Blog Post Style Considerations

Congratulations on making it to Part 4 of our six-part series on how to start a successful WordPress blog! If you haven’t already, please read the first four articles in our series before reading today’s post, during which we review some style considerations to keep in mind when blogging.

Our previous posts have covered: Technical Requirements you need to fill when writing your first post, Previewing/Scheduling your first post, and Promoting your Post on Social Media.

Today, here are our tips on some style considerations you may want to consider when posting your first blog:

Basic Tips.

• You do not have to be uber-formal. In fact, most blogs tend to be more conversational. This more matches the tone of this clinic anyway. Yes, you want to sound professional and provide helpful information and credible resources, but engage too and meet people at their level. Avoid using too much jargon. If you do introduce jargon (not necessarily a bad thing), just make sure you break it down in layman’s terms.
• One common mistake a lot of people make is to get too flowery or try to explain too much with their opening paragraphs. In general, it’s better to just get to the point as soon as possible. This also helps you make sure you get your chosen keyword up higher.
• Consider putting important phrases (and sometimes keywords) in bold – particularly if it isn’t what you use for your anchor text. This helps it to stand out (making it easier on the reader) and may also improve your SEO.
• You can write in the first person, but try to stick to “We” and “our” rather than “I” – unless you’re talking about a specific personal experience.

Making it easily digestible.

• Bullet points are good for blogs. So are sub-heads. Both help to break-up the copy and make them easier for readers and search engines to digest.
• Lists also work well for this same reason.
• Avoid lengthy sentences and break larger paragraphs into more manageable pieces for the reader’s ease.
• Ensure you are using a font size that is easy to read, a legible font and avoid colors that will strain the reader’s eye.
• When writing your blog title, try to keep your title under 70 characters so that it will not get cut off in search engine results. According to the folks at Outbrain, titles with 8 words and those with a colon or hyphen in the title performed best.

Good luck and we’ll see you next week for our last post in the series!