Visibility Generating & Authority Building
Writing and Marketing Information
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October 11, 2014 / Newsletter 101114
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Blogging - 4 Major Mistakes to Avoid When Writing Blog Posts
By Karen Cioffi
Writing is a craft, a craft that needs to be learned and honed. With
that being said, there are many successful bloggers who had no writing
training.
You might consider writing as being doubled sided – there’s fiction and
nonfiction. Within these two sides there are research papers, resumes,
articles for medical and scientific use, business and health content,
and even short stories, children’s books, and novels.
To write for these genres, you need to learn the craft of writing.
Depending on the genre you write, you need to know how to write
dialogue, how to reference quotes in a nonfiction article, and how to
write POV (point of view). You should know the difference between a
comma and a semi-colon, and how to use each. You get the idea.
On the flip side, there is web writing: blog posts and writing copy. In
these niches there aren’t many rules, aside from grabbing the reader and
making your content engaging, persuasive, and shareable.
While there aren’t many rules for blogging, there are four mistakes you should avoid:
1. Avoid aiming for perfection.
If you wait for the perfect time, the perfect circumstance, the perfect topic, the perfect anything, you’ll be forever waiting.
While you do need to be a responsible writer and respect your reader by
providing quality content and doing the best you can, you shouldn’t wait
for everything to be perfect. There’s nothing wrong with learning as
you go along.
I love what George Fisher said about perfection: “When you aim for perfection, you discover it's a moving target.”
2. Avoid confusing and unfocused content.
The quickest way to lose a reader is to make your content confusing. If
you’re topic is ‘allergies,’ don’t go on a rant about the latest
clothing styles.
Blogs posts should be in easily digestible pieces of information that
are focused. From the title to the concluding paragraph, keep it on
topic.
In addition, you want to lead the reader down your post. In the
beginning, let the reader know what to expect, what’s in it for him.
This will motivate him to read on.
3. Don’t write long paragraphs.
We all lead hectic lives. We want to get targeted information as quickly
as possible. For this reason, your content needs to be easy to read and
written in short paragraphs. This is especially important for skim
readers.
Keep your content clean and leave plenty of white space. White space is
the space between paragraphs, between words, and such. It’s the blank
space on the page.
This is true of podcasts and videos in your posts also. Let the reader
know how long she’ll need to invest in listening or watching.
When I come across videos that I’m interested in, if the length isn’t visible, I move on.
4. Don’t use grandiloquent language.
Here we go back to the premise that people are in a rush and along with
this, most people don’t want to have to look up words to get the gist of
the article. This is another quick way to lose a reader.
Keep your writing simple. Write how you would normally speak.
In addition, choose your words with care. C.S. Lewis knew the importance
of this when he said, “Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't
say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very'; otherwise you'll have no word
left when you want to talk about something really infinite.”
Following these ‘four mistakes to avoid’ will help you write content
that readers will appreciate and will want to share, and content that
Google will be happy to use in their search results.
P.S. If you like this article, please share it!
~~~~~
You might also be interested in this writing article: Writing – To Serialize or Not to Serialize
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