Blogging 101 - The Content - Part 8

BLOGGING TIPS – The Content – Part 8


By Nikki Viljoen – Viljoen Consulting CC June 2010

I don’t believe that I am any different to anyone else who loves to read and one of my biggest pet hates around reading (apart from the fact that I hate starting a book and I hate finishing a book), is when there is an abrupt interruption of the story.  Don’t you hate when that happens, you’re reading away, minding your own business, following the twists and turns of the story, engulfed in the plot, hardly daring to breathe as you turn the page and . . .  well nothing!  As you begin to read the next page, nothing that you are reading makes any kind of sense and you glance down at the page number and then look at the previous page number and in total disbelief you find that  someone has torn out several pages – or even worse – you turn what you think is the last page only to find that someone has stolen the last few pages and after reading a thousand odd pages you have no idea how the story ends!  Grrrrrr – that makes me mad as a snake!

Clearly this does not apply only to the books that you read but also articles that you read, whether those articles are in magazines or on a blog, makes no real difference – you want to know the whole story, well at least I know that I do.  You want to know how the whole thing started and what happened then and then the result or consequence. Look, let’s be reasonable, we understand that unless your full time job is the writing of blogs, your time and energy is stretched and that that means that you probably won’t be able to research every single article to the ninth degree, but you also need to understand that  the readers really do need to have closure. They need to know how it ends.  They have to at least understand the basics of what it is that you are trying to say.  Think about it for a moment, it’s like people walking around and starting a conversation, uttering  half a sentence and then walking away leaving everyone looking at them with very perplexed looks on their faces. Remember the basics that you learnt at school (well I did), that every good story has a beginning, a middle and an end.

If you don’t at least follow the basics and leave your readers feeling confused and frustrated, they won’t be returning any time soon and not only will they not be returning, but they will also not be sending any new readers or referrals your way either.

Next time we will look at a few more points about the content of your blog.

Nikki is an Internal Auditor and Business Administration Specialist who can be contacted on 083 702 8849 or nikki@viljoenconsulting.co.za or http://www.viljoenconsulting.co.za