Everyone is not well-versed in blogging and nor should they be. Your main objective, to say what you have to say. To give advice, sell your product. or whatever you do best. My objective, to help you know how to get them to read it. So as your write your post, be sure to keep these tips in mind.

1. Write about something your audience cares about. We often make the mistake of writing what we care about only. Well, what if no one else care?  If you’re a makeup guru, the majority of what you talk about should be makeup and fashion and not about what you did at school, unless you’re going to school for beauty and fashion. Similarly, if your audience is into gaming, the latest MAC beauty products shouldn’t be at the heart of your discussion – even if you are into beauty products.
2. Write from your heart. There’s nothing more painful nor more dishonest than writing what you think they want to hear. Real content and authentic passion can only be conveyed when it comes from the heart.
3. Capture their attention at the beginning. Start with a short story, statistic, or anecdote that the reader can relate to to capture interest. Then
4. Select a title that captures your audience but is also SEO-friendly. Your title is crucial as it’s used to entice the reader. And it needs to be SEO-friendly because you want to entice the search engines.
5. Make it plain. A blog is not a scholarly journal and your readers shouldn’t have to feel as if they’re looking to obtain their post-graduate degree by reading your blog. Even if the topic is more academic or advanced by nature, be weary of using terms that may trip them up or stop them from reading all together. Just because the topic is of interest doesn’t mean your audience is well-versed in the jargon.
6. Use formatting and bullet points to draw interest to key points. I’ve said this many times and I say it again. This helps draw the eyes to important points to those with short attention spans (ahem, me).
7. Get to the point and keep it short. Eliminate unnecessary works and back off the fluff. We get it. You like to play on words. Well, your readers like their time. There’s a time to be clever and a time to simply say
8. Choose good pictures. While not even close to the most important pat of the blog, pictures add a visual element to a blog, breaking up the redundancy of the black and white. (Even wonder why people like to read magazines? Nothing scientific, but based on my 2 cents, I would say the images are why.) Start here for free pics.
9. Vary the type of content you publish. Blogs don’t always have to be words. Think about embedding a video or maybe an all picture blog post. Reading is not everyone’s thing. Video engages the visual and audio learner. And pictures are just a good way to convey information differently.
10. Provide the audience with a glimpse of your personality. People relate to people, and the words on the page have a way of conveying who you are. Leverage your uniqueness to add flavoring that only you can do. While there may be many who provide similar services, there’s only one you. Use that to your advantage.

Until next time

RP