By now (early July 2008) all of you have your blogs set up and many of you have written a post or two. How is it going? Perhaps you are in need of some tips and advice for writing good blog posts. Well, you have come to the write place! Here are some tips for good blogging that I found during a Google search. The following list comes from the ProBlogger blog. We’ll go through it in class and I’ll help explain what each point means using easy English. 

Here are ten tips that help me with my blog writing.

1. Make your opinion known
2. Link like crazy
3. Write less
4. 250 Words is enough
5. Make Headlines snappy
6. Write with passion
7. Include Bullet point lists
8. Edit your post
9. Make your posts easy to scan
10. Be consistent with your style
11. Litter the post with keywords

1. Make your opinion known
People like blogs, they like blogs because they are written by people and not corporations. People want to know what people think, crazy as it sounds they want to know what you think. Tell them exactly what you think using the least amount of words possible.

2. Link like crazy.
Support your post with links to other web pages that are contextual to your post.

3. Write Less
Give the maximum amount of information with the least amount of words. Time is finite and people are infinitely busy. Blast your knowledge into the reader at the speed of sound.

4. 250 is enough
A long post is easier to forget and harder to get into. A short post is the opposite.

5. Make Headlines snappy
Contain your whole argument in your headline. Check out National newspapers to see how they do it.

6. Write with passion
If you write about things you are really interested in, your writing will be more interesting to your readers.  

7. Include bullet point lists
We all love lists, it structures the info in an easily digestible format.

8. Make your posts easy to scan
Every few paragraphs insert a sub heading. Make sentences and headlines short and to the point.

9. Be consistent with your style
People like to know what to expect, once you have settled on a style for your audience stick to it.

10. Litter the post with Keywords.
Think about what keywords people would use to search for your post and include them in the body text and headers. make sure the keyword placement is natural and does not seem out of place.

11. Edit your post
Good writing is in the editing. Before you hit the submit button, re-read your post and cut out the stuff that you don’t need.

I hope this list of tips helps you a bit. For some information in Japanese, just do a Google search. If you find some good Japanese blogging tips, please let me know!