Blog basics – Content is the key

Blog basics- Content is the key
Blogs are many things to many people. They’re commentary, they’re humor, and they’re often business blogs, doing online marketing providing information for clients and people researching their markets. They’ve become both a medium in their own right and a defining point of front line media content.
The major cultural shift in blogging is that these roles have raised the bar a long way from the old “website rant” level. Modern blogging is much more like media writing, and content is everything. The best blogs work on high information values to their readers.
A good blog has:
• Topical, up to date subject matter: The fact is that good blogs are very much based on interest levels. Choice of subject is critical. If you’re writing to a special interest group, you also need to write to the levels of expertise of the readers.
• Excellent style and expression: Readers don’t want to be bored to death with clichés or comatose text values. A good blog must be worth reading in terms of writing styles.
• Useful insights and perspectives: Also stemming from the interest levels devolves the need for high quality information and higher levels of perspective on the subjects.
• Effective links to materials: Where relevant, or where dealing with sources, links are excellent for providing both additional materials and further areas for research. They’re also good qualifiers in terms of your own materials.
• Good visual and media content: Often extremely valuable to readers, these materials need to be carefully selected for both visual and information qualities.
• Positioning: This is similar to the marketing “placement” concept. Whatever subjects your blog may cover, consider the target audience. What are their needs?
Basic blog writing
The rules for writers are all pro writing rules.
The particularly sensitive areas for writers are:
• Quality: Don’t get casual about your material. Writing with free flow is good, but low writing quality is a real own goal. Make sure you’re writing something with substance and good writing values.
• Content information. Get your facts straight. Do not, ever, make incorrect statements or make clearly contradictory statements. That’s another own goal, and it’s also not great for your writing credentials.
• Originality: Don’t use other people’s materials freely. There are two reasons for this. Firstly it can affect SEO, and may be rejected by search engines. Secondly it can reflect poorly on your own credibility as an information source if it’s not balanced with your own materials.
• Criticism: Criticism needs to be understood. You must understand the basis of criticism. Even if it’s wrong, you need to comprehend and assess the value of the criticism on its merits.
Self-editing
Following on from the sensitive areas comes a demand for doing your own editing.
There’s a very simple way of doing this:
Be utterly ruthless with your blog materials.
If any part of your blog doesn’t meet the quality of the others, delete it. The most beautiful pieces can be sabotaged by some dire bit of text which looks like it was written by someone else.
You don’t have to be Shakespeare, but you do have to be good.