One of the most frequent questions I get from both new bloggers looking to get advice for building their own blogs as well as those who want to guest blog here on Dragon Blogger or one of my other sites is How To Write Better Blog Articles?
Obviously my advice tailors for those who have interest in developing their writing skills and building an audience that follows their personality and writing style. My advice is not for sites that simply want to regurgitate content and try to capture some of the traffic by accident or luck, nor does it apply to guest bloggers who simply want to respin the same content on dozens of sites just to get backlinks.
Show Personality in Your Writing
For those who truly want to write articles that capture an audience attention or better yet to make them a fan of your writing and personality, you need to have just that “PERSONALITY” in your writing. I often have said that bloggers unlike journalists are expected to have opinions, personality in their writing, where a journalist just reports the facts.
You don’t always have to think of a unique topic and write from scratch either, it is okay to jump on news articles and industry trends from time to time, but if you are reporting on a press release or company announcement or news piece, don’t just cut and paste news articles. You need to add perspective from your experience, make the article your own. Use this simple rule I follow when I write articles that are basically inspired by news reports or trends.
If someone searches for a topic you are writing about on Google, why would they come to your article vs. any other site article, think about that and what makes your article unique that someone should come to it. What will the gain from that they wouldn’t get on another site that reports the same news, tech specs and information on a news or press release?
This is where personality and opinion come in, you have a unique perspective and personality, everybody does so this is where you need to let how and what you say do the engagement for you. Tell them your hopes, dreams, fears, loves, likes, disgusts, hates about anything you are writing about and engage, question, challenge them to agree, defy, debate, contest what you are saying.
Don’t like what I have to say about something, share your opinion on it, why do you think I am wrong when I say I don’t think this product will make a dent in the marketplace, or if you believe Android consoles have no chance of taking over the living room space from Sony or Microsoft consoles for example.
Now, the personality you show in your writing should be consistent and be something either that embodies your actual personality or a portion of it that you can keep consistent for all future articles. If you want to be a hater/flamer and always write with negative connotations, stick with it, like Angry Joe for example. If you want to always have a positive spin on things even when you don’t like something, stick with it. Don’t flip flop your personality once you establish it, but you can experiment on one or more new sites to see which personality fits your writing style better and seems to engage your audience better.
Inform and Always Entertain
Even in articles where you are strictly about informing or educating your readership or viewers you can inject entertainment in your articles, this entertainment can be in the form of humor, sarcasm, or whatever other style you can think of. Again the key is to be remembered, but don’t go for the cheap trick unless you want that to be your shtick, if you want to be taken seriously go with a persona and entertainment style that will get you taken seriously, if you want to be a jester like entertainer then by all means go with that route, but think of it like an actor in movies. You can do drama’s and invoke a different range of emotions and display a different entertainment style altogether than a comedy. Find how you want to convey your information that will resonate.
Reduce Fluff and Be Specific
Most commonly you see this with guest articles, they are generic overviews that merely hint at what someone can do without any concrete suggestions or tips, like merely scratching the surface of a topic without providing any real meat or benefit to where the reader can finish the article and then apply the knowledge gained toward something.
You want to add enough verbiage to entertain, it is okay to do some elaboration but it is a balancing act between being precise in how you communicate the information and how much extra wasted words are added just to fluff up the article. Again, when communicating in an article you need to make sure a reader leaves the article feeling like they learned something important or something that they can use or they were entertained and left with a favorable impression. A generic article that is 1500 words that leaves no lasting impression with a reader is not as valuable as a concise 500 word article that gives the reader exactly the info they were looking for or kept them entertained where they will remember you as an author or your site.
Again, just my opinions and advice to help others because this is how I approach writing articles. If you have your own opinions on how to write better blog articles, feel free to share them here or argue against any of my advice if you want.