Blog Writing Tips from the World’s Most Famous Authors

You know me, I always encourage you to experiment, to learn new things, to reinvent yourself, but sometime the wheel doesn’t not need to be reinvented. Sometimes the best thing to do is to learn from the experience and wisdom of our “elders”. Such is the case of today’s blog post. Instead of sharing some of my own tips with you, I’ll leave you in the company of some of the world’s most famous authors and only interpret their teachings in the art of writing.

Easy reading is damn hard writing.
Nathaniel Hawthorne

Have something to say, and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret.
Matthew Arnold

It’s easy to get lost in words and ideas. It’s harder to keep your writing concise and to the point, to make it clear and easy to read. Focus on getting your ideas across, to your readers, in their most natural form. Nathaniel Hawthorne and Matthew Arnold both agree on this.
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A Blog Reader’s Nightmare

How many times did you come across a blog post that seamed to deliver the right information, but the post itself was just too hard to follow? Countless times, I bet.

And so, what seamed like the perfect solution for your searches, easily turns into a nightmare.

Quality content is NOT enough

Writing a good article is obviously not enough to make people read it. There are many things that can be done to attract readers and back links to it. In the past, I wrote a few blog writing tips on how to make your blog post more readable and the proper structure of a blog post. Now, it’s time to take a look at some of the things that you should not do when writing a post.

The traps of WYSIWYG editors

For most people, the WYSIWYG editor (What You See Is What You Get) built in the blogging platform is a great tool, one that easily allows us to style our content in just about any way we want, but this “power” is tricky. Here are a few things you need to take in consideration whenever publishing a new article:
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Effective Communication: Know Your Audience

Sometimes, having a great idea to write about can give your blog posts a boots, but most time it’s not enough. In order to establish a good, effective level of communication with your readers you should consider a few essential factors that could improve your writings and clear their path to your readers’ minds.

When blogging on a certain topic, you’ll be automatically considered either a specialist, or an enthusiast. While enthusiasts have more premises to write using a natural tone, specialists tend to overuse industry specific language which could make it hard to spread ideas through a general audience.

In terms of communication, William Butler Yeats – Irish poet and dramatist – said it best:

“Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.”
William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939)

We’re talking about your blog, which means it’s about your thoughts, your advice, your skills, but if you don’t manage to get your ideas past the screen, they can be totally brilliant and still won’t get you anywhere.
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Finding Your Reader-friendly Blogging Tone

With the amazing amount of blogs available out there, a question raises naturally. Why do we read some blogs, and not others? Why do we follow certain bloggers and become more active in their comments section? Content, information is definitely one of the key factors, but what is information if it’s not nicely wrapped in a good delivery package?

Think of your articles as if they were products on a shelf. Are you going to pick the cheapest looking? Surely not! That’s also available for bloggers. The way you deliver your message is extremely important and finding the right tone should be a top priority on your list.

Different people have different personalities. Your own style can help you connect with some people, while pushing others away. So, basically the keyword should be: Balance.

Shifting from classic media to blogs

Over the years we’ve seen a migration of readers from classic media like newspapers to blogs. No matter how talented some journalists are, they still have writing guidelines to follow when writing an article in the paper, which means that their own tone will be moderated by the overall publication’s tone. Knowing this, many of them decided to publish additional blogs, where they could express in a more natural way.

This is the advantage that bloggers have over the classic media. We can be ourselves, 100%.
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