Regular blog readers know that some posts go on and on and on and on and on….. and on… and on. And then, they go on and on.
And pretty soon, it gets really boring or you just get lost altogether. That’s not a good thing, if you’re a blogger.
The folks over at Copyblogger, who I would consider the experts on blog writing, are generally agree that it’s important to keep your blog posts as short as possible.
Some writers don’t seem to know when to shut up. They ramble and pontificate and theorize, seemingly oblivious to the agony it’s causing everyone else.
To avoid this awful fate, you probably try to keep your posts short, chopping up longer ideas into a series of posts. No need to scare away readers by dumping too much information on them all at once, right?
If you know then, that it’s important to keep your posts relatively short – or at least, keep them shorter than War and Peace, the question becomes – how do you do it?
Again, we turn to Copyblogger for the answer. Here’s the list.
- Write For Yourself
- Edit For Your Readers
- Stick to the Spine of Your Content
- It’s all about Precision
- Save the leftovers
For a long time in school, I was encouraged to write more. Then, I came to a Professor who wanted every paper to be less than one page long. The latter taught me a few things that I have stuck with me when it comes to articulating.
Write for a Knowledgeable Audience
Assume that the people you’re writing for know what they’re talking about. If they don’t know, chances are they are going to Wikipedia for the answer anyway.
Don’t Try to be Pretty
If you read the Copyblogger post, you got the point that plain is pretty when it comes to writing. If someone has to look up a word that a blogger uses, then it’s probably a sign that the writing is too extravagant.
Stick to the Limit
Newspaper writers and authors know that when an editor or publisher says X number of words, the editor or publisher means X number of words, not X words plus a few.
If you have to, set yourself a limit and stick to it.
