Blogging

Writing a Blog Post: Why Delivery Matters

We always hear that content is king, and that’s certainly true, especially as Google continues to retool their algorithms to weed out sites that are too thin on informative material. That will probably never change, and there’s no reason it should. But lost in all the content talk, is perhaps the second most important aspect of your blog posts; delivery.

Blog notes on Laptop

What is Delivery?

Delivery is the manner in which you present and arrange the information you’re providing. It’s a specific way to describe how you lay out the content of your post, and it definitely has a lot to say about the success of your posts and the engagement of your readers.

When writing a blog post, one must keep in mind that there is not only a lot of content out there on a given topic, but there’s also likely to be a lot of good content. This means that you need another trademark to what you’re writing, and another layer of creativity, to distinguish you from the rest of the crowd. That layer will ultimately come from how you choose to deliver a given topic.

More specifically, the term “delivery” should be thought of as made up of the following things:

  • Formatting and presentation —
  • Writing style —
  • Placement of information —
  • Use of media —

These are the four basic elements of how you deliver content, and they’re vitally important to the interest and engagement of your reader. These are the elements of your material that set it apart and have the potential to cause an internet user to prefer your site and your writing over someone else’s.

Let’s look a little deeper into each idea.

Formatting and Presentation — This is essentially referring to your use of paragraphs, length of sentences, bullets, lists and anything related to the architecture of your articles. There is definitely an optimal way to arrange the information you present, especially when you’re talking about online content.

Typically, the shorter your paragraphs, the better. In fact, three or four sentences is plenty long enough, and it’s not unusual to have one or two sentence paragraphs.

Numbered and bulleted lists are also great ways to format your post better and should be utilized wherever it’s a more optimal way of delivering information.

The more you write, the more you’ll perfect your format and come up with something that works best for your writing style and your topic. It won’t take a lot of intentional effort or planning, but the format of your post should be in the back of your mind, and you should know that a blog post should not look the same way that text looks in a book.

Writing Style — Your writing style is more or less all your own, and as long as it doesn’t compromise your writing quality, the only thing you have to worry about here is being consistent. While it might be easy to confuse with formatting, your writing style has more to do directly with how you form sentences and how you arrange words.

Your vocabulary and the way you speak should have a lot of say in terms of your writing style, so again, don’t worry too much about changing anything here. Instead, try to standardize it in a way that can be improved upon, but at the same time can be allowed to remain consistent.

Placement (inclusion) of Information — Some aspects of information placement could cross paths with format, but this is referring to how your story or narrative unfolds to the reader.

Do you summarize something before you explain it? Do you have a clear thesis? Are you able to expand thoroughly all your main points? These are the kinds of things that you want to ask yourself when assessing your placement and inclusion of information. Think of it as your ability to be clear and thorough.

Use of Media — The way you handle pictures and videos should be considered when assessing how you want to deliver information. For most bloggers, both those things are secondary methods of delivering information, meaning that while you’ll explain something in text, you might have a picture or video to further explain or illustrate the point you’ve already made.

Media can be a useful tool to break things up and give your readers a rest from all the text. Yet it shouldn’t be overused, unless the focus of your blog is something conducive to media, like photography or video tutorials.

Crafting your Delivery

All these elements need to be considered and taken into account when you’re deciding how to delivery your information. Even though a lot of these ideas will flow naturally, the most important thing is to get some sort of a standard put in place, so that your reader knows what to expect from you.

The more consistent you are, the more consistent your readers are going to be and the more reputable you will become as a consultant in your industry and topic of choice.

About the author

VISHAL

I am Vishal Gaikar, Engineer, Web Addicted, Living in Maharastra, India. Email Me @ vishal@techbucket.org

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