I am blogging since last over 11 years. Blogging is a great way to
communicate with the audience your point of view, opinion, ideas. It also
provides the writer with an opportunity to get connected with his audience in a
dialogue and discussion. It’s a two way magazine. The versatility of blog is
due to its medium, the internet. In my
opinion, and I am sure most would agree, that Internet is one of the greatest
invention after wheel which has changed the society in a revolutionary manner.
For the students, blog is an excellent tool, which can not only help
them in refining their writing skills, but also being able to develop a thought
into an article, it will help them consolidate the concept in a proper and
presentable manner. Starting a blog is the easiest thing, the tough part is
writing it on a regular basis, with unique topics, which would be of interest
to the audience. Getting new ideas is a challenge. One can get help from many
sites and pages suggesting ideas for blogs. But most of the time when you go
through them, you find that you also had some of the ideas, but still were
unable to write anything beyond few lines, it is the dreaded writer’s block.
All your ideas all your thoughts seem to end at blind alley. I am also currently going through the same
stage hence; my posts are intermittent, and sparse. While going through the
pages I just mentioned, I came across a blogger Neil Patel’s page neilpatel.com.
He gave some great ideas, which are not about suggesting topic and areas to
write on, but about finding the topics and ideas of relevance, from the point
of view of the readers. One of his suggestions was to go to quora.com and look
for the questions that people are asking. You might have better answers to the
questions, you might also find some good keywords, on which you may elaborate
or write detailed posts.
In my many years of blogging I have come across many blogs, some I find
interesting enough to follow, I would like to mention a particular blog named “rollingstone-revelations”
by Mr. T.K. Koshy. I find it worth mentioning because of the clarity and conciseness
of posts. Mr. Koshy has also categorized his posts in different labels, which
are helpful for a reader to identify the topic of his interest.
What should be ideal length of a blog post? Well it depends on for what
purpose you are writing your blog, if it is a fun blog, which you are writing
just to share your random ideas and thoughts, then there is no such stipulation
on length of the post, but if you are a professional blogger who wishes to have
his blog reach to larger audience, he should pump in more words, lot more than
people generally trust, most bloggers trust that the ideal length of post
should be between 200-500 words, but from SEO angle, the average length of blog
posts should be around 1900 words.
Having said that, one should not really bother how long his post is,
there are many variables that define, or help one decide on the best length of
the article or blog posts. The most significant being – the consumer of your
post, that is the target audience, depending on the target audience, one should
decide the tone, tenor and length of the blog post. Another factor is the nature of the post, and
the length would depend on how many words, sentences and paragraphs can explain
the concept, thought or idea can explain it to the reader.
We all know that attention span is much shorter on screen that it is
there on printed text in hard form, but this should not make one shorten the
text. Attention span is definitely short when one is browsing on non-serious things,
or just surfing casually, but when one is reading something of his interest or
need, irrespective of the medium of communication one pays interest. “Quality over Quantity” is always a better
proposition. Though no one can deny the
importance of substance or length of content, but just to maintain the length using
redundant words or sentences doesn’t help at all, rather it adversely affects
the readability quotient of the content.
One should be very clear about the topic, the keywords and the audience.
Like any piece of text which intends to communicate, the blog post also needs
to have an introduction of the topic, concept, thought or story; then a body
which describes the crux of it, and concluding paragraph or sentence.
Being on the internet gives a unique advantage to a blog post writer
while communicating his thought to the people; he can use multimedia
information to substantiate, support, and explain his concept. The cross
reference is also handier in case of internet where just a hyperlink would do
the job.
The facilities at internet also come with challenge for the writers. You
just can’t write anything and get away with. Your content can easily be verified
on the internet for its originality or correctness. Of course one does get
inspiration from some place, but inspiration should remain only inspiration, it
should not entice you into plagiarism. Sometimes
it becomes important to cite reference or quote content from different sites,
but in that case it is pertinent to share the source of the references and
acknowledge the original writer of that content.
Internet is a collaborative medium, no one owns it but everybody can use
it, it is like a city where cybercitizens live, work and play. Like every other
city, on cyber-city too, it is the responsibility of the citizens to abide by
the social norms and values, as it makes it comfortable for everyone.
I hope my writers block has removed blocks from many of you who were
thinking of starting a blog, and may be some of you who were not thinking would
start consider writing blogs. It’s a great way to improve your skills. Before closing let me reemphasize that your
goal should never be to write 500 words, 1000 words, or 2000 words post. No length
can be considered as “perfect length” so stop worrying about the length, let
your fingers dance on your keyboards and let the magic happen.
Size doesn’t matter, at least not on blog posts.
Comments
Post a Comment