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Chapter 1: Discovering Blog Basics

I’m not making an excuse, however, for ignoring all the rules of writing. Well-

written and correctly spelled blogs attract readers just as often (perhaps

more often) as those that aren’t. You can develop a friendly, personal way of

writing without losing touch with the dictionary. I encourage the use of spell-

checking, even for very informal blogs intended for friends and family.

For a professional blog, don’t even consider writing without paying attention

to spelling and grammar. Your readers will run the other way, and your com-

petitors will get a good snicker out of it.

Most importantly, however, think through your writing and consider your

reader. Take the time to practice and develop a voice that sounds personal

and conversational while still qualifying as good, engaging writing. Don’t let

the chatty style of a blog fool you — the best bloggers spend just as much

time writing a casual blog post as they would a work memo.

You can find tips on how to develop your voice in Chapter 7.

Posting frequently

Commit yourself to writing new posts on your blog frequently. Ah, frequently

is such a deceptive little word — because really, what does it mean?

For some people, frequently means every day. For others, it means three

times a day. If you want a blog that doesn’t eat up every spare moment in

your life but that you still update enough to keep people interested, define

the word frequently as at least two or three times a week. (If you want to blog

more often than that, go to town.) This number of updates strikes a good bal-

ance for most blogs.

Many bloggers use a little trick to account for periods of writers block or for

when they go on vacation: They write posts ahead of time and then save them

for later. Using your blog software, you can schedule a date and time for a

post to go live, making it possible for you keep your readers entertained, even

while you’re having your appendix removed or sitting on a beach in Hawaii.

You also need to pace yourself. In the first heady days of having a blog, the

posts flow freely and easily, but after a few months, you might find it difficult