An excellent and quick read on the fundamentals of writing effective blogs. I myself try to follow the concepts laid out in this article for every post that I create(except the one which states - write more frequently, at least weekly).
Although the purpose behind the referred article is to learn to effectively create and distribute business related content online, I feel it applies to blog writing in general. For our purposes, that is technical blogging, I tweaked the article a little bit while retaining the overall essence:
1. Writing for the right audience - I understand that not everyone shall benefit from my blog. But at the same time I make sure that I do not lose out on the niche readership base. In my mind, students pursuing higher education, especially in the field of science and technology will relate most it. Also, anyone interested in research or privacy and security related matters will instantly find their time being put to good use when they visit my blog. Others, may be not.
2. Making headlines meaningful - I ensure that the headline basically is a summary of the article in 4-7 words. A vaguely or incorrect headline will only attract the wrong audience and if this wrong practice is continuously followed, it may discourage the readers from revisiting the blog.
3. Focusing on quantity over quality - I promised me that i'll write at least a post a day. That obviously was an overestimation of the time available to me. Given that I've personal and professional commitments, and that I do forget sometimes about the blog, even a week becomes hard to manage. This is one area I need to work on. Other than that, some form of committed frequency is a good habit. Readers do start expecting a post in that time frame once they become regular visitors. Which, by the way, will happen only if one writes regularly.
4. Use the Search Engine Optimizer wisely - That's what they are for. Properly tagging the post with the right labels will attract targeted readership and make the post show up in search results on a popular search engine like Google.
5. Blog writing is not the same as other forms of writing - So be careful in replicating the content elsewhere. Like research publications, articles, presentations etc. Blogging uses a more natural form of language, unlike a more technical style used in research publication. They definitely require a much more sophisticated form of writing and that is because of reason no. 1 described above - "The Audience". So keeping the content quality true to the audience it is targeted towards, one will seldom make the mistake of writing too casually or otherwise.
6. Always proofread - Something never to be missed. One is never in too much hurry to allow a poorly or un-proofread post go online. Once completed, always look out for the various mistakes one can make in writing. A short article on this can be found here. My rule of thumb- Read the post in its completeness. Save it. Take a break for a few minutes. Revisit the post. Publish it only if it still makes sense.
