Tickle your readers taste buds. Add a selection of Posts.
Writing articles on a Blog can sometimes become quite tricky especially when you have a readership to satisfy. Whether your readership is 100 people large or 100,000 large you as the Author and many of you as the owner as well need to ensure your posts are effective in the message they are trying to put across. However this is sometimes easier said in your head than it is typed on your Blog.
There are some people in the world who are very intelligent, whether this be in one individual subject or in a general scale, yet when it comes to teaching others and sharing their knowledge with other people they find it hard to teach them effectively and easily, without confusing their students or readers. Personally I can associate myself with having this type of experience, being in University one of my lecturers seems very intelligent however the way he communicates his knowledge to the lecture threatre, comes across as being difficult to understand. It won’t be because they are stupid, as I’ve just said he is clever and its not just him many of my friends have the same experiences in other Universities. The problem is that some people are just not naturally gifted at teaching others or informing others, giving others information in any single way or form.
I picked this example, because it portrays some of the difficulties that come through Blogging, trying to communicate with your readers, trying to ensure that you can make things as simple as possible yet as informative as you can. The way I try and do this is to structure my articles out in sections whilst trying to delve as deep as I can in to what I am trying to explain. This is sometimes not the best idea though, something complex or hard to understand may be best kept simple in one post and explained in a little more detail in another post. This technique gives the reader the choice to extend their knowledge further by reading the second post however if they don’t understand at least they have the first post as a guide or explanation.
Plan your article
I believe one of the tricks in writing your best and making your posts simple yet informative for your readers is to plan your article. Whether it be in your head or on a peice of paper, by writing down the main points of your article you can ensure that it is structured in a sensible manner. Therefore increasing the chances your readers will learn from it, enjoy it much more.
Consider its length
Another tip before you write your article is to consider the length of the article. If its a large subject, for example on Internet Marketing and you plan on explaining every aspect of Internet Marketing in under 1,000 words then I would reconsider this, either that or consider that you are missing a big chunk of the explanation out.
This brings me swiftly on to my main point of this article, this is whether you should write short posts or long posts.
Short posts
My personal opinion of a short post would be a post thats a maximum of 750 words others may find this to be quite a large post however it depends on your writing techniques and what subject you write about and to whom your readers are.
There are benefits to both writing short posts and long posts, these are just a sample of short post benefits.
- A short post can simplify a normally complicated subject.
- A short post can be more memorable and easier to absorb.
- Short posts can be written quicker, giving the Author more time in other areas.
- Readers can read a short post from start to finish with out any trouble.
There are other benefits however these are the main points that I believe need to be made. Short posts can definitely become a positive to some readers who prefer to skim read articles or tend to get bored after 500 words or so, at which point they would have stopped about 15 lines up from here.
Long Posts
A long post in my opinion would be a maximum of 2,500 words, I believe there should be a maximum because if there isn’t then some people such as myself (if I didn’t have any self control) would just go on and on again and again most probably repeating the same point continously, this would bore readers, perhaps annoy them and in all fairness probably have a negative affect upon your readership.
Like with short posts I think long posts have there advantages too such as.
- Readers can attain a higher level of knowledge from these posts.
- They become pillar posts for Blogs, helping to add traffic and backlinks.
- They can look more professional on Blogs.
- Give the impression that the Author is an expert in their field.
Again there are other benefits however these are the main points I picked up. With both the benefits for short posts and long posts I believe they can be transferred from one to the other however I think they stand more strongly where they are now.
Which should I publish on my Blog?
You may be wondering then, well which post is better to publish on your Blog, the answer is simple, both. Blogs should have a varied mix of short, medium and long posts covering several different topics written in several different structures using different learning techniques and using personal experiences. This I feel is a method which would mostly benefit your readers and this is what every Blogger should want. At the end of the day your readers are what should come first, not your affiliate income or your statistics its down to your readers as individuals if they have an array of mixed content structured in different ways to help them learn then thats going to be more beneficial to you and them. The long term method would be to mix your content up a little, don’t stick with 500 word posts do a variety of 300 word posts and 500 word posts with a couple of 1,000 plus posts each week.
I can safely say this is something I am experimenting with these days, I got bored of writing large 1,000 word plus posts however I do enjoy writing these I just felt the readers of my Blog may want a little more than to be overwhelmed with me blabbering on all the while. So with the introduction of new Blogging series such as Bullet Proof Blogging and my latest to be announced soon which will collect a selection of the previous months most popular articles on Internet Marketing, I feel I can offer a variety of informative posts to my readers. This is what you should aim for too, don’t stick with the one type.
I hope you enjoyed this article, I enjoyed writing it as I usually do. I hope you have had a nice weekend and a nice Valentines day. I would be very interested in knowing what type of posts you enjoy the most?
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