Last week, I gave some tips to writing great headlines that will get people to open your e-mails or read your posts. This week, let’s talk about things you can do to get them engaged in what you are writing.
Before I launch into the tips, let me preface this with an important overarching caveat.
No amount of good writing will overcome a poor website design. You need a web design that, first of all, facilitates people finding your blog posts. Otherwise, only your mother is going to click the tiny little word, Blog, that is lost on a blah blah blah marketing speak site. Once you have a good site, make sure the style sheet is set up to give your posts a nice presentation. This will make it so much more rewarding to write. Now with that said, here are 15 tips to make you a better blogger:
1. Write posts that are interesting and informative and not just marketing speak. Show them how great you are, rather than telling them.
2. Use at least one image to draw people into the post.
3. Left align the first image with text wrapping, so that the first couple of lines of text to the right side of the image are shorter (about 250 – 300 pixels wide). It is easier for people to read shorter lines of text on the web, but once they are engaged they will keep reading the text with normal column width.
Images are an important component to a good blog post. They give a reader a first hint of what the article is about and they can set the tone. Using a visual can break up the text in posts that may otherwise feel too long and they just add a bit of polish to a post and to the site.
