Improving your blog posts

Many of my readers know that I'm a marketing and PR workerbee by day, so I figured I'd share some non-wedding related marketing advice for bloggers. One of my co-workers shared a short article about improving your blog writing skills from Shoestring Marketing.

Here are a few of my favorite suggestions:

• Write less: Try to use 50% of the words you would normally use. Once you finish writing, go back and try to further reduce your word count. Repeat the process until your paragraphs are short and tight, and your message is clear.
• Link to complementary information instead of trying to include too much information in the body of your article. Linking to sources of information is not only good ettiquete but it helps to put your writing in the right context, both for your readers and search engines.
• Use an easy-to-read font size. Normally, 10pt or 12pt are good choices. Use fonts like Arial, Verdana or Georgia; they are optimized for computer screens and easy to read.
• Use other elements that facilitate scannability, like bolding key words and phrases, and using bullet points to organize your content.

If you think blogging may be too much of a committment for you, trying microblogging on Twitter (find me here). Sometimes it's hard to find things to say, much less say them in 140 characters but if you start simple, things start to flow.

Blog on!