site gets hit. The con­tent of your blog is what sep­a­rates the good from the bad, and the vis­ited to the not visited.

What will fol­low are tips that will help to ensure that your sphere of influ­ence in the blog­ging realm will con­tinue to grow. The sug­ges­tions will cover a range of issues from syn­di­ca­tion to struc­ture and back again. I hope it encour­ages the reader to be mind­ful and to cre­ate mean­ing­ful blog con­tent. Remem­ber that this year’s Time magazine’s per­son of the year is: “You,” and that pro­noun refers to the peo­ple who are gen­er­at­ing influ­en­tial, thought-provoking con­tent through the Inter­net medium.

Remem­ber Your Syndication

Why does RSS exist? It exists to all my con­tent to be portable across appli­ca­tions. I no longer have to worry about vis­it­ing my favorite sites to get updates, because now I am noti­fied. In my RSS reader, I don’t care what your web­site looks like, because all I see is your con­tent. If the con­tent lacks in qual­ity then it will even­tu­ally be removed from my list.

Fur­ther, sites such as 9 Rules do a good job of ensur­ing that the best writ­ers get the recog­ni­tion over those with the flashiest sites. It’s true that many of them look fan­tas­tic and have fan­tas­tic con­tent, but they make their judg­ments on who has the best content.

Writ­ing with Well-Structured Content

Being read­able is also a fun­da­men­tal prin­ci­ple in ensur­ing that your now well-written con­tent gets read. It seems all-to-often that good web writ­ing struc­ture gets lost in the mix of mak­ing sure that our blog reflects the lat­est design trends. Remem­ber the 7th grade when you learned about topic sen­tences, gram­mar, and other meth­ods to make your writ­ing look intel­li­gent? Go ahead, use them, don’t be afraid.

Struc­tur­ing your con­tent into a read­able for­mat is also help­ful. Give bold head­lines to each sec­tion of your arti­cle, and always use a overview and con­clud­ing state­ment (that should reflect one another). Be poignant in your arti­cle, and stick to your the­sis. It will go a long way to ensur­ing that your mes­sage is clearly con­veyed. Remem­ber that your read­ers (and you as well) scan and not read most con­tent on the Inter­net. Give them a rea­son to stay around and hear all your thoughts. Be sure to exer­cise brevity when­ever pos­si­ble, and avoid using need­less words to con­vey your ideas.

Jakob Niel­son gives us some good tips per­tain­ing to writ­ing for the web.

• 79% of users scan the page instead of read­ing word-for-word
• Read­ing from com­puter screens is 25% slower than from paper
• Web con­tent should have 50% of the word count of its paper equivalent

The Need For Con­sis­tently New Content

There is noth­ing worse than a deceased blog. Imag­ine the hun­dreds of Blog­ger and Xanga accounts that haven’t been updated in two years. Most peo­ple tend to give up, because they don’t see a dras­tic surge in com­ments, hits, and pub­lic­ity. They need to remem­ber that those things don’t come instantly. It’s kind of like los­ing weight. How many peo­ple do you know that get excited to work out and eat healthy only to get dis­cour­aged when they don’t see imme­di­ate results? Sadly, they often end up revert­ing to their old man­ner of living.

The pop­u­lar blog­gers out there didn’t start writ­ing one day and have 1,000 sub­scribers to their feed. They spend time and energy writ­ing fresh con­tent con­tin­u­ally for a sus­tained amount of time. If your users come back again and again only to find old con­tent, they won’t be doing that much longer.

Write with Pas­sion Not Passivity

I can’t tell you how many blogs I go to that write in a lack­adaisi­cal man­ner. Who would want to con­tinue to read con­tent that doesn’t dis­play and pro­mote pas­sion con­cern­ing the issue at hand? I always want to ensure that I don’t just write to write, although it’s an easy thing to do. You’ve got read­ers that want new con­tent (see point above), and it’s easy to write con­tent that is sub-par at best sim­ply for the sake of writ­ing. But I’ve found that I have to make sure that the con­tent I write con­cerns some­thing that I’m con­cerned about. Your pas­sion for the topic at hand will be con­veyed, and it will encour­age the reader to action (espe­cially if it’s a per­sua­sive writing).

Just remem­ber that con­sis­tently updat­ing your blog doesn’t mean throw­ing any­thing out there. Be mind­ful that your read­ers come and keep com­ing back, because they feel your writ­ing has some­thing that can ben­e­fit them. Don’t write half-heartedly, but instead write with a sense of purpose.

Engage Your Readers

The last thing worth men­tion­ing is that you write a blog, and there are cer­tain expec­ta­tions asso­ci­ated with that. I can’t under­stand why any­one (who isn’t insanely pop­u­lar and prone to bad com­ments) would have a blog with­out the abil­ity to inter­act with the writer. I tend to get dis­cour­aged if I can’t ask a ques­tion or throw in my $.02 on the article.

It’s also not enough to just allow com­ments, you have to be will­ing to engage your read­ers and sat­isfy their inquiries and/or com­ments. Make inter­act­ing with you a joy­ful, inter­ac­tive process and not a labo­ri­ous one. It will keep them com­ing back, and it will get peo­ple to actu­ally visit your site instead of just read­ing it in their RSS reader. Be sure also that if some­one comes to your blog then for heaven’s sake, it won’t hurt you to visit their site and participate.

In Sum­mary

Think about what you would expect and how you behave on some­one else’s blog site. If you expect a cer­tain degree of read­abil­ity, inter­ac­tiv­ity, etc. then be sure to extend that to your read­ers. It will go along way to ensur­ing that your online expe­ri­ence, and your read­ers, will be sat­is­fy­ing and worthwhile.

(This essay was writ­ten and pub­lished for the Weblog Tools Essay Com­pe­ti­tion.)