7 ways for effective blogging and engaging readers

Blogging! It seems to be the buzzword nowadays. Everybody who is somebody seems to have a blog – your own personal space on the internet. To write, to express ones thoughts on various issues and broadcast it to the world.

Now what makes a blog effective and interesting? What is it about some blogs that makes you keep coming back to it, makes you wish the writer would write more often? These are some basic rules which need to be kept in mind while writing :

1. Love what you do
   First and foremost rule when doing anything is learning to love what you do. Whatever you do, do it with a lot of passion and immense love for the task. The passion with which you write will invariably be communicated to your readers. A blog is uninteresting only when the writer himself isn’t very interested in his own writing and doesn’t put his heart and soul into it.
2. Be yourself
   Never try to be someone you are not or try to project an image which is not akin to you. It never works. Most of the good blogs we have read / good writers we know are the ones who put in a lot of themselves into their blog. There is so much of them in their writing that at some level you start relating to them and their blog becomes a must read and sooner than later you start becoming addicted to their blog. Such is the power of a well written blog
3. Write for yourself
   Never write to please anyone else because it is just not possible to please everyone. Remember you can please some of the people all the time and all the time some times but you can never please all the people all the time. So write for yourself. Let good quality writing be the first and foremost thing in your entry. Everything else will automatically fall in place.
4. Be Creative
   Roald Dahl used to say that a good writer is one who can bring a scene alive in the minds of the readers. While reading your blog a writer should be able to visualize the scenes you are describing as vividly as you did when you wrote the blog. Remember, the minute a reader feels that he is not able to relate to your posts you have lost him. Keep the readers interest alive. A good writer is one who can make even the most mundane and boring topics come alive just with the power of his/her writing.
5. KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)
   As clichéd as it sounds, this is a very very effective point and will go a long way in attracting visitors. Never try to use big words when simple words will suffice, never try to make a sentence large and complicated when the same idea can be conveyed in a very simple manner. Remember if readers wanted to learn English they would rather buy a dictionary or enroll themselves in classes than read your blog. Simple ideas are the ones which are conveyed most effectively. There is no point in confusing your reader. Amuse your reader, don’t bemuse him.
6. Be Original
   This is a golden rule to be followed when blogging. Post original stuff which you have written, not forwards or poems or articles lifted from elsewhere. As the header on BlogAdda said “If you have original content, readers will stay longer and come back sooner”.
7. Use Humour
   Lastly, use humour effectively. The best thing you can give a reader is a good laugh, the best thing in the world for a writer is the realization that he/she has the ability to make people laugh and the best way to talk about any issue is to talk about it in a lighter vein. Humor can be used to drive a point quickly and effectively. So use humor wherever possible.

These 7 points are not exhaustive and do not cover all the ways of attracting readers but are the key points to be kept in mind when you write and if you want more readers visiting and reading your blog. And remember attracting readers and making a blog interesting are not mutually exclusive of each other. If your blog is interesting, it will be noticed for sure.