How to improve your
blogging style
Before you start blogging I think you should know some basic facts about how
to achive good writing:
- don’t rush. Good writing takes time and it must have something to say (because the quality of it’s content is a direct result of the time and effort invested in developing ideas.)
- good writing is organized logically and clearly expressed
- try to maintain positive attitudes about the project and yourself as a writer. You must know how to handle negative emotions when you meet with frustrations along the way.
- you can program yourself to get the best out of yourself just by changing the way you think about your writing
- set realistic, achievable goals for writing well
- be positive about your writing. You wouldn’t expect to learn to do something overnight, so don’t expect overnight miracles with your writing.
Here are a few tips for improving your bloggin style: - Write a better ‘About’ page. This will help convert more new visitors into loyal readers. You can almost guarantee an effective About page by answering the question: “What does this blog have to offer?”
- Start using more images in your posts. Readers like images — they help set the tone of your blog post and generally make your posts more interesting to look at.
- Write a week’s worth of posts in advance. Developing the habit of writing in advance will give you a safety net of content to fall back on when you’re lazy, busy or uninspired. Writing and posting in the same time-frame will inevitably lead to an erratic posting habit, because your readers will never know what to expect from you. Write enough posts in advance and you could also earn the right to a
blogging holiday.
- De-clutter your sidebar. Clutter likes a sidebar in the same way that monkeys like trees. If you have less in your sidebar, you can focus bigger chunks of attention on what’s really important (your feed link, categories and
popular posts). Remove unnecessary widgets and put your blogroll and archives on their own dedicated page. It can also be a good idea to remove underperforming ads.
- Highlight your most popular posts. Linking to your blog’s most popular posts in a prominent location is essential practice, because it gives new visitors a place to go. They don’t have time to search around for good content: the want to see the best you have to offer, straight away. Linking to popular posts can help ensure that the links and comments keep coming, even after the post is several months old.
- Start making friends on a social media service like Digg or StumbleUpon. These services are a great place to network, because you’ll be establishing relationships with people who have the potential to send hundreds of visitors to your articles. If you vote up their content, you may be able to call in a favor later on by asking them to vote up posts you’ve written.
- Pitch a guest-post idea at the most popular blog in your niche. Guest-posting is a fantastic way to raise your profile and bring targeted traffic back to your blog. Navigate to the most popular blog in your niche and think of a post idea you think would work well there (but make sure it’s one they haven’t posted about before). Pitch your idea to the blogger and offer to write the full article if they’re interested. If not, you can always use the idea on another blog, or on your own blog.
- Craft a great resource-list. Resource lists are very popular with social media and can be quite easy to make, particularly if you already have the resources on hand. Pick a topic your target audience is keenly interested in and create a list of resources relating to that topic. You can use your own bookmarks if you have enough. If you’re short on links, a del.icio.us search for your topic will return hundreds of useful links people have saved using your chosen topic as a keyword.
- Offer a free service to your readers (without expecting anything in return). Whether it’s a logo redesign, free post ideas, a design review, social media votes or 15 minutes worth of free consulting, giving something valuable away for free without expecting anything in return will leave a lasting impression on your readers (and might attract a few links, too).
- Pitch a link to one of your blog posts to three other blogs in your niche. Take the most popular post on your blog and pass along the link to the bloggers behind three popular blogs in your niche. If they like it, they may link to it in their next link round-up.
- Add social media links to the bottom of your posts and to your feed. While most people will vote for your posts via the toolbar, social media links or icons can remind people to vote for your post if they liked it. It’s even more essential to add these buttons to your feed, because there’s no easy way for people to vote straight out of their feed reader. Using a FeedFlare to put an ‘Add a Comment’ link at the bottom of your feed items is also a good idea. FeedFlares are available under the ‘Publicize’ tab in your Feedburner control panel.You could read more at http://zoomxsolutions.com/blog/?p=88