Writing Great Content For Your Blog
Know your audience. It’s been said a million times. But, this is the most effective skill that a professional blog writer can have. Writing creative, engaging content takes time and practice. Knowing your reader does too. If you want to be a great blogger, you’ll have to make your readers want to come back. You’ll have to find your voice.
Don’t talk over people’s heads with a bunch of technical jargon that they won’t understand. Most people don’t like that, unless you’re writing something very technical for a very specific market. Most of the Internet writing and blog writing is written between a sixth and an eighth grade level. That doesn’t mean that people are stupid, but only that they don’t want to have to work too hard to understand something. They are busy. They have things to do.
So show them why they need and want what you have to offer. Make them laugh. Make them cry. If what you have to say in your content gets to their emotions, you’ll have a lot better chance of getting them to stay on your site and to come back later. Whether you’re selling something to people or just trying to be heard, what you say should be valuable to them. Most people can write about nothing for a very long time, but that won’t keep people coming back in the long term, because everything will start to sound the same after a while.
Finding your voice is an important part of writing. Don’t be afraid to spice things up with some personality. After all, getting people to relate is easy if there is a real person behind the words. Voice and personality in writing is something that has to be discovered and cannot be taught. But it is essential to creating quality content.
Another thing you’ll need to consider for effective content creation is that people can and do plagiarize. Don’t do it. There are many ways to get caught anymore, and if you do you can get in a lot of trouble. It’s also not fun to find that your content has been ripped off by someone else. If you steal from others to fill up your site or blog you’ll lose all of the credibility you would have had with your audience, too, and who wants that? It certainly won’t keep people coming back!
To be effective at blogging, even more so than content writing, you have to have a niche. There are some personal blogs out there that are more like diaries, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Many people enjoy writing these, and quite a few people enjoy reading them, too. However, if you have a business and blog for that reason, being more professional and staying on a particular topic is vital. Few people want to go to your real estate blog and read about how your child has the flu so you’re watching TV in your pajamas all day. Most people don’t care. They’re looking for information on your business only.
Who are you talking to? It feels like a Robert DeNiro scene from taxi driver (almost). But you have to remember those words. It can’t be stressed enough: KNOW YOUR READER. How old are they? What is the demographic? Male? Female? What other interests do they have? Asking yourself these questions and fine tuning your blog or content to their interests will seriously pay off in the long run.
