How Professional Should Your Writing Style Be When Posting?
ByOk, so you have your blog started, everything is set up and you are ready to start posting daily. Have you thought about what kind of writing style you are going to use?
How well your blog will be accepted in the niche you have chosen will depend on your writing style. Some niches will require a professional style, where a personal blog will have a more laid back personal feel to it.
In a professional writing style you will often see a pattern to the article. A typical pattern to a professional article would look like this:
- Title
- Objective
- Information
- Summary
Common sense will tell you that section three will contain the bulk of your writing. The Objective and Summary will normal be a very short paragraph in which the information is introduced and then reviewed at the end.
The style of the writing will be very formal, correct grammar, sentence structure, correct spelling and word usage. In other words if you don’t know when to use “then” and “than” you will need to pick up a book on writing to help you get things under control.
When you are writing in a professional style think in the way you would read a typical newspaper article. Check out the style of writing in your local newspaper to get a good feel as to how your posts should look and feel. This will help a lot in the beginning and get you on a good track.
How do I know I should be writing in a professional style for my blog? Your niche will determine the style.
Niches like:
- How To
- Technical Reviews
- Product Reviews
- Science
- Teaching/Instructional
- News
These types of niche blogs should always be written in a professional style. The readers will be looking for information. “Just the facts, madam”, that is what you should be thinking with these kind of niches. Personal comments, humor, and anything that doesn’t involve “Who, What, When, How, or Why” should be left out. In these niches and with your professional writing you want the blog to look like an expert on the subject is writing all the content. Readers will want their information from an expert, if you can’t provide it then they will find another source.
What about personal style? Not all blogs require a professional style, the best example is a personal blog. Personal blogs tend to look more like diaries and tend to take on a warm cozy feel to them. You don’t have to be an expert on anything, and if you want to throw some humor or anything else into your writing your reader won’t care. Your posts on a personal blog doesn’t have to have any structure, but it should have the best correct grammar and spelling. While personal blogs are just that, if your reader still won’t weed through spelling problems and grammar to read posts. Readers do have a limit.
There are many other different styles in which to write your blog. For example, if your blog is intended to be funny, humorous, a place for fun, then you are expected to post that way. A professional writing style will run your reader off in a heartbeat.
Once you do decided on the writing style you will use, STAY CONSISTENT! Don’t start changing your writing style for that blog around except to get better in the style. Your readers will be looking for the same style each time they read a post. Changing styles will get your reader confused and they won’t come back anymore.
Since I said you need to learn good grammar for blogging I will give you a writer’s secret. There is one book which every professional writer knows by name. It has helped countless people become better at writing, plus these same writers keep it on their bookshelf. I highly recommend you purchase the book if you want to be a blogger and a better writer.
The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition
It is a small book, but it holds a lot of information on grammar usage.
