Are Your Blog Posts Stealing Your Credibility

The Importance of Blog Post Literacy
Whether you’re a blogger by hobby or for a purpose, it is important to remember the lessons you learned in your high school English classes. With the internet becoming bigger than Christmas, Jesus and Hot Dogs combined, the amount of content to be found, content of every nature, is immense and extremely hard to sort through.
There’s a good chance that whatever content you’re posting has already been posted somewhere else online. While this creates a wealth of information for those seeking it, it also creates a bit of competition for posters. The way to separate yourself from the competition is to make your content stand out and making it appear to be information of a higher quality than that posted by your competition.
All too often we surf the internet hoping to get some ideas or information, and start searching through content looking for answers to our problems and the results come up more appealing than they actually are. Many times the information we find is short, uninformative or so poorly worded (and punctuated) that the credibility of the content disappears. When a user finds their way to your site, they are likely excited because they believe they’ve found what they were looking for. When poor spelling, bad grammar, and lack of paragraphs cloud your content, you’re basically handing your users over to the next listing down on Google. As I mention in most of my posts, you only get one chance to make a first impression in life and online. The difference between the two is first impressions online have a tendency to spread much faster than in reality, so turning one person off to your site can result in turning hundreds away very quickly.
Here are a few quick tips to keeping your content relevant, professional and clean enough to matter:
Use Paragraphs:
As a fan of the English language I can’t stress this enough. USE PARAGRAPHS! No one block posts. There is nothing more annoying to a web surfer than having to hit Ctrl+F just to find the keywords they used to find your site. Separate your paragraphs and keeps them somewhat short, do your best to avoid running on.
Add Headings to your paragraphs:
This ties in exclusively with paragraphs. If you’re making a point use a heading for every paragraph. This will help your users find exactly what info they wanted from your posts quickly, and help your search engine visibility at the same time (if you do them properly).
Remember why you took spelling tests:
If you’re a writer, you should know how to spell. If you’re not a native speaker of the language you write your content in, get a native speaker to review it. Leaving out words like “the” and “and” may seem quicker, and you may think it helps your SEO efforts, but you ruin your “user friendly” image and destroy your credibility. If you can’t spell, or build a proper sentence, why should I trust you’ll design my new day care center to code?
Read, Read and Revise:
This one you might remember from high school. The annoying 1st, 2nd and final draft. While it may have bothered you back then, it should have prepared you for today. Unless you blog for fun, you need to read and re-read your content before you put it online. Make sure it MAKES SENSE and flows naturally to the reader. No jumbled messes that a preschooler would giggle at.
Plan Your Content:
Figure out what your point is, and then figure out how you’re going to prove it. Everything prior to this in the list is useless if your content runs on and on but never gets anywhere. Place your paragraphs wisely, make them informative and have them structured so that they flow nicely to your point, your conclusion.
Finish off with a statement
All too often bloggers forget this crucial aspect. With every thesis statement there must be a conclusion. Once you’ve provided your information, make sure to end your post and sum up the information you’ve provided. Don’t throw out a great list of ideas and forget to summarize what they are and how the can help.
The tips you found above will help you set yourself apart from your competition. With quality content must come quality context, syntax and sentence structure. Without these crucial parts, even if poorly attempted, you risk proving only your ignorance and having your content overlooked. Remember what bothers you when you look for information online, and be sure you don’t repeat the mistakes others have made.