I recently taught a “WordPress for developers” group for the WEA. As this was a returning group of students following on from the “Setting up a WordPress website” course and there was the opportunity to ask in advance what was needed to be covered. Luxury.
Most of the group asked mechanical questions. “How do I link Facebook and Twitter with my WordPress blog?” and “How do I organise my categories as menu items?” The surprise question amongst the group was “How do I write an engaging blog post?”
A good question. After a bit of research I prepared the following hint list, culled from many sites and personal experience
How to write an engaging blog post
In no particular order here are some tips on writing more engaging blog posts
- Write to one person (your perfect reader)
- Keep it snappy and short (less than 600 words)
- Know whom you are writing for
- Use bullets and lists – they break things up and are easy to read
- Make clear points so readers can take something away
- Spend time writing a good headline
- Check your site’s statistics to see what readers are looking for and give them more
- Use headlines and sub headlines – people don’t read articles, they scan them
- Consider using the inverted pyramid writing technique practiced by journalists rather than the academic pyramid (see below)
- Monitor your post’s performance to be sure of its engaging qualities
- Publish little but often – don’t swamp your reader
- Encourage readers to follow your blog so that they receive articles automatically in their email
- Lucky 13 – ask your colleagues and readers for feedback periodically
The Inverted Pyramid vs The Academic Pyramid
The inverted pyramid is a journalistic device for prioritising information in a story. The device is particularly useful for blog posts as it gets the essence of the post at the top. As we all know, people do not read websites – they scan them!
More information on the inverted pyramid can be found here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid
