How to Write a Better Blog Post in 15 Minutes or Less

Guest Post By Gerlaine Reliford

You are here at this post, because either you were intrigued by the magnetic headline or you are really interested in how to write a better blog post.  One way or the other in the next few minutes you are going to learn how to write a more effective blog post.  By effective, I mean a post that gets the reader to read past the first paragraph and possibly peruse your blog further.

Focus on Your Reader

Read that topic heading again:  Focus on your reader.

When writing a blog it is easy to get carried away in your own thoughts and experiences.  You become the narcissist that we all are and get to rambling on about “I” and “me.”  For your loyal readers, this is okay.  To new readers, this type of writing may not be so appealing.

When writing a personal blog, it is all about “I” and “me,” but when writing as business, the point is to provide value for your readers and engage them in conversation.

While writing your post you should be asking yourself two questions:

1.    Who am I writing this post to?   (i.e. Reader Profile)

2.    What am I trying to tell them?

You want to focus on your reader for a better blog post, because these are your customers.  They will converse with you and they will be the ones buying from you.  So your writing must be focused on them.

Use the K.I.S.S. Method

Keep It Simple Silly

Remove Fluff— Using filler words that are just used to take up space and make the post a bit longer, is totally not necessary to engage the reader.

Minimize Clichés— Cute as words can be (spoken by a true word-monger), blogs are a displayed on the “world-wide web.”  Everyone will not understand your clichés, and this will subtract from your post rather than add to it.

Magnanimous Words (i.e. Big Words)–  ← If you have to do that at all, do it very little.  I don’t care if half of your readers understand the word ‘magnanimous.’  For everyone one who does know the ‘big word’ remember that there is another person who does not.

Explaining the word with the Latin ‘i.e.’ can teach your reader a new word, but used too many times it may convey that you think your reader is stupid.

Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation

A few years ago, you could type up a blog post and press publish.  Then put up some Google ads and make some money.  Today, you must take more care of the process before you click publish.

There is a very good spell check in Microsoft Word on your computer.  If you don’t happen to use Word (like me) then you need another method of checking your posts before you click publish.

I can publish a Word document on my computer, but the document is created from a program that doesn’t have a grammar check.  So, even though I can check my word spelling, I cannot check word usage.

Here are a couple of sites where you can check grammar as well as spelling in your posts:

http://www.veditor.net/

http://www.spellchecker.net/spellcheck/

I have used these multiple times to check my college papers and have found that they are great tools for checking grammar usage.

Click Publish Now

Once you have made this thorough review of your blog, you can publish it without fear.  Yes, there is more to writing a better blog post than just these few steps.  But in the spirit of keeping it simple, if you take these tips back to your post writing, then you will have a better blog because of it.

About the Writer

Gerlaine Reliford is a personal development writer and international radio personality from the US.  Writing is her number one passion.  You can find her at http://www.gerlainetalk.com.