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Lorelle Van Fossen from Lorelle on Wordpress has a fantastic guest article at Problogger on 30 writing tips that every blogger should know. Basically, the article goes through 30 tips that apply to writing in general but apply especially to bloggers. I don’t follow all of these tips as many of my posts are written and edited in one session (which you should never, ever do) due to time constraints. Today, I wanted to focus on a couple of her tips.

Write Clickable Titles

This is important if you want people to read what you write. I’m just starting the process of really advertising this site through Reddit and Netscape and all you have is a title to entice readers. When I use feed readers I often scan the title to see if it is something that interests me in the slightest and skip the article if it doesn’t grab me. When I use Google Reader Mobile, all I have is a title to judge the article by. If the title doesn’t do it, I don’t waste the time downloading the article over my phone. I have no idea if the article is interesting if I never get past the title.

People do judge books by covers and your title is your cover. If you want people to read your content, make sure that the title will grab them.

Move the Reader Through the Story

Posts, especially long form posts, should have the same structure you learned about in school. An introduction, middle, and conclusion are essential for a reader to understand what you are writing about. The introduction contains a short roadmap of where you are going to lead the reader. The middle is the meat of your post that gets across what you want to get across. The conclusion summarizes the post and gives a call to action if appropriate.

Write With Conviction and Passion

While this is important, it is not often a problem with bloggers. Often you do this because you have something to say rather than for the money (what money?). Everyone has that point where the fire goes out and it becomes incredibly hard to write about anything (I’ve been doing this on and off for eight years now, I know this). So, what do you do then? You fake it or quit. If you can’t muscle up the enthusiasm to write it the reader is unlikely to muscle up the enthusiasm to read it.  If readers stop reading, they drop you from their feed readers. You get discouraged and write less. More people drop you. It’s a vicious cycle that’s happened to many blogs and many bloggers. So how do you get around it?

You fake it. You simply have to learn to use words and phrases that make it seem like you care about your subject even if you don’t. That takes practice and it really can’t be taught. One way to practice is to write a post about something you could not really care less about, say Britney Spears’ latest meltdown. Write a compelling post on the subject that brings in a new perspective. Do it in the word processor of your choice and pretend it’s a real post. You won’t ever publish it, but it is good practice for when you have an on subject topic you couldn’t care less about. Do it over and over again and in no time you’ll be able to fake it so real no one will be able to tell.

Go and read the rest of the 27 tips that Lorelle has (and figure out which one she violates with that very post).