ridaalbarazi.welcome

When I have started this website as a blog six months ago, I didn’t understand what blogging really is, I had some very different idea from the one I currently have, I thought that blogging is just about writing whatever you want whenever you want and publish online, well maybe this is what some people are already doing, but that is not why I wanted to blog in the first place.

Currently while preparing for the next reboot, and fortunately NOT as a designer (my dear friend and partner Mohanad is doing it for me), I had enough time to do my homework, read more and do some deep thinking on what could possibly be the best way to have a better writing experiment, so I wrote down the following few rules to commit in every post I do, to make this blog more readable, clean and have as much quality as I can.

Avoid duplicating news posts, try to discuss it instead: One of the biggest mistakes is trying to re-tell a story just for the sake of having a new post or because everybody in the community is talking about it, for example if a new product has launched from some company, next day if not in the same day you will find more than 10 posts talking about the same product and telling its story. Writing about the product itself is not wrong, but how and what to write about it is what concern, the reader had already knew about this product, why should he read your post?, unless there is something new to know.

In other words, flavoring the news, reviewing the product or discussing the event, telling your opinion, and explaining from where you’ve got this opinion, this is what makes your post more interesting and readable, you are not wasting time by duplicating the news anymore, but you are saving time by giving a brief conclusion or review.

Why should I read your blog? Normally new readers reach your blog for one post, if they liked it they may check the rest, if they found them interesting and talking about a topic that they like to read about, then they will subscribe to your feed and come again, but when your blog is so general and one day you talk about astrophysics and the other day giving a cooking recipe, then you should be very special in your writing to keep your readers interested in your subject. Reader will like you for one of two reasons, either your topics are really interesting for them, then even if you are not a really good writer they can tolerate that, or your writing style is very interesting and special so readers enjoy it whatever the subject is.

Everybody may read this post, let’s avoid jargon: Everybody now has an easy access to any kind of information they are looking for, from related websites or from search results, by keeping this in mind it’s better to keep your language simple, and understandable for all readers, this might be a little difficult specially when you choose to write about something technical, but even though don’t always talk to gurus and expect the reader to know everything, try to target the beginners, let them love the subject and become interested in it because of you. Targeting professionals all the time reduce your readers a lot, and targeting all users only also make your readers a non-quality readers, but having quality posts simplified make every reader happy.

Read your post 3-4 times before publishing: When you re-read your posts several times you notice some weak points so you fix them, you feel that some other points are not clear so you clarify, reading your post few times before you publish enhance your post and make it more solid so if you read it again after one week you will not regret any word of it, you will be completely satisfied with it, so will be your readers.

Consistently not constantly: I took this from A List Apart article written by Mark Bernstein about 10 Tips on Writing the Living Web, having a better blog is not really about how often you post, or how many articles you have, it is on how quality and readable your posts are, how much do you influence your readers, let them remember this post at least till the end of the day or maybe discuss it with their friends.

In the other hand writing posts consistently is the key, regular, systematic, once or twice a week, or two three times a month, it really doesn’t matter, but what matter is how regular it is, regularity means not to sleep over a month without blogging, but when you blog you give something really readable and you do that every certain period of time.

Reputation and Personality: Your posts will reflect your personality, and will affect your reputation, while you are reading your post over and over again prior publishing, think about these two factors carefully, is this really your opinion, or you are just copying an opinion, are you convinced and able to convince with this opinion, how much will this affect your credibility and reputation? they seem like big questions, but they will stop writing junk posts, when you have it clear that this post complete the accumulative picture of yours in the readers mind you will be more serious about it.

Writing for the web is not as easy as it looks, specially when you have serious goals, when you want more people to read you, and enjoy reading you, interacting with you, and supporting you, thousands and thousands of blogs are coming up everyday but not everyone is readable, many of them are made for fun, or for friends and family only, very few got to the top because of their interesting topics and style of writing, one easy way to summarize all the above rules is to put yourself in the reader’s shoe, read your post as if you are reading it for the first time, will you like it, or just close the window, you are your best reader and critic, and if you don’t really care about readers, then I think you didn’t understand why you are writing in the first place.