5 Things your readers want from your next blog post

Posted September 28th, 2011 / By Jon Dawson in Misc

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If you’re spending a significant amount of time blogging, you may as well make sure that readers enjoy what you’re writing.  Creating effective blog posts isn’t rocket science, but you’d be surprised by how many people don’t get it right.  Making sure that you give readers what they want and that they come back for more just means using some common sense.

Write appropriately

If you want to blog more effectively, you need to stand out.  There are a billion blogs that don’t seem to even consider what readers want.  If you want to grow readership you have to keep them happy.  You need to give readers consistently good content.  That means your writing needs to be excellent, of course.  But what constitutes good content when you’re writing a blog post is very different from other forms of writing.  You shouldn’t be writing the way you learned to write in a high school English class.  And you definitely should avoid imitating the style you may have picked up in college English courses.  University-style writing makes for great academic papers.  But it can make for unbelievably boring blog posts.

Lighten it up a little

Good grammar is important.  But you need to marry good grammar with a much different tone.  It needs to be lighter, less dense and easily digestible.  That’s assuming of course that your blog isn’t about black holes, DNA sequencing or string theory.  But even serious topics can benefit from a lighter touch.  Regardless of subject matter, your blog shouldn’t be a soapbox or a bully pulpit—assuming you want to keep readers coming back.  It’s helpful to consider who your readers are and what their motivations are for coming to your blog in the first place.

Choose your words carefully

Don’t talk down to your readers—ever.  Readers want helpful advice and an easy conversational style.  They want to be treated like the intellectuals they are, but they won’t stick around if you come off as pedantic or pompous.  Assume that your readers know just as much as you do.  That can help you avoid infantilizing them.  Readers hate that more than anything.  Make pop culture references that don’t seem contrived.  Humanizing yourself through your writing can add a great appeal for your readers.

Use humor

If you want effective blog posts that captivate your readers’ attention, you have to learn to incorporate some humor.  Unless you’re writing super-techy java script articles or other very nerdy stuff, people are always going to respond well to humor.  Blog readers don’t want to be bummed out.  Remember, many of your readers are checking out your blog when they’re supposed to be working.  Give them a reason to make shirking worth it.  If you can make them laugh, they may Skype your blog post to a colleague who might appreciate it and your readership just grew.

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It’s not 1950.  Your readers have short attention spans.  And don’t ever assume it’s because they’re stupid either. They just have an awful lot of other options. You have to continually give them good reasons to keep reading.  This is the YouTube and Twitter generation that has mastered the art of conveying complex thought with only 140 characters. You can’t give them miniature Tolstoy novels.  Give them an interesting video clip to complement your post.  Funny and whimsical works every time.  Visual and aural stimulation adds punch to your post.  Who can resist this?

cc image by warrenski

Jon Dawson lives near Indianapolis. He divides his time among work, writing and family life. He writes on behalf of Colorado Technical University and has a keen interest in blogging and social media. He also writes for www.professionalintern.com.