The somewhat invisible component of what I am doing in my blogs is the fact that it essentially is performance of professional writing tasks. Since I mentioned the idea in one of my blogs of people needing speaking out more concerning one issue, many people probably tried to sit down and write something, only to experience unpleasant flashbacks of high school English class where they had to ask the teacher "how long should it be?" and "are we graded down for misspelling?" They may have come to realize since then just how complicated the process of composition is. This is a fact of life that I long ago came to realize.
Let me do what I can here to help. I will not cover how to write in any and every stylistic genre and length, because a how-to on that subject matter would be the length of a whole book. Let's focus on how to write a basic blog post. The basic steps to writing an excellent blog post are easy to learn and do, and a good process is as follows:
1. Know your audience
Who you are writing to will determine to a great degree what you say and how you say it. Think for example, of the many friends, family, and co-workers who might very well read your writing. If you're writing about a specialized area, then the others who share an interest in that speciality may likely read you also.
2. Start with a topic and working title
You'll want to start with a general idea in mind and a title that works to propel you through any possible "writer's block" (it should be specific and interesting enough to really get you going in the writing process). By going through the process of writing and fleshing out ideas you may be able to further refine the topic and scope, and from that you'll know whether to change the title. Whole entire blogs are supposed to each be of a certain type and subject also, so make sure your topic fits with your great blog's purpose and type. This blog, for example, was supposed to be a free-spirited one, but my center of gravity has been societal concerns, news, and politics.
To have a good nexus of audience and purpose is desirable. You already thought of who your audience is. Purpose is defined essentially as the specific reason why you are communicating to them. Is it to explain, entertain, express, persuade, inform, describe, analyze, or something else?
3. Write a captivating intro
The rule would make a lot of us want to barf from reminding us of school, but it is good practice to write a captivating introduction paragraph. The main idea of this practice is to make the introduction grab attention. You could start with an interesting fact, illustration, or personal story that fits with your purpose. You should establish the purpose of the post right away in the introduction and the form of a topic sentence or sentence that contains the very main idea.
4. Organize the content
If this skill doesn't come naturally to you, then you can organize your thoughts in advance with an outline. I do that if I am dealing with a complicated topic that will result in a longer blog post. A lot of times the natural flow of good thinking can result in good technical organization of the body of a post, so that the writing process itself is one of organizing ideas.
You'll want to have a good idea in advance how long your post will be. Is there a lot to say or not? A blog post could be one paragraph to a hundred paragraphs or more. With the general idea of how long the post will be, you'll be able to plan how much writing time you will need to set aside to accomplish your task. See how much is involved? Blogging takes, commitment, energy, know-how, and intelligence.
5. Write
Write the post itself. Use proper grammar, punctuation, and mechanics. Refer to a dictionary and thesaurus as needed. Feel free to say what you want, because you can always go back to edit and revise. Try to follow the plan you had in mind or the outline you prepared.
6. Revise and edit
Revise and edit the post before making it public. Editing after publication, while possible, is not the desired method of protocols. Inserting appealing images and tags are great if you able to and have time. Additionally, calls-to-action and SEO optimization are part of blogging also, but I would rather stick here to the basics of composition (and not so much the business and marketing end since that is not really my strength. I would rather give advice on the components that are my strengths). I tend to think that if you write about what you're good at and what you love, you'll be essentially bulletproof and find a way to conquer the areas that you're not comfortable with at first.
You'll want to put the writing through multiple edits or revisions until you are pleased not only with the accuracy of the work, but all levels of writing technique. Is the post comprehensible top to bottom, and will your readers understand all of it? Is there any way to make your point more clear through further descriptions, analysis, or analogies? Have you made the post as very clear as possible and is it free of any and all mistakes?
8. Revise the title, if needed.
Revise the title, if needed, to a catchier one. This should be easy now that you've gone through the whole writing process and have a handle on everything you've said. You might think of how the post will pick up in search engines (web crawlers) and make sure the title has the keywords you want in order to get the largest number of hits from readers.
Does the title gel with the rest of the post you've written? If not, change it so that it does. A typical problem is that the title is too wide in scope and has to be refined to something more specific to make it work.
That completes the steps! After editing and revising to your satisfaction you will have to make the final determination as to when to publish, but understand that after doing so that the whole world is now able to access and read the post. I hope I have been of help to people that were stuck not being able to start their own blog posts in order to communicate [right now! as my blog title says].
Let me do what I can here to help. I will not cover how to write in any and every stylistic genre and length, because a how-to on that subject matter would be the length of a whole book. Let's focus on how to write a basic blog post. The basic steps to writing an excellent blog post are easy to learn and do, and a good process is as follows:
1. Know your audience
Who you are writing to will determine to a great degree what you say and how you say it. Think for example, of the many friends, family, and co-workers who might very well read your writing. If you're writing about a specialized area, then the others who share an interest in that speciality may likely read you also.
2. Start with a topic and working title
You'll want to start with a general idea in mind and a title that works to propel you through any possible "writer's block" (it should be specific and interesting enough to really get you going in the writing process). By going through the process of writing and fleshing out ideas you may be able to further refine the topic and scope, and from that you'll know whether to change the title. Whole entire blogs are supposed to each be of a certain type and subject also, so make sure your topic fits with your great blog's purpose and type. This blog, for example, was supposed to be a free-spirited one, but my center of gravity has been societal concerns, news, and politics.
To have a good nexus of audience and purpose is desirable. You already thought of who your audience is. Purpose is defined essentially as the specific reason why you are communicating to them. Is it to explain, entertain, express, persuade, inform, describe, analyze, or something else?
3. Write a captivating intro
The rule would make a lot of us want to barf from reminding us of school, but it is good practice to write a captivating introduction paragraph. The main idea of this practice is to make the introduction grab attention. You could start with an interesting fact, illustration, or personal story that fits with your purpose. You should establish the purpose of the post right away in the introduction and the form of a topic sentence or sentence that contains the very main idea.
4. Organize the content
If this skill doesn't come naturally to you, then you can organize your thoughts in advance with an outline. I do that if I am dealing with a complicated topic that will result in a longer blog post. A lot of times the natural flow of good thinking can result in good technical organization of the body of a post, so that the writing process itself is one of organizing ideas.
You'll want to have a good idea in advance how long your post will be. Is there a lot to say or not? A blog post could be one paragraph to a hundred paragraphs or more. With the general idea of how long the post will be, you'll be able to plan how much writing time you will need to set aside to accomplish your task. See how much is involved? Blogging takes, commitment, energy, know-how, and intelligence.
5. Write
Write the post itself. Use proper grammar, punctuation, and mechanics. Refer to a dictionary and thesaurus as needed. Feel free to say what you want, because you can always go back to edit and revise. Try to follow the plan you had in mind or the outline you prepared.
6. Revise and edit
Revise and edit the post before making it public. Editing after publication, while possible, is not the desired method of protocols. Inserting appealing images and tags are great if you able to and have time. Additionally, calls-to-action and SEO optimization are part of blogging also, but I would rather stick here to the basics of composition (and not so much the business and marketing end since that is not really my strength. I would rather give advice on the components that are my strengths). I tend to think that if you write about what you're good at and what you love, you'll be essentially bulletproof and find a way to conquer the areas that you're not comfortable with at first.
You'll want to put the writing through multiple edits or revisions until you are pleased not only with the accuracy of the work, but all levels of writing technique. Is the post comprehensible top to bottom, and will your readers understand all of it? Is there any way to make your point more clear through further descriptions, analysis, or analogies? Have you made the post as very clear as possible and is it free of any and all mistakes?
8. Revise the title, if needed.
Revise the title, if needed, to a catchier one. This should be easy now that you've gone through the whole writing process and have a handle on everything you've said. You might think of how the post will pick up in search engines (web crawlers) and make sure the title has the keywords you want in order to get the largest number of hits from readers.
Does the title gel with the rest of the post you've written? If not, change it so that it does. A typical problem is that the title is too wide in scope and has to be refined to something more specific to make it work.
That completes the steps! After editing and revising to your satisfaction you will have to make the final determination as to when to publish, but understand that after doing so that the whole world is now able to access and read the post. I hope I have been of help to people that were stuck not being able to start their own blog posts in order to communicate [right now! as my blog title says].
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