Advice on Writing Blogs: What has helped me

There are over 60 million blogs on the internet and I’m sure that this number will continue to grow. What makes a good blog? How can you make your blog stand out from all the other 60 million plus blogs? These are a few ideas which will help you to write and create a successful blog.

1. Share your Passion. Write on what you know about. It may sound obvious but to be successful you need to be able to write with passion and / or with an informative background. There is no use trying to make a blog about mortgages unless you know actually something about it.
2. Regularity. Post on a regular basis. If a blog is regularly updated then it will definitely encourage others to come back and check for your latest content. Also search engines like blogs and websites that have regular content added at a natural rate.
3. Keep it simple. Good writing is often deceptively simple. There is no need to try and develop complicated linguistic skills. People will appreciate blog posts that are easy to read. See previous post on writing articles for internet
4. Clear Easy Format. I sometimes like to write in bullet points or numbers. It makes it quicker to write and easier to read.
5. Niche Areas Focus on a couple of niche areas of interest. If you try to cover every interest under the sun then it is more difficult to build up a regular readership. Having said that I sometimes ignore my own advice. On this blog I post on many unrelated posts: The UK economy, spirituality, Monty Python, Photos of Oxford, poetry e.t.c If you do have several interests you could always consider having different blogs for different topics. This is likely to develop a readership who are interested in your whole blog, rather than get put off by seeing different things. At the same time don’t spread yourself too thinly by having countless blogs.
6. Don’t Make Me Think. A while back I came across an idea on the internet “Don’t make me think” I like this very much. Basically the average internet user wants to find the best things with minimum effort. Make sure your best posts don’t get lost in the archives. You can always link to them every now and then or you could have good posts highlighted. Don't Make me Think

“If you really want to know if your Web site works, ask your next door neighbor to try using it, while you watch." (When my mother can navigate my site I know I have got it right)

7. Good Titles Choose titles with care. To get traffic it is good to choose keyword rich titles. For example if you choose “Advice for writing a blog” you have much less competition than if you chose a title “A Good blog”. Generally 3-4 words are better than 1.