I received this the other day from Richard Morton who can be contacted on Richard Morton info@qm-consulting.co.uk. His words of advice are too good to be ignored, so here they are, slightly edited to include my own prejudices!
Although there are many reasons for blogging, a good blog is simply one that generates interest and comments. There isn’t any one particularly good writing style for a blog, but there are probably plenty of bad ones.
- Be yourself
Others expect you to write in a way that reflects your personality, so you don’t have to follow a particular style or mould. If you want to make all your entries rhyme for example, or avoid all forms of punctuation, then go ahead.
- Post Headings
Make the title interesting and engaging: “50 Ways to Love your Liver” might be more effective than “Suggested Limits for Alcohol Consumption”.
- Content Guidelines
It is a good idea to break up large chunks of text into paragraphs to make them more readable. People almost always skim read items on the web, so the more engaging the first few words of a paragraph are, the better.
- Avoid jargon or acronyms unless you know your target audience are comfortable with them.
- Avoid overusing capital letters. OCCASIONAL use is OK for emphasis but too much is considered a written form of shouting.
- Avoid clichés like the plague – please no “brain dumps”, “blue sky thinking”, “cutting edges”, “first movers”, “leveraging of the proposition”, and even “low hanging fruit” (don’t ask!)
- Check posts before sending – typing, spelling and grammatical errors look unprofessional. But on the other hand, don’t be afraid to break the rules occasionally; all the best writers do. Just make sure it is oveeusly intenshunall.
- Choosing a Subject
A few ideas for helping decide on an interesting subject to post about:
- Brainstorm – come up with as many ideas as you can, no matter how wild and wacky. Then filter out the obviously bad ones.
- The best advice you have ever been given – whether related to business or personal life; you often see a question like this in interviews.
- Ask a question that people will be dying to respond to. If you are desperate offer a prize.
- Compliment someone or an organisation; it goes against the negative trends in the world so it can attract attention.
- News related e.g. “101 Things that David Cameron could do now there isn’t an election looming”
- Random thoughts – e.g. “What was the best thing before Sliced Bread”
Things to Avoid
As with any other form of written publication blogging is subject to the law and particular things to watch out for are:
- Slanging matches – don’t respond to inflammatory comments; if possible get them removed.
- Defamation – if you write anything about anyone or any organisation, then you need to be sure that it is true and could be proved in court if necessary.
- Copyright – all published material is copyright so unless you have permission from the copyright owner to use it, don’t. This applies equally to text and images, for example just because you find an image that you like on Google doesn’t mean that you can reproduce it anywhere.
- Offence – it goes without saying that anything offensive shouldn’t be included, and offensive comments should be removed. Some things are obvious and some aren’t, bear in mind that it is difficult to make a joke without potentially offending someone.
- Personal Details – don’t publish other people’s personal details without their permission, and use common sense when publishing your own.
