Welcome to the second part in my series of blogging lessons – I’m not claiming to be an expert or anything but I’m going to go ahead and air my views on what makes a great blog. This information comes directly from the amount of things that annoy me when reading other blogs – and everything that annoys me is another thing that will make me want to go ahead and click that unsubscribe button!
photo credit: Peregrino Will Reign
Ok, so now that you’ve got an online identity the next thing you need is some great content…
Lesson Two: Great Content
- I’m not going to want to read your blog if I can’t find your posts, and similarly I’m not going to want to comment if I can’t find the form! Try to avoid too much clutter and badly placed ads to create a clean, easily accessible website. Posts should be obvious and the easier it is to comment, the more likely people are to do so.
- Please, I am begging you, do not have all your text centered. It might look pretty, but it’s seriously difficult to read. Go for either align left (jagged right) or justified, and go easy on your readers. I can’t count the amount of times I’ve stopped reading a blog post because they’ve put every sentence on a new line, and centred it all. It’s just too much of a pain in the arse to try to read! Even if your content is great, if you make it difficult to read then no one is going to.
- Try to keep your font readable. Again, if you can’t read it easily, then other people aren’t going to bother! A light font or a super small one both cause problems. Keep in mind that just because you can read your posts on your monitor with your 20:20 vision, other people might not be able to. Display contrast settings and brightnesses range wildly from one to another, and so what is legible on one may be almost impossible to read on another.
- Use good english. Try to avoid ‘txt spk’, use full words instead. Make use of a spell checker – there is an excellent free plugin called After the Deadline that comes as either a firefox or chrome extension, or as a WordPress plugin. It is easy to use and might save you from making an embarrassing mistake in your posts! I do not like reading blogs full of really obvious spelling mistakes and awful grammar, and so I just don’t read them. This one really drives me bonkers, especially as it’s so easy just to press a spellcheck button and fix things! If you want people to take you seriously, good english is important. Trust me.
- When you’re thinking of things to post about, try to keep it varied. Don’t write about what every other person out there is blogging about, if you can help it. If you do, then make sure that your post is unique and not just a carbon copy of all those others you’ve read! If you have an interesting idea for a blog post, jot it down to explore later. This will help keep your content fresh and interesting. Blogs full of the same type of post over and over are boring!
Next up – RSS feeds. What they are and how to provide a good one!
Tags: blogging
