The essence of any blog is the content. Content is KING. Always remember that. However, when it comes to blog content there is an additional and very important element and that is "conversation".

There are "rules" to blog writing so let's discuss how to write a blog.

Rule 1. It's Nothing Personal, It's Just Business...Or Is It?
Is your blog a personal blog or a business blog. Clearly identifying which and delineating that in your mind will help you writing effecting for your blog. You can be a business writing and personal blog or and individual writing a business blog. There are implications for each one.

Implications for a Business Blog. A business blog will be held to a higher standard of integrity and reputation because of it's overall obligation to the public trust as an enterprise. Any busy business that opens up a dialogue with an audience through a blog must be aptly prepared to invest the time to cultivate trust and establish their reputation. This requires speaking to their audience in a voice that proves trustworthy.

A business must be prepared for the long term. A business blog cannot be used as a additional channel for mere marketing speak. It will hurt any attempt at establishing credibility with the intended audience. Authenticity and transparency is what builds and audience and that takes time. A business blog should clear purpose for blogging and commitment to their blog if it is the reap any level of results and reward. A business blog should humanize your business, must be produced by a persona that people can connect with (READ: A real person) and should give more than it asks.

Implications for a Personal Blog. Blogging as a communications tool demands that the voice behind the message be real, transparent and human. Blogs humanize businesses yet a personal blog is still subject to the same standards. Once small difference is that if a personal blog went away it may not be missed and so it may not be newsworthy. If a business blog decides to go away the circumstance surrounding such a departure could harm the public perception of the business. Bloggers could get that message out in mere minutes and in just hours thousands could be exposed the coverage however unflattering it may be.

A personal blog doesn't always mean irrelevant discussions about favorite colors or the like. A personal blog can be any blog that doesn't represent the views of a business or organization. A personal blog represents YOU. You are the brand of your personal blog no matter what the theme or topic of your blog is. Therefore you must give careful consideration to what you say and how you say. Remember that what you publish will be etched into the content universe of the Internet for ever. Others could link to it, search engines could spider it and your name and blog will be attached to it...forever.

Be free to express yourself but be smart. Contribute value and establish credibility and you will build an audience and reputation in return.. There tons of hungry markets out there. People are waiting the listen and be heard. You have a duty to yourself and your audience to represent yourself well but without pretense while speaking or publishing freely without being reckless. To do otherwise is to only harm yourself in the end and cut short any hope of success with your blog.


Rule 2. To Thine Audience Be True
Know your audience and know what they want and need. Serve them and not yourself. If you are selfish in your content it will show because you will be asking for more than you give. It will show because you will less responsive to comments make to your blog. It will show because your content will lack that personal "something" that allows people to connect with you. You passion, compassion and commitment to your audience will show when you are focused on providing them with value and in gaining their trust.

Don't neglect or ignore the power of you blog in getting attention for you or your business. When executed properly and with patience your blog will become one of your most important assets for conduction business communications online or even inside your business. You have to look beyond your on needs and remember that you may have a larger audience than just current customers or future prospects. There are bloggers who publish information are products, services, and markets similar or identical to yours. There are people who read them also. They can tip the scales. If you aren't nice the world will know.

The good thing is 99.9% of blogging is being true to your purpose in serving your audience. Blogs are like "line of living" tools in my opinion. As a social tool, they are natural extension to normal activity you would do offline and for in-person interaction. Blogs allow you to express yourself a way that is so organically in line with how you communication anyway that it would be rather difficult to not be able to use an blog soft tool for self expression.

Rule 3. Communicate with Conviction
Rules 1 and 2 address not tangible factors that set you up for success as you begin to actually write your blog. When you start to write your blog you must write with conviction. After establishing a purpose and style for your blog and after determining the needs of your audience you need to approach your blog with a clear conviction and consistency. Decide what your voice will be and stick with it. Be yourself but do have an opinion. People love confidence, conviction and authoritative content.

Expect and invite your audience to interact with you. They will eventually give you feedback. Accept and build your social network around your topics. As you generate great authoritative content you position yourself for more readership as more people reference you and word-of-blog your content. Stay flexible and keep your sensibilities about the needs of your audience and changes as they happen. Let your persona and personality shine through and have fun doing so.

Rule 4. Speeds and Feeds To Meet The Needs
Content length and frequency are extremely important considerations. If you publish several times in a single day then you may want to consider shorter posts or articles. If you are publishing once a day or less then you may want to consider longer posts. Longer posts several times a day can be overwhelming for your readers and they probably won't read your blog or enjoy it as much because of effort it would take to digest all of your content.

Longer posts drive up credibility faster than shorter posts that reference other resources. Shorter posts are optimal for frequent updates. The balance here is the frequency of updates. My own personal experience is that frequency of updates + content value + keywords = increasing traffic.

My personal style is to write a single long post on a daily or every other day schedule and that works well for me. I know of other bloggers that do quite well with shortly post with more frequent updates throughout the day. You blog style, topic and theme will help you decide how much it takes to get your point across and how to distill that in a post that reaches your audience most effectively.

Rule 5. Back It Up
Do reference authoritative sources where necessary and do properly credit sources. If you are writing and an opinion piece about something, include links and references so your audience can get a better understanding of what you are talking about and can check sources for themselves. Do not make claims in a vacuum. Bloggers are known to be fact checkers also. If you find a article that you want to blog about from a blog that references and another blog the references the source (are you still with me?) how far should you credit?

My rule of thumb as I adopted from someone else is to go back at two hops. So if I'm reading an article from one of my favorite blogs and they have an article that references something I want to write about that I will reference that article "by way of" the blog that I was reading.

Let me say that a difference way. I'm reading Blog A. Blog A has an interesting entry they found at Blog B. I click through to Blog B and read the entry. It's very good and I'd like to bring this to my audience as well. I will blog about the entry in Blog B but I will credit my "find" with a comment in my article that something to the effect of "found via Blog A..." with a proper link to Blog A.

Here's Rule 5 in a nutshell. Reference and Give Proper Credit where appropriate.

Rule 6. Write It Down
Here are some quick guidelines to make your content scannable by your readers. Give your readers to opportunity to quickly identify the value of your content by following these simple guidelines for content layout.

6a. When you write your post break up your content into shorter paragraphs.
6b. Identify sections of content with related subtitles throughout you content.
6c. Bold words and sentences to emphasize content you deem important to your audience.
6d. You may want to summary longer posts with an opening summary statement for a high level view of what follows.

Conclusion
These are just a few quick rules. They are not inclusive or exhaustive at all but these rules and a few others have worked pretty well for me. Blogging is more art than science in my opinion. It should be good news for you to know that there are success methods for blogging. You can and will succeed with your very own blog as you continue to learn and test and mature you own blogging experience. Balancing the informalities of blog content where the rules of grammar aren't as strict against the protocol and etiquette of properly publishing with a blog may be a bit challenging for some or trivial for others.

What is important to know that blogs are easy use, will take some work and effort but can reward you quite well in short order as you continue to blog.

Additional Resources on Blog Writing:
How To Write A Better Weblog
Business Logs: Writing For The Web
How To Write A Blog And Survive