Amateur Blogging Series: Writing for your Blog, Part II

Welcome back! Last time, we talked about initial posts, blogging schedules, and what to do if you couldn’t blog for a while. This time we’ll discuss what types of posts you can write, and the length of posts. Let’s get started!

Types of Posts

There are many, many types of posts. In fact, Darren Rowse, at problogger.net has identified 20 specific types. We won’t touch on all of them, but I highly suggest you familiarize yourself with them all. I’ll touch on some of my favourites.

Reviews

Everyone knows what a review is. Whether you’re reviewing a book, a tool, a product, a movie, or even another blog, a review is a great way to bring in visitors. In fact, you’ll often find people linking to your review from their blogs, especially if you’re one of the first to review, or present a unique viewpoint. Don’t know how to write a review? It’s simple:

• What you’re reviewing.
• A little about it (factual information).
• Your opinions on it/experience with it.
• Your suggestions (pro/con) to others.

It’s just that simple. Write a few, you’ll get the feel.

Op-Ed (Opinion/Editorial)

Op-Ed pieces make up a good majority of the blogosphere. Keep in mind this isn’t a rant. A rant would be going all out, and not caring what others think. In an op-ed piece, you want to address an issue, present the background of that issue, and then address your feelings, opinions, or concerns regarding the issue. Op-ed pieces are most often found in the political world, but I’ve written a few on other matters (and so have millions of other people). If you find a post in a blog that expresses an opinion (often in a “letter to the editor” style), that you don’t think is a full-on rant, then it’s most likely an op-ed piece. Here’s a bonus thought… Ask your readers to e-mail you their “letters to the editor,” regarding your articles.

Affiliate-geared

If you’re trying to make some money off your blog, then I highly suggest the occasional affiliate piece. Simply put, you pick a product, describe it, talk about it a bit, and include a link to an affiliate program that has that item (I use Amazon.com often for this). Whether or not people click is irrelevant. The fact that you’re presenting information on a product is the point. Often you’ll find these pieces reading a lot like a review (and if you haven’t included an affiliate link in your product reviews, what’s wrong with you, heh). Make no bones about it, though, these pieces have to be well-written, and present more about the product, than your opinions on the product (although your opinions are important. They’re often what get people to click/buy).

Link posts

I touched on these in the last session. We’ll talk about them, briefly, again. It’s just a good idea to include the occasional link post. Whether it’s several links that you’ve added that day to del.icio.us, a link to someone else’s blog, or a single link to some random site you’ve encountered, link posts can bring in readers for miles. Especially if you consistently find the obscure and unusual things (grade-A scrounger? If you’re the Klinger of the internet, you should be making link posts).

Dissection posts

The premise behind a dissection post is simple. Take someone else’s post, and dissect it (through judicious use of blockquotes). Take it piece by piece and explain your feelings behind it. Sometimes you’ll agree, and sometime’s you’ll disagree with what you’re dissecting. Heck, sometimes the disagreements can bring in a lot more visitors. The point is, you’ll be linking back to the post you’re dissecting (and hopefully trackbacking to it, as well), and this can bring in readers. Besides, people love to read what you have to say on others’ posts.

Trivia/Knowledge

Know some unusual, obscure, or preposterous bits of trivia? Have a bit of knowledge to impart? Then by all means, tell the world about it. A lot of times, these posts will be short and sweet, telling people about some little fact, and linking them to the information on it. Sometimes you’ll tell them about a factoid and then expand upon it. Often times, I take truly obscure trivia, and then what-if it to death, often creating my own pandimensional, alternate universe based around the what-ifs. Why? I enjoy it. After all, half of blogging is narcicism (you want the readers/attention), and half is for your own personal enjoyment. (If you’re blogging for cash, then the third half is for income.)

Rants

Sometimes a post calls for a good, old-fashioned rant. If you’ve seen something that gets your schwartz in a twist, then dang-it, rant about it on your blog. You’ll usually wind up with comments for miles. People will be agreeing, disagreeing, calling you names, threatening to trap you in a closet, all sorts of things. In short, you’re getting your feelings out, planting your opinions on the ‘net, and generally getting things off your chest. Salut!

Inflamatory

It’s easy to go inflamatory. Inflamatory is when you’re fishing for the massive comments by trying to piss people off. These types of posts are especially easy to combine with rants, or dissections. The goal of an inflamatory post is to get others’ to twist their schwartz, and, thereby, comment. Just remember, you want to try to keep from being slanderous/libellous when you go inflamatory. It’s okay to tell CNN to get its head out of its ass. It’s NOT okay to say that CNN is in bed with the religious right in an attmept to get everyone in America to slaughter the proleteriats.

Articles

Sometimes you can’t think of anything to post, so you post an article by someone else. Sometimes you choose a topic and write an informative article on it. Articles are structured posts, designed to impart knowledge and infromation, with as little opinion as possible. Often you’ll see others re-posting your articles, so be sure to include information at the bottom about your site, and whether or not you allow re-posts.

How-to

Remember those knowledge posts, above? Well, this is a sub-set of them. Take a topic/thing/idea/dohickey, and tell people how to do it. Got trapped in the closet, one day? Tell people how you got out. Encountered some random error on your computer, and fixed it? Tell people how to fix it. How-to posts are among the most-often bookmarked, slashdotted, and digg’ed posts on the ‘net.

Combination

A lot of posts will combine more than one method in a single post. This is fine, and - in fact - is even encouraged. Make an inflamatory rant about a specific product, and link to it via an affiliate program. Alternatively, write an article on how to link to an affiliate program. You could even write a series of articles on how to be an amateur blogger, and include some of your opinions on the matter (just remember, go light on the opinions in articles). Oh, wait, I’m doing that right now. Well, no matter, there’s always room for more on the ‘net. We’re the Jello of the next millenium.

Remember, there’s several more types of posts. This is just a place to start. Read, reasearch, learn!

Length of Your Posts

So you’ve decided to write, you just don’t know how long to make your posts. Simple, a post should be as long as it needs to be. Now, sometimes you’ll have a topic that you could go on and on for pages. My general suggestion is that if a post takes up more than two and a half “pages” (screens) on your blog, you should consider making it two posts, and expanding on it. As for too short, or too long? BAH! Link posts are notoriously short, articles are about midline, and rants can go on for miles of screen real estate.

The trick is not how long to make your post, but how much of it to show on your front page. If your blogging system has an “excerpt” or “short/full post” or “more” feature, I’d suggest using it on the longer posts. In general, the front page needs to have enough to get the basic information across. In other words, include enough to tell what the post is about, and draw the reader in. Then, to conserve real estate on the front page, you can include a “Read more” link. See my blog for examples. On my longer posts, I usually only place the first couple of paragraphs on the front page. The point is to draw the reader in, in the first few lines. The rest is all in real estate.

So What’s Next?

In this conversation, we talked about what types of posts you can make. Next time, we’ll discuss where to find things to post about - so-called “blog fodder,” as well as properly citing within your posts. See you soon!

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