What? I’m Blogging?!

As someone whose hobby was writing as a child, it comes as a surprise to those who are the closest to me that this is my first attempt at blogging. It’s exciting to think about how a blog has a potentially global reach, yet it is terrifying to think about a potential 7.5 billion people scrutinizing each choice of words. It’s interesting to think about how this blog was only opened because of a school project: a blog post dedicated to reflecting on effective blogs. And so, with the lesson on effective blogs in mind, let’s go over some of the key takeaways, for my first official blog post.

 

Having an effective, relatable blog takes patience; a successful blog goes through trial and error. Blogging takes practice, but there are aspects of blog posts that can help to make it more engaging to the audience on the author’s first attempt. Let’s discuss.

 

First things first, while the average 2-year-old has an attention span of a maximum of 5 minutes, the average adult has an attention span of approximately 20 minutes. Posts should be broken up into smaller paragraphs, shorter sentences, and with lists or bullet points if it makes sense for the post. This makes it simple to scan and makes it easily digestible, so that the readers attention is not lost.

 

In conjunction with keeping posts short and concise, authors should use anecdotes when possible. This connects the reader to the author on a personal level. Telling short, seemingly insignificant tales about yourself can draw the audience into the picture that you’re trying to paint with your writing.

 

Finally, ensuring that a post is free of spelling and grammatical errors is important. There are dozens of editing tools and combining these with peer editors will reduce the likelihood that simple mistakes are made. Personally, I prefer to hand-write notes so that I can catch any grammar errors on the second draft as I type it out.

Image taken from: my notes

Image taken from: my notes

 

So, that just about sums it up. The most important takeaways from the lesson on successful blogs, taught by Frank in my opinion, are as followed:

• Having short, easily digestible content
• Little anecdotes and fun stories
• Ensuring a post clean of spelling and grammar errors

Keeping these three points in mind will help any writer have a successful blog. Obviously, there are more tips and tricks that should be used, but these were the three most important to me. What are the most important tips and tricks for blog writing that you know?