Many blogs deal with the day-to-day activities of the writer, something they did, saw, or perhaps a joke they heard. But how personal should the writer get with their blog?

Let's take Joe for example. Joe works his Monday through Friday 8am to 5pm job in your typical office environment. Joe has a friendly relationship with his supervisor and co-workers, occasionally going out for drinks with them after a hard day's work. They discuss life, politics, things of interest, and so on.

One evening at the local pub they start to discuss the internet and the blog phenomenon. Joe and a couple of his co-workers have blogs and explain to the others how it is a great way to meet people, share interests, rant and rave, etc. The others appear interested, and ask how they can create their own blog. Joe gives them the web site address of the blogging service he uses, along with the address to his own blog.

A few weeks later, Joe's supervisor receives a phone call just as he sits down to begin another day at work. It was Joe on the other line, and a sickly sounding Joe at that. "Morning boss," Joe says, "I'm not going to be able to make it in today, feeling a bit sick". Joe's supervisor excuses him, and returns to what he was doing.

Lunch time rolls around, and instead of running down to the local sandwich shop, Joe's supervisor decides to work on his blog, and do some browsing on the internet. After writing articles about "good work ethic", and "the responsibilities of today's supervisor", Joe's supervisor decides to spend the remainder of his lunch hour browsing other people's blogs.

As usual, Joe's supervisor decides to first browse the blogs in his bookmarked list. After reading a couple of good articles, he pulls up Joe's blog, not having visited it in a few days.

"Oh, wow!", Joe's supervisor exclaims. "I didn't know Joe went turkey hunting this weekend, he didn't mention anything about it yesterday". While looking at photos of Joe's prize, he noticed something odd... the date on the blog was this morning!

Although Joe's desk remained pink slip free when he returned, he did have some explaining to do, and had learned a valuable lesson from the incident:

Be careful what you put on the internet, it can be accessed by anyone!

Category: Blogging

Rules Of Writing

Please repeat after me, "I am not writing for CNN". Rinse and repeat, "I am not writing for CNN". Great! If you don't take anything else away from this article, at least remember that statement.

Considering ourselves as amateurs gives us some lead way in our writing style and technique because our readers aren't expecting the Pulitzer of blogs to be typed out by our fingers. However, that doesn't mean we shouldn't write to the best of our ability.

Writing sloppy and knowing it is a lot different than writing sloppy and not knowing it. If you think you misspelled a word, look it up. If your sentence doesn't make sense when reading it out loud, rewrite it. Remember that your published article is on the internet in front of readers with short attention spans. Break up your post into paragraphs to keep it easy on the eyes of your readers.

Your writing ability will get better as time goes on. A great way to shorten this timeframe it to read other blogs, the good and the bad. Learn from both!

Knowing Your Readers

Are you writing to Aunt June, or does your audience consist of those you don't personally know? Write for your audience, and get them involved. Even Aunt June probably won't care to know that you woke up this morning, drank a cup of coffee, and went to work.

Stir the minds of your readers! By making them laugh through use of a good story, or writing an opinionated piece which causes a rush of emotions, your readers will be more likely to submit a comment on the article. And a blog with comments posted is a healthy blog!

Details

If you decide to write a story from a past event in your life, write it as though your reader wasn't there because they probably weren't. Accurately describe the important details which make the story more than just a string of words, but a story to be remembered and shared with others.

People love to read stories, as they can often relate to them. If you happen to be upset about something, don't just say so, but explain why you are angry. Declaring a set of facts or statements tends to be boring. Keep the emotions of your readers flowing by giving just enough details without getting to wordy.

Update, Update, Update

The title of this next set should say it all! To keep your readers coming back, you need to give them a reason to come back. If you snagged the interest of a few visitors with a couple of good blogs, they come back the following day/week seeing the same posts as before, chances are that they won't return for a longer period of time, if at all.

Get in the habit to set a short amount of time everyday or every other day to devote to your blog. Feed your readers with their daily dose of your writings. Make them need it!

Category: Blogging