For someone who is starting out creating a blog (like myself), there is a ubiquitous catchphrase no blogger can ignore:
Content is King
Apparently, even Bill Gates has uttered these words. So it’s official: Content rules!
But what is good content? Have you not come across this questions time and time again in articles “How to…” or “The 10 most important…” ?
It’s not an academic question and neither should that be the language of your blog. In these times of soundbite-perculation dripping into each form of media, cloaked and inflated language is often perceived with mistrust.
There a lots of useful guides how to write a quality-content blog, notably Kyra Kuik’s excellent article on Distilled.net or anything by Jeff Bullas.
They all emphasize the same points (amongst many other ones, of course):
- Know your audience: If you don’t know who you are talking to you’ll have difficulties getting your message across. That also implies that you use the language your audience understands.
- Be an expert: If you can’t get your facts right, how can your content be good to anybody? In other words: You must know what you are talking about.
- Provide solutions: Folks are using your blog to get things done, right?
- Imprint your personality: It is always more fun to read a post when you feel that a real person has done the work. Authenticity will always win your readers over.
- Break it down: Structure your posts into “digestible” paragraphs with clear calls to action and key-points highlighted in bold or color. No one wants to stare at an uninterrupted low of Lorem ipsums.
- Get on the other side of the fence: Put yourself in the position of your reader. Would YOU find your post helpful? Would you be intrigued to carry on reading?
There are no hard-and-fast rules for this complex topic, but these points helped me to position my compass and get started.
