There’s one question to keep front of mind whenever you write any piece of content – why should the audience care? If you want your blog to find and engage an audience, you need to keep them in mind from the beginning.
Here are 5 blog writing tips keeping your audience in mind:
1. Choose a tantalising topic
Write about something that would interest your audience (an obvious one but very important).
2. Make it relatable
Blogs should be conversational, not just informative – people are more likely to engage when they can relate to something and get a sense of the person behind the story.
3. Get the audience’s attention straight away
Give your blog an interesting, shareable title and a strong, relevant opening paragraph – hook them in and they’ll keep reading.
4. Chunk your content
Create content that is easily skimmable by using subheadings, dot points, lists and multimedia. Use short paragraphs and sentences – no-one wants to read a wall of text online.
5. Finish with a call-to-action
Give the audience some action to take once they’re done reading, so they can feel involved – note the way this blog ends, for example.
And here are 5 things to avoid:
1. Writing a blog post like a press release
Allowing your personality to shine through is a great way of avoiding this pitfall.
2. Forgetting about sources of evidence
Back up what you say with what other people have written on the topic. Linking to academic blogs or open source journal articles is an effective way of enriching your post.
3. Going on too long
It can be tempting to try and cram everything into your post. Futures blogs average at around 500 words each, so make this your aim – we can assist in editing if you are finding this challenging.
4. Burying the lede
Work out what you really want to say – and what your audience wants to know – and ‘front load’ your post as people won’t read it if they don’t see what’s relevant.
5. Putting it off
The worst mistake you can make with blogging is not to give it a go. So, what are you waiting for?
See our newly updated Contributing page for more information on how the LX.Lab’s editorial team can support you, check out our WordPress guide for details on how to create your post, or email us at lx.lab@uts.edu.au for more information or advice on shaping your idea into a blog post that you can be proud of.