Blog

People ask all the time, “What does it take to write a good blog, one that is worth reading?”

The answer is simple: be a good writer. Sure, you could depend on one of those AI programs to write the blog for you. Or you could consider what it takes to put together a meaningful blog, one that showcases your company, your industry, your topic or even your passion.

In all earnestness, let’s look at what it takes to be a good blog writer. From my perspective, there are three key ingredients to successfully craft a blog that cuts through all the noise and encourages people to respond or react.

They are as follows: Be sincere and truthful, tell stories and be personal, and leave the sales pitch out of it. Let’s review each one of these themes.

Be sincere and truthful

Everyone wants sincerity today, not hidden agendas and personal pursuits at the expense of others.

When it comes to writing sincerely, start with honesty. Don’t try to cloak your blog in language that confuses or leaves the reader wondering what the point is. Offer your information, ideas, facts and suggestions in a straight-forward way. Do not try to hide behind language or overwhelming stats or jumbled concepts. Be simple, direct and focused on what you want to share. Leave it there – that’s being sincere.

When it comes to a blog, truth is sharing information in a format that allows the reader to make his or her own judgment while also citing the source and attributing the information properly (letting people know who said what, where the study came from, how the information was collected, etc.).

Being sincere will help you write a good blog. Being truthful will help readers realize they can count on you for accurate information, reasonable ideas, and interesting stories.

Tell stories and be personal

Bloggers like numbers and stats. Most people connect with ideas that way – it’s a form of validating the nature and accuracy of information presented. But numbers can be adapted or even used in a way that leaves a reader wondering what’s really being said.

When I find statistics and resources from studies and various research efforts, I like to also look at the story behind those numbers. Use stories to give readers a real-world example that helps define and clarify the numbers being cited.

Being personal isn’t a hard thing in our culture today; check social media if you don’t know what I mean.

Sharing about a personal experience helps complex information and/or stark numbers on a page come to life, and ideas take on a form that is easier to understand than a theoretical explanation that says a lot but means little to the reader.

So, take a cue from social media and talk about your personal experience. Tell stories. It’s fun, it makes the writing experience more meaningful to you as the writer and it reminds the reader that you are indeed being sincere and honest.

Forget about the sales pitch

This one is easy and doesn’t take much time. Blogs are a way to showcase your expertise with a subject or share quality information or good ideas. They are not a sales pitch or an advertisement.

Writing a good blog is all about content and sharing content. If you find yourself mentioning a new product or service within the blog, that’s one thing. If the entire message is about that product or service, what you’ve created is a sales sheet, a marketing summary, or an advertising flier.

Now it’s one thing to have a “call to action” in a blog and suggest readers can learn more by going to a website or social media channel. It’s another to focus a blog in such a way that it basically tells the reader to buy something or hire someone.

Bottom line, blogs need to stay focused as blogs and not be distorted as something else. Don’t think your readers won’t see what you’re up to. Those who love blogs know what it takes to write good blogs, and what not to do if you want to be read.