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.)