Help for authors timid about technology
Don’t waste your time doing things on your author blog that turn your readers away.
This post gives you five things your readers don’t want from your author blog.
1 – Posts Over 1000 Words
People have no patience for long posts. Even 500 words is pushing it. If you have 1000 words to say and can’t cut anymore break your post into several shorter posts. For some comparison this post is less than 300 words.
2 – Long Paragraphs
People have no patience for long paragraphs either. Use no more than four lines. The “enter” key is your friend. Remember: It’s all online so you don’t need to worry about wasting paper
3 – Boring Titles
The temptation when writing a blog post title is to describe your post. Never do this. People won’t read your post if the title is a description. Instead tell your readers why they should read the post. Better a long title that sells than a short title that describes. For tips on writing better titles read 5 Keys for Magnetic Blog Titles.
4 – Generic Posts About Being a Better Christian
If you have a Christian audience the thinking is to write a post on some generic subject like grace or love. The problem is that your audience already listens to hours of generic sermons every week.
You must be very specific if you want people to read your work. You need to know who your target audience is and who your target audience is not. It is better to thrill a small group than to please a large group. If you thrill someone he will spread your message. If you please someone she will just consume your message.
5 – Unedited Short Stories
As much as your readers would love to read your short stories and guides they don’t want to read typo ridden overspeak. If you are going to have a goodies section make sure you only have publisher quality content.
Great tips! I shared them on my blog as well. Thanks!
Excellent! This needed to be said!
Also, don’t post 5-6 times a day. Whoever came up with that stupid amount was high on painkillers or something. One long post, maybe two shorter ones in a day. Anyone who blogs more than 3 times a day and tweet more than 15 times a day, I un-follow because I can’t stand them cluttering my RSS feeds.
Posts over 1000 words. Some things require over 1000 words to get my point across. If people don’t read the whole thing they don’t care what I have to say, but I care. One person who cares what I have to say is worth more than 1000 people who want a quick list of what not to do to be successful.
I do use blog post titles that describe the post, which you say is wrong here. However, that is more for me than for my readers; I have a tendency to get easily distracted so the descriptive titles help me recall what I wanted to write about. I don't know if there is a way to have the best of both worlds in that regard.
As for post length; my blog is on LiveJournal so I could hide part of a post behind a "LJ-cut" if I wanted. I don't know if there is an option like that on other blogging platform.
Thank you Thomas!
Thanks for your article. It gives me great guidelines as I continue blogging.
My recent post Attempted Murder – Part I
Posts over 1000 words = bad editor.
I wouldn't worry about post length if you're writing informative, compelling content. Look up Steve Pavlina–he's become very rich writing very long blog posts. Some of the articles on his site are 6,000+ words plus.
My recent post Kindle Nation Sponsorship Results
@GoblinWriter
I would agree with you but not many people can be interesting for 6000 words. It is much easier to be interested for 300 words. If you can't get readers at 300 words you are unlikely to get readers for anything longer.
These are guidelines more than iron clad laws though.
For several years, I wrote a newspaper column that allowed for 600 words. It was painful. As I removed words, I always felt that I was cutting too deep.
I have also written 800 and 700 word columns. 700 is manageable, but 800 is my preference. If you’re actually trying to write something that has a lead, several points, examples, and a conclusion, 800 is ideal.
Sure, you can do things in fewer words – lists and single tips and what not. But that doesn’t work all subjects. I’m convinced 800 is the optimum number of words for an article that makes a point and gets people thinking.
Not sure how that works with today’s attention span and the ideal length for blogs, which i know is 400-600 words. Kind of sad, really.