Tag Archives: Social Media

How to Write a Blog

Know Your Audience

A great blog is both educational and interesting, so when considering your audience, think “Who might need this information?” and “Who might find it interesting?” Typically, the audience is one in the same. Knowing your audience is marketing 101 and blogging is a business. Yes, of course, there are some that still use blogging as a diary, but blogging is also about branding, selling, and educating. Put yourself in the reader’s shoes and consider what information would keep them on your page. Knowing your audience will also help you choose the tone and voice of your post. Blogs are less formal that academic papers, so the language tends to be more relaxed, but it’s important to consider your audience to know how relaxed your language should be. Also, knowing your audience will let you know what information they already know. Millennials probably don’t need a how-to on creating a social media page, but they might need to know how to tweak their pages to gain followers. Knowing who you’re talking to will help you make these subtle changes and create a more focused blog post, which leads us to the next point.

Choose a Topic and a Title

Chances are, you already know what you’re writing about. This is more about being specific. Amateur bloggers will write the content first, end up in left or right field somewhere, and then try to create a title that addresses all their excellent points.

Choosing a narrowed-down, granular topic, then creating a title that clearly conveys your message will focus your blog post and aid in keeping your audience engaged. Make sure your topic is something you find interesting because a lack of enthusiasm will kill your blog. Remember, you are writing for an audience and you don’t want Ben Stein’s “dry eyes” voice to pop into their head while reading your blog. Speaking of dry, choose a catchy title that would make you want to read your blog! You’re writing for like-minded individuals, so use a title that would catch your attention but also tells the audience (or hints) at what your post is about. Making it too vague can be misleading if the reader interprets your title one way but finds out your post is about something else. Go for attention-grabbing or thought-provoking, instead of mysterious.

Write an Outline

Organizing your post will keep the content clear and concise. A 2015 study by Microsoft found that the human attention span has decreased from 12 to 8 seconds. That’s it — just 8 seconds — so you don’t want to lose your audience with an overwhelming amount of content. Audiences often seek blogs for a specific purpose, and no one wants to scroll through an endless amount of content to find what they came for, so plan for between 800-1200 words. Maybe your topic has a lot of information. Consider breaking it down into sections and sub-sections that will make it easier to read. Now, you have your topic, title, and outline, but maybe you’re still struggling to make it interesting to both you and the potential readers. This next element will help move things along.

Use Anecdotes and Images

As mentioned before, blogging (in all its forms) is quite popular, so you don’t want your blog to end up a dead fish in an internet sea of endless blogs. There is an undeniable art and power to storytelling, and that power should be utilized in blogs. When I think of blogs, I think of Scheherazade. Audiences read through the stories she tells the king, night after night, just to get to the real reason they keep reading — to find out if the king is going to kill her that night. Yes, that looong story about grandpa’s farm at the beginning of your favorite blog, just to finally get to the recipe for butter, is the same formula Scheherazade uses, and it’s how some bloggers use anecdotes. It is a way to connect to readers. Also, stories are processed in the brain differently, so pull out some humor or a catchy story to grab and engage readers.

“The audience will not tune in to watch information. You wouldn’t, I wouldn’t. No one would or will. The audience will only tune in and stay tuned in to watch drama.”

– David Mamet

The use of visual content —gifs, images, videos, etc. — will not only make a blog palatable and interesting, but also leads to an increase in readers. Use visual content thoughtfully with consistent headers and sub-headers, and well-placed images that add to your message.

Don’t Forget a Call to Action (CTA)

Here’s where you tell the audience what to do next and how to lead them to other parts of a blog or other post. For professional blogs, a blogger will tell readers to subscribe to their page or download free content, but other blog CTAs might encourage a reader to action, which is often seen in persuasive writing. For example, if the blog post is about politics, then the CTA might encourage people to vote. Sometimes, a CTA can be as simple as encouraging readers to “Learn More” or “Discover” a new topic. Check out this example of CTAs on this blog post on Electric Lit (see what I did there). You’ll not only see a section “About Recommended Reading” that tells readers to “Sign up” and “join our membership program,” but there are ads along the side to “donate” and “subscribe.” Also, CTAs is where the money’s at. You need to drive readership if you want to attract companies to advertise on your page (because we all love those ads…).

These are just a few ways to get started. Learning to blog will prove useful both academically and professionally because you want someone to see your work. Blogs use search engine optimization (SEO) which helps people find the content and information they need, and since Google isn’t going anywhere any time soon, it’s safe to say that neither is blogging. Think of it this way, when you’re trying to figure out how to use that InstaPot your mother just sent you, are you more likely to read the manual or find a blog or YouTube video? Exactly.

For some examples of blogs, I recommend these websites:

Sprinting Through Writers Block

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Written by Abigail Beard

Let’s face it: Writing is hard.

It doesn’t matter who you are or how long you’ve been writing. It takes a lot of focus to sit down and write a draft, and it sometimes seems all but impossible, especially if the paper is more than a page long. And with social media easily accessible, it’s easy to get distracted; ten minutes go by, then a half hour, then a full hour, and the page (and our minds) are still blank.

I expressed my problem with staying focused and meeting my word count with my writing mentor, Kayla Olson, and asked her how she is able to finish a book draft on time. Her response:

Try Writing Sprints!

Writing Sprints is a technique many authors, journalists, and writers use to maximize their writing time and decrease their distractions while writing.

Here’s how it works:

Set a timer for 15 – 20 minutes, depending on how comfortable you are with writing and how you’re feeling that day. If you’re feeling discouraged or daunted, try setting the timer for 15 minutes. If you’re feeling great and you’re just struggling to put words down, go for 20!
Once you start the timer, write! Don’t worry about whether what you’re writing is “good” or not—just write. Get those thoughts down, and try your best not to stop until you hear that timer go off!
Give yourself a 5 – 10-minute break (this is your time to check Instagram and TikTok, stretch, get some water, or refill your coffee or tea).
Repeat!

I’m a fairly slow writer. It takes me a while to get into a groove where my thoughts really start coming to me and my fingers start flying across my keyboard. But when I started incorporating Writing Sprints into my writing routine, I went from writing about 700 -1,000 words in an hour of writing time to writing between 1,500 – 2,000 words in an hour of writing time. For me, that’s a lot, and it was a sign that Writing Sprints worked and was something I needed to do more often.

Benefits of Writing Sprints:

You’ll find that the more sprints you do, the better you train your brain to produce words when you sit down at your computer. The brain is a muscle, too, and it takes consistent training to become a better writer, just like it takes consistent exercise to train your body to run a 5k.

You’ll make the most of your writing time. Which would you rather do? Write for an hour straight, or write for a 15 – 20-minute chunk of time, and repeat that a couple times? Writing for a focused 15 – 20 minutes seems way more manageable to me. And knowing that I get a quick break after I work hard makes the time fly!

Extra Tip:

When she advised I try Writing Sprints, Kayla told me about an app called Forest that she uses during the time she’s writing. The purpose of it is that you set the amount of time you cannot look at your phone (the same time as your writing sprint), and you plant a tree. If you open your phone, you kill the tree. If you don’t, and you keep planting a tree each time you “sprint,” you grow a forest! It’s a great incentive to not touch your phone during your Writing Sprint!

Take it slow. Start writing for 15 minutes and give yourself a 10-minute break, and then as you become accustomed to Writing Sprints, try adding an extra 5 minutes to your sprint! That being said, don’t force it. If you’re not feeling it that day, don’t push yourself to write for 20 minutes. Write for 15 minutes, or even 10 minutes. If 10 minutes is all you’re able to manage that day, then you wrote for 10 minutes, and that’s infinitely better than nothing.

Writing is hard. That’s a fact of the game, but you now have another trick in your writing arsenal. The next time writing gets hard, get comfortable, set a timer, shut off your phone, and Sprint!

Escapril: Spring’s Writing Challenge

1. Write a poem

The event is centered around poetry but other types of short form writing such as prose and flash fiction are also welcome.

2. Post it online

A screenshot of a Word document, a photo of your handwritten work, a filmed performance – the form it takes is up to you.

3. Hashtag your work

…with the hashtags #escapril and #escapril2019. This makes your work easy to find, enjoy and share.

4. Repeat

…for the entire month of April. The event is all about challenging yourself!

This challenge is incredibly useful for writers who are yearning for a new source of inspiration. In addition, because this challenge is focused on shorter pieces of poetry and prose, it removes the burden of producing something of a longer length. Escapril provides a routine, enjoyable activity to complete daily, especially with the self-isolation and social distancing being put into practice during this virus outbreak. The best thing about this challenge is how it revs the motor of your mind and allows you to produce content you would not have thought of otherwise. Personally, I have been struggling with a creative drought and writer’s block for months now. Escapril has changed that. Just as its name entails, it lets me escape the dullness of everyday life by writing whatever strikes me. Although I am not versed in poetry, I have been taking part in this challenge since the first day. Here is one of my favorite pieces that I have written so far:

Escapril Day 5: “The view from up here”

Clouds thick like honey

Traipse across the sky

Arrogant in their monotony

Time cannot be accurately measured

When it is constantly slipping through the sieves

Between our fingers

Each grain of time holds a memory

The ones forgotten replaced by those with more weight

And the scale is full of numbers we cannot control

Too many zeroes and decimals to count

They have eyes and mouths and buzzing bodies

Nestled in capsules that grow closer and closer

It is only then that the entrance is opened

Difficult to let in but even harder to get out

There is no key underneath a welcome mat

Or strewn on top a table in the foyer

An invitation that cannot be declined

Sealed with a blood red stamp

Emblazoned with the symbol of scrutiny

Sent from somewhere above

Necks can bend backward

With arms outstretched to the heavens

But they will never be able to reach

The depths of what they cannot see

Savannah Brown’s writing challenge is an activity that all writers can participate in. Moreover, because it is social media-based, it makes it that much easier to share and leave feedback for fellow creators. It also showcases the distinct writing styles of all the diverse writers taking part in the challenge. I challenge everyone reading this to take part in Escapril. Challenge yourself, fuel your mind, and most importantly, do not hesitate to go out of your comfort zone! As Sylvia Plath said, “…everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

Sources

https://www.instagram.com/letsescapril/

https://www.savbrown.com/escapril