name: Blog Master
What makes a good blog post?
18 October, 2006
The folks at Content Robot have some very interesting tips on what makes a good blog post.. so here they are for you:
Instructional
These posts teach people how to do something. For example, posts that feature tips are popular both in the short term (loyal readers love them and will link to them) and the long term (people often search the web to find out how to do things).
Informational
This is one of the more common blog post types where you simply give information and your view on a given topic.
Reviews
‘Review’ is a highly searched term on the web. Give your fair and insightful opinion or ask readers for theirs. These can be be highly powerful posts with a great longevity. With reviews, you can also discuss problems, include your critique, contrast two or more products, or predict upcoming offerings.
Lists
Content that lists ‘The Top Ten ways to….’ is usually very popular with readers and can assist in getting links from other bloggers.
Interviews / Guest Posts
Let someone else do the talking and give your readers a relevant expert’s opinion. You may find you'll learn something more about the topic you’re writing yourself.
Profiles
Profile posts focus in on a particular person in your niche. You can point out how they’ve reached their position and the characteristics they have that others might like to develop to be successful.
Link Posts
Find a quality post on another site or blog and link to it. Adding your own comments makes these posts more original and useful to your readers.
Rant, Be Inspirational, and Create a Debate
Get passionate, stir it up, say what’s on your mind and tell it like it is. These are great for starting discussion and causing a little controversy - they can also be quite fun if you do it in the right spirit.
Add Some Fun Elements
Start a poll, an award, ask your readers to submit a post/link, or run a survey or quiz.
Why Blog? - From a Journalist's Perspective
03 October, 2006
Chip Scanlan is Senior Faculty-Writing, and Director of National Writers Workshops at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, USA; a school for journalists, future journalists, and teachers of journalists.
In a very interesting and beautifully-written column, he shared the story behind the blog and the reasons he started blogging...
Here is some of what he points out:
1. Blog items respond to a rapidly changing media landscape. I like the way blogging lets me tackle multiple topics in a day or through the week instead of focusing all my time and energy on one weekly column. It's the difference between being a beat specialist and a general assignment reporter. I can write on subjects that draw my attention. I've written about journalistic subjects and pointed readers to repositories of stories that represent best practices. But I've also written about fiction and memoir, two forms that are passions of mine. Like Cream, the '60's mega-group, sings, "I feel free."
2. When I blog, my standards are lowered, always a key element in producing writing that can be revised, even after it's published. A blog, by its very nature, is more informal than a column and less freighted with the expectations that a metro or sports column can impose. Blogging hasn't made me indifferent to revision or accuracy; it just makes the process of generating words less susceptible to the inner critic.
In a recent radio interview, former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins talked about his art, and it helped me understand whly I like to blog.
"The real thrill is composition," Collins said. "To be kind of down on your hands and knees with the language at really close range in the midst of a poem that is carrying you in some direction that you can't foresee... It's that sense of ongoing discovery that makes composition really thrilling and that's the pleasure and that's why I write."
3. I'm my own editorial board. As a newspaper reporter, I was trained to keep my opinions out of my stories. In a blog, I can be as opinionated as I want. Case in point: my no-holds-barred reaction to the James Frey-Oprah's Book Club fiasco. I feel free to have an opinion and share it.
4. Change is vital. Wise editors realize that a reporter can burn out on a beat and so they switch their assignments, knowing that a fresh pair of eyes will benefit the writer and readers. They feel free.
5. Blogs are not new, but they're still on the leading edge of communication technology. I've always been an early adopter and I don't want to be left behind. In a time when reporters and editors are blogging on their news organization's Web site, I feel free to be part of this experiment.
6. Let's face it, a blog can also be a great marketing device. I've posted examples of my own writing, some published and others that have yet appeared in print, along with books I've written or co-authored with links that make online purchasing a snap. Like most writers, I harbor the dream that an agent or publisher may see commercial possibilities in my work.
7. To paraphrase Kafka: my blog is the ice-axe that broke the frozen sea within me. It has helped me find myself again as a reader and writer. It has set me free.
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