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What is good blog writing?

Blogs have much in common with any other type of writing, so there are certain universal tenets of good content. They include accurate spelling, good grammar and punctuation, clarity, purpose and the ability to meet the reader’s needs. These can be applied across the board, to everything from literary fiction to marketing copy; whether you are writing about a love affair or about organic memory foam matresses.

What changes is the last of those tenets: the ability to meet the reader’s needs. To do that, form and style need to vary. So, what kind of writing makes for good blogging?

Informal

Blogging is, by its nature, a social and informal form of writing. You don’t need to write as if you are a broadsheet journalist: try and keep keep your tone engaging and let your personality shine through. A blog is a conversation with the reader, so write as if you are having a conversation.

Consistent

Leading from the above, keep your voice consistent. Your readers want to feel as if they ‘know’ you in some way, and your writing style is your tone of voice on screen. If you write like one person in one post, and another in the next, they will be confused and their trust in you might be damaged.

Easy to scan

People tend to read things on the internet differently to how they would read things in print. They scan pages quickly and won’t always read a whole page, just try to pick out the things that interest them most. They will quickly move on if the post doesn’t catch their interest. So, to get and keep readers on your page, you need a snappy headline, relevant sub-headers and short paragraphs. Lists and bullet points can also be useful.

Concise

Concision is important in any kind of writing: no-one likes to read pages of waffle. However, it is especially important in blog writing. As above, internet readers tend not to want to concentrate on one thing for very long. Blogs don’t have the automatic authority that national newspaper sites do, so readers are unlikely to want to ‘risk’ spending their precious time reading a long post that may not turn out to be much good.

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If you simply write without giving thought to these points, it might still be good (often not). But planning and evaluating your writing based on good writing practices can make good writing even better, or bad writing good.

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