It is our pleasure to introduce Franco Sammarco, a professional blog writer who has kindly agreed to share his ‘Blog Basics’:

BLOG BASICS – MAKING A F.A.S.T IMPACT

What makes a good blog? What are Blog Basics? Specifically, what qualities should good blog entries emphasise? The answers to these questions depend greatly on what kind of blog you’re writing for.

My own experience has been in writing mainly for a business blog, specifically for a small firm in the entertainment industry. But I believe that the basic qualities I’m about to detail hold true for all kinds of blogs, from for-profit enterprises to personal reflections.

I’ve come to adopt a four-point method for generating effective content for blog basics, which I will now summarise. I call it the F.A.S.T way of making an impression on your audience.

FOCUS

In my view, each individual blog should have a definite focus. This could be a single product or service, which has been the case with the majority of my recent work. On the other hand, for a more personal blog, it could be a single thought or unified train of thoughts.

Having a clear focus at the outset of writing each blog helps enormously in preventing rambling that might blur the overall impact of the piece. In the case of a piece supporting a particular product, service or brand, it also helps you in extolling the virtues of your subject matter.

ATTRACT

One of the fundamental blog basics is your writing style. I try to approach every piece I create with 100% belief in what I’m writing about. For a personal blog, this should be a given. You’re writing about your subject because you think it’s important and you want to share your knowledge and/or views.

This is also important for blog entries supporting products or brands. Try to write in an easy, conversational style, in line with the expectations of the target audience. Your writing needs to be able to set ‘hooks’ of interest in the mind of the reader, to encourage them to read on even after a quick skim.

STORY

Although each blog entry works best with a single focus, they should also be placed in the context of a wider whole. A blog is effectively telling a story in its own right to keep the reader hooked. But as well as this, blog entries also form instalments of a longer story, either of an individual, a business or a brand.

I think that building a story in a wider context is important. In the case of my own recent work, this quality involves literally telling stories about traditional wargaming products. These are woven into the wider fictional ‘storyline’ of the games, so that the reader’s suspension of disbelief is maintained.

However, I think the storytelling aspect can be a boost for any business. Blogs relating to products and services should be interwoven with the brand. This allows readers to appreciate the full breadth of what that brand or company has to offer its clients.

TECHNICALS

This final quality is the most crucial of blog basics – making sure your blog piece is properly edited and proofed. Spelling and grammatical errors can make any blog look amateurish. This may affect the reader’s willingness to take the blog seriously. Many errors even risk undermining the reader’s ability to understand entries at all.

Making sure that information is properly presented in a structured manner is also crucial in holding reader interest. For best effect, the layout and writing style should ‘flow’ as easily as possible. This greatly assists the reader’s understanding and ability to pick out key information.

So there is my F.A.S.T method of effective blog basics. Do you use something similar? Why not give it a go and see if it helps your style.