How Not To Write A Quality Post
This post was made Apr 30, 2008 by Carlos del Rio
Some days it is difficult to come up with a quality topic, especially when you have been away for a few days. What can I say as I am trying to switch gears from vacation to work. I know that I need to produce content, at least to get my brain back on subject.
I should just do it badly to start and get better. So I search “how not to write a good blog” it seems like the perfect question to start with, right. I am sure that there are plenty of people that are writing badly as we speak. It turns out that How Not To… is a very popular subject. More than 14,000,000 people couldn’t think of what to write so they inverted their needs.
Conceptually I expected that there would be a fair amount of sarcasm in the content, that their would be earnest tips with a catchy, but trite, title. But as you will see they go the route of telling us about the issues that they find rather than showing.
In many of the cases that you are trying to illuminate the error in someone else’s way, or your own, give it a little extra and show the reader what you are talking about:
David Boles does a great job of covering what will make your blog less appealing. He is very thorough, but he leaves out two very important points:
- Purge your broken links
- Use some whitespace.
It is difficult to follow content that is tightly spaced with no concept breaks, if you are thinking of a list make a list. When you change thoughts make a visual mark to make reading easier. To improve your results from the web you should:
- Make content whenever you can
- Write the way you talk
- Accept that when write you are the brand
- Leave an opening for people to comment and participate
- Put your real feelings into your writing
- Realize that some days you are going to be below average, but make content anyway
What is your biggest challenge in making content?
When all else fails fall back to grade school book report mode and start every post with “Webster’s dictionary defines as…”. It also helps to summarize with “The End,” because otherwise people might not know.
Yeah, next time I can’t think of anything I will just create a Carlos Dictionary.