Tell us a story

If you're like me, you don't read blogs like you would an essay i.e. yawning and wiping the odd tear of sadness from your cheek. You read blogs because they're personal, because you get to know the author in a way that isn't shown in academic writing.

Address your readers

Don't forget who you're writing for. People will return to your blog because you're speaking to them and not simply writing a diary. The more you can relate your words to those who read your blog, the more they'll appreciate what you're doing and ultimately the more blogging success you'll have.

Spend time on your headline

There are many posts in the blogosphere about how important your headline is. The best headlines are not just written for Google or Digg. Your headline is an opportunity to halt people in their feed reader tracks. It must be engaging, specific, and invite a clickthrough. Equally important, it must reflect the content.

Use images

A blog post with images is much more appealing to the eye than one entirely made of text. It's much more likely to be read and will help the reader remember the content.

Optimise your images for the web so you don't use unecessary bandwidth and stay clear of cheap looking clipart that devalues your blog. Photographs are best, although well done illustrations can be equally effective.

Char from Essential Keystrokes writes about Thirteen Things Every Website Needs and has this to say on images:

A picture is worth a thousand words and a well-placed picture or graphical element will save your web site from eternal loneliness.

Ask us questions

This is an important point to help gain more blog comments. There are other things you can do, such as install the subscribe to comments plugin for WordPress or join the NoNoFollow community, but if you don't ask a question in your blog post you can't really expect a response. People might read your post, agree, and move on, but if you take the time to ask something you’d be surprised how effective it can be.

Give us your own opinion

Splogs, or spam blogs, are rife. There's enough duplicate content on the internet to reach from earth to the sun if it were in manuscript form*.

Don't add to it.

If you find something worth blogging about, and it's already documented on another blog, add your own spin to it. Do a little research and combine a few stories, with your own comments as you go. It's so much more interesting than a simple regurgitation, and you'll keep people returning to read your thoughts again and again.

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Here's where I ask you for your tips on writing a great blog post.

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