How to Write Long Posts

We all have friends who If you ask them one question you will get a very long answers. These friends of ours never seem to run out of things to say. I myself enjoy being with these type of people because even if I just stay quiet, the conversation would go on. I don’t even have to provide my input. All I need to do is just show them that I’m listening attentively and everything will be okay.

I believe these people would make wonderful bloggers. They would have no problem writing long posts. After all, writing is just another form of talking.

But what if you are the quiet type who is used to answering everything in one sentence? How do you write long posts?

Fortunately, there is one technique we can steal from journalists.

Just remember one H and four Ws.

What – Tell your readers what your post is all about.

Where – If you are writing about an event or an incident you can write its location or the venue.

When – Write when it happened or when it would be happening.

Why – Explain the reason for your subject. Why are they conducting seminar? Why they think about starting this business? Why did they take this course of action?

How – Write how your chosen subject is done or how the action was done. How did they go about the crime? How do you cook beef stew? How do you make candles? How do you define an array?

Using this technique we would be able to expand our posts.

Ideas for Bloggers: How to Maintain Fresh Content

One of the cardinal rules of blogging is to always have fresh content. But if you think you have already written everything there is to know about your chosen niche what topic can you still write about to ensure that your blog is always fresh.

Events – Write about events related to your chosen niche. If your blog is about photography, there are always photography events happening somewhere. You can write about photo exhibits, seminars, contest, trade shows, and photography field trips.

If you are maintaining a travel blog, you can write about travel seminars, exhibits, trade shows, and promos.

Reviews – You can write reviews. Again for photography blog you can write reviews about cameras, camera gears, and books. With a travel blog you can write reviews about travel destinations, gears, and books.

News – You can break news about your niche. You can write about certain laws that have been passed like the no visa requirement among Southeast Asian countries or certain issue that have recently cropped up.

Comment / Opinion – You can comment about what other bloggers are saying regarding your chosen niche.

Referrals – You can refer your readers to other blogs or websites which you think they may find useful or informative.

What Keeps Readers Returning to Blogs

I read a certain comment on one of the Philippine’s top blog. The person said that he could not figure out why that certain blog was considered the top blog when all the author do was brag about his gadgets, hist trips, and his blogs.

It made me question my own motives why do I keep coming back to certain blogs.

Big Brother is a popular show because it allows viewers to peek into a group of peoples lives. I guess it is the same with blogs. We keep coming back because we just want to find out what the authors are doing. Pretty much like the Big Brother show.

Secondly, certain authors are fond of posting very short entries. Sometimes I too question if they truly provide real value to their readers because the entries are so short that I barely got a hint on what the post was all about.

But, although the authors only provide very little information, and sometimes we would even see certain post as useless information, looking at it deeply we would discover that this style of blogging do offer us certain value.

Short posts taken collectively could give us an idea where our community/society is at.
It can reveal to us what’s in, what’s out, the general aspirations of people, our current issues, and our present concerns.

Just like with news programs, we keep returning to these blogs because we feel a need to know.

How to Prevent Blogger from Interpreting HTML Tags

If you qoute HTML tags in blogger it will get interpreted to its HTML counterpart.
One way to prevent it is to use escape characters.

Here is a good reference for escape characters: http://www.html-reference.com/Escape.htm