WHAT’S THE PURPOSE
Every good piece of writing has a purpose. Whether you’re making an argument or just telling facts, there’s a reason why you’re spending your valuable time writing it. A good purpose is the most important part of writing, especially blogs. Then, once you figure out why you’re writing, you’ve got to figure out who’s going to read it: who’s your audience? After you accomplish all of this, you can begin to blog.
HOOK THE READER IN
The first paragraph and title of any blog post should hook the readers in. Your readers have no obligation to read your writing so unless you give them a reason to spend their time reading your opinion, they won’t. It’s as simple as that. When writing my first blog post, I figured having an interesting title was the quickest way I could draw people into my writing. By titling it, “How to Fix English Class,” I’m immediately connecting to a topic that people find interesting. Also, it implicitly takes a controversial position about english classes: that they need fixing. My first paragraph itself continues to argue my position that typical english assignments are boring. By doing so, I hope to hook anyone who agrees with me and everyone who disagrees with me. Also, because it is a blog written in first person, my first sentence immediately begins to start a conversation with the reader. It reads,
“Imagine this. You’re sitting in your dorm room, listening to the newly released Kendrick Lamar album, talking to your roommate about how much you don’t want to do your latest english assignment.”
My goal with this sentence was to start a dialogue with my audience and make them feel as though they are part of my writing. As long as your readers feel invested in what you’re saying, they’ll continue to read it.
DRAW ON PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
Before I wrote my first blog post, I spent a lot of time reading blogs across the internet. The blogs addressed numerous different topics, from sports blogs to politics blogs, but they all had one thing in common; each and every one was written with a personal touch. I decided that I needed to find a way to draw on a personal experience of some sort in my first post. As a result, I decided to focus on my friend’s english class and one of his boring assignments. His courageous choice to think outside of the box was the perfect springboard into my bigger topic, that in order to have a meaningful education, technology must be used.
EDIT IT DOWN
If you’re anything like me, when you start writing about a topic that you find interesting, you’ll suddenly look at the page and realize how much you’ve written. This is always going to be a challenge that you face when writing blog posts. In my first post, I started off with a very long essay about how technology is extremely important in the world of education. I decided to cut much of the essay out, leaving just a few of the most important paragraphs and substituting the less important ones with my personal stories that transformed it from an essay into a blog post.
MAKE SURE THEY LIKE IT
Lastly, an extremely important part of blogging is keeping your audience entertained. This can be accomplished many ways, but one of the most common, and easiest, is through the use of imagery. When writing about dense topics, like the necessary use of technology in education, funny pictures can be a great way to break up your writing. They give the reader something pretty to look at for a moment, which gives them a refresher from your writing while also adding to your argument. In my post, I used images after almost every subtitle. Additionally, I used my first image, after my title, to hook my reader in. By using a picture that many people would recognize, Bart Simpson in trouble in his elementary school, I not only get more people hooked into my post, but also demonstrate that it will be about education.
Image Credit
http://www.ignitesocialmedia.com/community-management/community-manager-life/