Write For Your Readers: Keeping It Clean And Simple

Photo by J Wynia

This is the fifth post in a roughly 10-part series I'm calling The Most Haunting and Profound Blogging Advice Series. I'm sharing blogging advice I've picked up from more established bloggers, different bits of advice which have haunted me profoundly since I came upon them. Read the introduction to this series here.

Some of the best blogging advice I've found has to do with how we as bloggers present our posts.

Presentation Matters

Blogging is a different publishing medium than more traditional types of media, such as newspapers or magazines.

Many bloggers are also writers for other mediums (as I am) and as writers we're generally more focused on writing and expressing our ideas than perhaps anything else.

Blogging adds another layer to how we present our ideas, though--we have to pay attention to how we present our posts themselves, by writing content that is easy to read.

Two bloggers who have really helped me to see that are James Chartrand and Abraham Piper.

James Chartrand, Men With Pens Author

James once told me that I should write shorter paragraphs and one line sentences and to use bullets and section headers--anything to break up my often typical long posts to make it easier to read on a computer screen.

He also encouraged me to write shorter posts.

If you look at this post from back in December (a long 1123-word post with no section headers and some huge paragraphs) and then compare it to today's 524-word post with bold section headers and much smaller paragraphs, you'll see that I've begun to incorporate these ideas.

Read James' recent post, How to Show You Care About Your Customers, for a great example of how to write this way.

Abraham Piper, 22 Words Author

Piper has written:

"Truth needs to be proclaimed, but trueness alone doesn't make what I have to say worth saying. I need to say true things well.

It motivates me to concentrate on presentation when I realize that badly written truth is almost as bad as being just flat wrong."

Piper really hits the nail here:

"Be familiar with the blog genre and write for it.

It will serve our readers if we write for the way they read, rather than the way we think they should read. More important than changing people's reading habits is getting them to read our content at all. That's how our message will spread—and that's the main point, right?"

In addition, Piper advocates writing less (which means shorter posts--check out his blog for an extreme example of that), using interesting and honest titles, and writing to be scanned.

He explains how:

"Here's a list of what will usually make text scannable:

· Putting your point at the beginning.

· Composing short, one-point paragraphs.

· Organizing with headers and sub-headers.

· Setting lists apart with bullets or numbers.

· Highlighting important words and phrases with bold or italics (but not all caps)."

Bottom Line

Blogging is a very conversational media forum and bloggers who want to be read and respected and who want to get their message out widely ought to write for that medium.

Write to be read, write for your readers--don't just pontificate with long, drawn-out paragraphs and no section headers. No matter how good your content is, if it's presented poorly, you really don't have any right to expect people to read it.

If you want your readers to respect you, you need to respect your readers.

Jesse Hines is a freelance writer. He has written company profiles, press releases, marketing copy, and investigative articles. If you have any writing needs, contact him at jessehines@hotmail.com

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The Most Haunting and Profound Blogging Advice Series: An Introduction

Yes, You Can Have A Successful Blog With A Very Relaxed Posting Frequency

Photo by tinou bao

This is the fourth post in a roughly 10-part series I'm calling The Most Haunting and Profound Blogging Advice Series. I'm sharing blogging advice I've picked up from more established bloggers, different bits of advice which have haunted me profoundly since I came upon them. Read the introduction to this series here.

What's your definition of blog success?

Is it fame? To make money--lots of money? To become an influential voice for a particular cause? To find a better job? To bring visibility to your freelance business or small business or huge corporation?

To communicate with your customers and employees? To have a place to release your thoughts? To just enjoy writing? To meet other people (from potentially anywhere in the world) and have fun?

It's A Blog

I've noticed that a lot of bloggers really stress out about how frequently they should post, even if they don't have a clearly defined purpose for their blog.

It seems to me utterly ridiculous to let that type of "pressure" stress you out if your blog is basically a personal journal or a place where you write about whatever interests you'd like to share or use your blog to argue a point for a certain view you endorse.

Actually, it's pretty absurd to let "posting frequency" stress you out no matter what reason you blog.

It's a blog. You know?

That said, I've wrestled with it myself, and I'll find myself thinking, man, "I haven't posted in 5 days; it's time for another one."

Posting Frequency

I know there are plenty of "pro bloggers" who advocate daily (several times a day) posting and do so themselves. Some of them are very successful--some of them make a very healthy living primarily from their blogs, they have lots of subscribers and web traffic, and are generally known and respected in the blogging community as A-listers or at least B-listers. If it works for them, I'm all for it.

Then there are others, like Dosh Dosh (well over 15,000 subscribers), who might post twice a week, and still have a huge following and tons of respect. Success ultimately depends on the quality of your content, I think.

Once you get to a point where your blog starts to own you instead of vice versa, when you regularly feel that you have to post a certain amount, then it's beginning to veer into unnecessary stress.

Perhaps I have a more relaxed approach to posting frequency because I got a hold of some profound blogging advice from Tim Ferriss that has haunted me ever since I began blogging. It made sense back when I read it probably last summer and still does.

Work Smarter, Not Harder

Ferriss wrote on his blog:

"No matter how good your material is, too much of it can cause feed-overwhelm and unsubscribes. Based on input from close to a dozen top bloggers I've interviewed, it takes an average of three days for a new post to propagate well in the blogosphere. If you write too often, pushing down the previous post and its visibility, you decrease the reach of each post, run the risk of increasing unsubscribes, and create more work for yourself. Test posting 2-4 times per week — my preference is two — and don't feel compelled to keep up with the frequency 'you have to post three times before lunch' Joneses. Quality, not quantity, is what spreads." [Emphasis mine]

Ferriss told Problogger:

"I've been told I need to post everyday, but when I really looked at the facts, a different picture emerged.

I've found that if i post less often, my blog has a sine wave sign-up curve. In other words: If I post just infrequently enough (for me, once every 4-6 days), the comments add up on each post, making the site look very popular, and rss subscriptions spike. If I post too often, it doesn't look popular (since posts get pushed down and comment-count is low), so it is actually better for my site to post less often!" [Emphasis mine]

Ferriss knows what he's talking about--he has over 25,000 subscribers. Yes, he had a best-selling book that he's leveraged to make his blog popular, but he's also done some masterful marketing and networking within the blogging community as well as create interesting, valuable posts with a unique angle.

Relax Now

I've adapted Ferriss' approach so that I don't have a set schedule of posting every day or even once every 7 days. I just post when I want to, when I have something I'd like to share, a perspective (like this one) that I want to advocate for.

By rejecting the "feed the beast" mentality that can sometimes pervade the blogosphere, I've been able to enjoy my blog much more, and stay much more relaxed about the whole thing than I might have if I thought I had to adhere to some blogging industry standard on posting frequency.

I think it's clear that, as Ferriss and Dosh Dosh have shown, if you write quality content that connects with readers, you only have to post once or twice a week, or even less, and you can still have a widely read and respected blog.

Jesse Hines is a freelance writer. He has written company profiles, press releases, marketing copy, and investigative articles. If you have any writing needs, contact him at jessehines@hotmail.com

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Ecclesiastes Vs. Modern English: George Orwell Shows How Simple Words Evoke Vivid Images

Photo by Steven Fernandez

Pretentious words are the enemy of poetic writing, and vague images are the enemy of clear writing. Both pretentiousness and vagueness are to be blamed for the following prose disaster, as shared by George Orwell.

Poetic, Elegant Writing

In his classic essay, Politics And The English Language, Orwell translated "a passage of good English into modern English of the worst sort," as he put it. He cited a famous passage from the Bible, King James Version--Ecclesiastes 9:11:

"I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."

That is a poetic, elegant sentence that concisely expresses a profound insight on the nature of human life.

Pretentious, Modern Writing

Orwell decided to rewrite this verse from Ecclesiastes into modern English (he wrote this in the 1940's), and here's the result:

"Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account."

Yes, his rewrite is over the top, but he used the type of writing that many people then and now consider to be "intelligent" and "professional."

Breaking It Down

Orwell elucidates:

"The whole tendency of modern prose is away from concreteness. Now analyse these two sentences a little more closely. The first contains 49 words but only 60 syllables, and all its words are those of everyday life. The second contains 38 words of 90 syllables: 18 of its words are from Latin roots, and one from Greek. The first sentence contains six vivid images, and only one phrase ('time and chance') that could be called vague. The second contains not a single fresh, arresting phrase, and in spite of its 90 syllables it gives only a shortened version of the meaning contained in the first."

The sentence from Ecclesiastes is simple, clear, direct and filled with everyday words--it's extremely elegant and profoundly poetic.

The modern English version is filled with pretentious words and utterly lacking in vivid imagery--it's terrible writing that doesn't convey its message memorably at all.

The Bottom Line

Try to create concrete images in your writing by using real, "earthy" words, words that describe actual things actually.

Ironically, by focusing on expressing your message clearly and simply (and honestly), you stand a much better chance of producing something elegant than you ever will by trying to write elegantly in the first place, as that often ends up devolving into pretension.

How To Write More Clearly: Advice From George Orwell

Most clichés aren't worth using; most writers use clichés because they either think that they sound more intelligent using them or they're simply being lazy, using what George Orwell called "ready-made phrases."

Some bad clichés:

par for the course
light at the end of the tunnel
stay within ourselves
time will tell
at the end of the day

Rather than succumbing to the temptation to just toss in yet another empty and often vague cliché, try to follow the following advice on writing more clearly, freshly, and originally, courtesy of Orwell:

"A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What words will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect? And he will probably ask himself two more: Could I put it more shortly? Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly? But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble. You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you — even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent — and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connexion between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear." [Emphasis mine]