Loading...Here we have a list of ten do’s and don’ts. The don’ts are listed first and are five of the most silly and self indulgent mistakes that any blogger can make. If you are clever then you will keep these five points in your mind as you write, and then you will go back and check your work when it is done to make sure that none of the “don’ts” have crept in.
The five “do’s” at the end of the article are things that you should do “as standard.” In other words they are things that you should be doing anyway in order to write and maintain a quality blog. There is no point in spending all this time writing your blog, just so that you can fall at the last hurdle–and produce a mediocre blog post.
1 – Don’t be negative
There are plenty of people in this world who are negative by default. This is because being negative by default is comforting and self-indulgent. Why do anything if you are a victim? Why take responsibility if the world is just so crappy anyway?
You should not play into this mindset. Even if you have a depressive personality or are prone to negativity, you must remove all traces of it from your blog posts. It will put people off. If people want to be miserable they will watch an M Night Shyamalan movie.
2 – Don’t ramble
It’s annoying in real life and it is annoying in blogs. Your readers are already very likely to skim read your blog anyway, so the last thing you want to do is give them an incentive to skim read any more.
3 – Don’t do a mind dump
Your mind may be jam packed with detailed and original content on a certain subject. This is a good thing, but you must not simply pour that information onto a page. It may be very good and it may be very relevant, but it is not going to be read. People are not going to pick through your words and pull out what they need. You need to organize and arrange your information so that it communicates well to the reader.
You need to understand that people have a though process and that people are not good at digging information out of chunks of text. You have to spoon feed it to them. This is especially true on a blog. If you do have a lot of information on a subject then consider doing a mind dump/brain storm and turning that information into a series of posts.
4 – Don’t just rewrite another blog or article
There is nothing worse than seeing ten pages of the same information on your search engine results. Rewrites should be banned from your blog.
5 – Don’t use a misleading title
People use misleading titles to gain attention. The blog is then different from what the title intimated, and so the reader’s time is wasted (and so is yours).
6 – Do put some pictures on your blog
Why don’t more people put pictures in their blogs? You are not writing a journal or a book, there is no need to deny people a little bit of visual stimulus.
7 – Do link to other websites
Use those links to prove your point, to verify your arguments, or to point to people who agree with your blog post.
8 – Do structure your blog so that it is easy to read
You may not be able to give people an incentive to read your post, but you can at least make it easy for them to read if they do decide to read your post.
9 – Do add details, facts, figures, references and research
Many people look upon a blog as a piece of text that is too personal to become an article. For that reason, many bloggers feel that adding details and references is just going make the blog too “good” to be a blog, and convert it into an article. Why not have a detailed blog post thought? What is stopping people? It is especially good if you reference your findings so that people can check your facts.
10 – Do comment on your own blog
This is such an under used tactic which is silly because it is free and simple. If you comment on your own blog then people will read it and reply. Better still you should answer the comments that are made on your blog. If people feel that you are listening then they will come back and comment even more.