Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content

73Writing Better Blog Posts

A few weeks ago, I asked author and entrepreneur Guy Kawasaki whether writing matters in blog posts. By this point in the book you and I are friends, so you know my position.

I admit I was goading Guy a little. But my heart grew two sizes when Guy said, “This is like asking if the quality of food in a restaurant matters. Writing is the primary determinant of the success of the post. Everything else—timing, graphics, frequency—is secondary.”

The best advice I can offer about writing better blog posts, then, is to simply follow the prescription for better writing in the previous sections of this book. (What will your audience thank you for?) There's nothing more magical I can offer than that.

But here are some tactical suggestions that have more to do with structuring a post than with the writing itself:

1. Keep headlines tight. Guy suggests headlines of four or five words. Play with length, though: length matters less than specificity and your own audience's preferences.

   Most blog post titles are around 40 characters in length. However, those with titles a bit longer than average—around 60 characters—received the most social shares, according to a recent study by TrackMaven. (Blog posts with titles of more than 60 characters had sharp declines in social shares.)

2. Add blog bling. Every post should have a large graphic or embedded video. Make it count: ...