Blogging tips and thoughts

You may or may not know that I’ve been writing online in one fashion or another since about 1998. Prior to that I wrote operator manuals and user guides in the Coast Guard. While I do not consider myself an expert there are some things that I have found to be invaluable to sustaining a career publishing content. I believe that these three basic concepts that I write by, are applicable all genres:

1. Find your core
2. Develop your style
3. Step out of your comfort zone

You need to define what your core subject is and then develop your voice. There are not easy answers here because everyone has their own style. Once you do your audience will naturally follow. Of course (now this is critical) once your have an audience you have to shake things up by routinely writing unique pieces that stretch your style and creativity.

For instance I learned a long time ago that I had a skill writing about technology especially how-to guides, therefore; I made that a staple of the content I produce. I spent years developing my style to be a cross between serious and comical, because frankly how-to guides are usually extremely dry and sleep inducing. I’m just being honest here.

Eventually, as I became more comfortable I branched out into other areas like writing Op-Ed pieces about politics, social media and even an occasional travel expose. If you take a stroll through https://www.jafdip.net, http://bsdnews.net, http://bitrebels.com and of course http://mikelking.com this will be obvious form as 90-95% of the content I write falls into one of these four areas.

In order to shake things up and expand my writing further I occasionally publish some of my more poetic works. This is something that my readers do not expect and thoroughly enjoy. I find the change of genre to bee essential to keeping one grounded and ensuring that the content I produce remains exciting for my readers. A perfect example would be my haiku Shiver (http://yhoo.it/GQxQiM) recently published by Yahoo’s contributor network. As you can see this is a total deviation for the technical content I usually produce.

When I write a how-to article, I literally spend hours gather screen shots and arranging the sequence of steps as accurately as possible. Those three lines took me longer to craft than most of the technical works I write. They pushed me in ways that were foreign to me and as a result stretched my creativity and that is exactly what I am talking about.

Related articles

• The Unwritten Rules of PR Writing (crttbuzzbin.com)
• 6 Steps to Creating Your Content Marketing Style Guide (contentmarketinginstitute.com)
• Microsoft Manual of Style (365.rsaconference.com)