I’ve been reading / surfing a whole lot of social media and pick up blogs on my Google reader lately. I go through HUNDREDS of feeds a day..  and I start to get bored by the 10th feed. Why? Because it’s like going back to school and reading essays.

Which got me thinking – how can bloggers write educational / informational blog posts that are less “blah” and more “huh that was nice and succinct”.

I’m not the best writer / blogger out there. But very quickly, before I head to lunch, these are a few things I picked up during my MindValley days as the blog editor for FinerMinds.

  1. Break It Up! : If you know it’s going to be long, break it up! Use sub-headers to make your content easily scannable.
  2. Write lists. Posts on websites like Cracked.com get passed around like CRAZY. And it’s not just because they feature some pretty bizarre shit. It utilizes the “lists formula”. It works because online readers are lazy. And lists look neat. It gives your reader the idea that “this dude isn’t rambling”. They’re more likely to read your entire post.
  3. Use pictures.People are visual creatures. Supplementing your posts with pictures usually captures a reader’s attention. Pictures that usually work:
    • Emotions – basic ones like happy, sad, angry – pictures of basic emotions ping our brains and say, “Hey I can relate to that!”
    • Funny images that are slightly bizarre
    • Cartoons
  4. K.I.S.S.. Shorter information posts = much better absorption. Think Seth Godin. The Internet and channel surfing has trained our attention span to be nice and short. So remember that when you write. Unless, of course, it’s a story. People LOVE stories.

Anything else I missed out?