How to Revise Your Blog For Maximum Impact
How’s your blog coming along? Are the blog writing tips helping? If you’ve been following our Spring Training for Bloggers series, you might have started with a headline and a “type” of blog article on Monday, and on Tuesday we gave you some tips for getting your thoughts and content organized.
We’ve gotten some amazing feedback from the people taking part in the series, and it’s not too late to get involved! Give us a shout out via e-mail if you want to get involved!It’s so exciting to see everyone energized about getting more readers by
creating amazing content that people just want to share!And if you have been keeping up with our challenge over the past few days, you should be ready to sit down and write the majority of your post pretty easily.Once you have a blog post written out, it’s time to do some refining work on it to get it as perfect as can be before you click “publish.”
How to Revise Your Blog Post for Maximum Impact on your Readers
When I took a writing class in college in 2001, I was introduced to the art of revision. And honestly – I’d skated through a lot of classes without revising. But this professor demanded that we revise each essay at least once, and sometimes twice. And he was fanatic about the art of revision, specifying that revision isn’t editing.If you break down the word, revision means seeing again. Revision means that you take a fresh look at a piece you’ve written, not just looking for technical errors, but looking at the piece overall, making sure it flows, making sure you’ve answered core questions. It means making sure that you haven’t started down a “rabbit trail” that doesn’t relate to your message as a whole. It also means making sure you haven’t flinched as a writer. It means being real in your writing.It drove me nuts at the time. Up to that point – I didn’t revise.
Spectacular bloggers revise. At least once.If you’re ready to be a spectacular blogger, you’ll make it a regular habit in your writing routine too. 5 Blog writing tips for revising your post.
* Did you make more than 3-5 main points?Remember – your readers are basically lazy. (Nothing personal against your readers. In fact, as a reader, you likely are too.) Most people don’t want to read text-heavy paragraphs. They just won’t remember them.In fact – if I could make an infographic instead of writing this all into a blog post, you’d like remember more of it than you will in this format. That said – if I have any hope of you remembering it, I’ll stick with short sentences in short paragraphs.
* Does each sentence lead you to the next?No matter what kind of content you write, the goal of your headline is to get your reader to read your first sentence. And the goal of each sentence after that is to get your reader to keep reading.Your goal is to keep your reader reading. Nothing more and nothing less. (Actually, it’s a pretty ambitious goal.)
* When you read your post out loud – does it sound like you’re talking to a friend?Writing like you talk to your friends is tough. It takes practice. But it’s the only way to keep people reading. The best way to check to make sure people will totally understand what you’re reading is to read it out loud. It’ll help you double check and make sure they’ll want to keep reading it too. If your audience thinks you’re talking down to them or over their heads – they’ll check out. I guarantee it.
* Did you include a personal story to help your readers connect with your message?Did you notice my story at the beginning about my writing course? It wasn’t in my first draft of this post. But when I went back to revise, I knew that being authentic (and a better blogger) meant that I needed a personal story to help illustrate points. If you can tell a short story to illustrate a point in your blogs, it does 2 things. It makes points clearer, of course. But even more importantly, I think, it helps you connect with your readers on a more personal level.
Do you revise your blog posts? If you’re participating in our challenge,make sure you take time to revise your post, getting it all ready for our goal of posting it! Leave a note below letting us know if you’ve done this – or if you’re stuck on any other part of the process. We’re excited to work with you to write some amazing posts!
