What comes before cooking? Preparation! Without a well prepared recipe a good food is something that is not possible. And the same rule applies while writing a post.

Although most of the times we bloggers tend to just sit and start writing about something, once in a while it is worth to prepare a post before you start writing it. A well written post will not only bring you traffic but will help you establish yourself as an expert or worth somebody’s time. My previous post How To Write An Effective Post - A Simple Guide also gives some example on how we can write a post to provide more information on a particular subject.

Instead of writing just for the sake of updating your blog, preparing your post with insights and value will prove to be worth much more to your readers. Here are some tips on how you can prepare a post before you publish. Let’s get started,

#1. Analyze your readers and the purpose of the post. Plan your post so it provides specific information that will interest and benefit your readers.

#2. Start your posts with a powerful opening. You can start your post with a humor or shock so as to grab your readers attention on what will follow. A brief description on what the post is about while making it a little dramatic will make sure to hook your readers. Remember, the first sentence and the first paragraph are very important to grab your readers attention.

#3. Use quotations, visual aids, examples and statistics to support your post. If you are writing about something that can’t be supported make sure to provide something that will make the readers connect with what you are writing. The more instance you can provide the more valuable your post become as this gives the readers to look and analyze it with different perspectives.

#4. Try and keep your sentences short. I am personally still working on this one. Keeping your sentences short will give the readers to pause and think about what they just read. Besides, you don’t want to give to much information out on just one sentence. Instead, write about something in one sentence and elaborate it on the next one.

#5. Highlight important words or phrases so you can let the readers know that these sentences or words hold high importance. Most of the bloggers make use of Bold and Italics to show that something is important, so give it a try.

#6. When you reach the end of your post, give a brief summary of what you just wrote. The last paragraph of your post is as important as the first one. Most readers just scan a post and the first thing they read is either the first paragraph or the last paragraph. So giving a brief summary at the end might be able to make readers read the entire post.

#7. Finally, make sure to end your post asking readers to participate. It’s not just about getting comments, it’s about interacting and sharing views and ideas with others.

Well, these are some of the tips that I think might be something we should all look into before we start writing about something. It’s always better to have 3 well planned articles a week then to have 6 that are just there for the sake of updating your blog.

What do you think? These are my personal thoughts on preparing a post before we start cooking, do you agree or disagree? Share your views with me and other readers and please add some tips that might be useful for us as well.

Hope 2008 proves to be a great year for you all!

Tags: Blogging //