Tips for writing a blog

It seems appropriate to kick off with a post giving some tips about blog writing. It's certainly not an exhaustive list but it should provide a few pointers for those starting out.

For the eagle eyed out there, see if we stick to them over the coming months!

1. Why are you writing a blog?

Sounds like an obvious question but it will impact in a big way on how you approach your blog.

So are you writing a personal blog for friends? Or perhaps you are responsible for setting up and/or running a blog for your workplace.

Two very different purposes which will require different approaches.

2. Decide who your audience is going to be

Linked to the above, deciding on your audience will to a large extent flavour the tone of your blog. For example an informal, jokey style would be fine for a personal blog but would not be suitable for a corporate blog.

Having said that, blogs are a great way to give a human face to your business (particularly if your business or the business you work for is very large) and a slightly informal style could be just what's needed to get this across.

3. Decide on an appropriate tone or style and stick to it

Switching between different tones on a regular basis would look messy and confusing.

Unless you have multiple contributors to your blog, stick to a consistent writing style. If you do have several contributors you might still need to exercise a certain amount of editorialship to maintain a clear message.

4. Keep it up to date

Of course you will keep your blog up to date but the internet is littered with abandoned blogs.

A regularly updated blog will encourage readers to keep coming back. Plan to write a post at least once a week.

5. Don't write extra long posts

Be concise and snappy. Casual visitors to your blog will have a very low attention span, so break your post up into paragraphs, make use of headings and bulleted lists.

Use keywords in the body of your post. These will not only help your blog in the search engines but will help you stay concise and to the point.

6. Re-read and edit before submitting

Eliminate those typos!

You might get away with bad spelling and grammar in a personal blog but they will most certainly not help you give off an air of cool professionalism on a blog for your business.

7. Blogging tools

There are many tools out there for creating blogs. Several of the most popular include:

• Blogger (https://www.blogger.com) - a free solution owned and hosted by Google. Simple to set up and use; no webdesign experience needed!
• WordPress (http://wordpress.org) - a free, open source blogging platform. You can either opt to have your blog hosted by WordPress or if you have more experience in web design you can download WordPress and use it to not only create your blog but also manage your website as a whole.
• TypePad (http://www.typepad.com) - another free platform that offers hosted solutions.

There's much more out there to choose from than we can list here. Check out the Wikipedia entry for blog software for further information.