What the People Want

David Lebovitz, owner and operator of the blog bearing his name, made a wonderful post that ties his normal food blog-related posts with some rules and expectations about web-writing and blogs.  One of the most important points that David makes, in my opinion deals with writing something that readers will find interesting.  Obviously, pretty much any piece of work that is or was written by a competent author wants to be entertaining to its readers, but doing that can be difficult.

One big idea that David gives is for you, the writer, to write about your own interests.  If you enjoy a certain type of food, or like playing a board game, make posts about those things.  Others may share the same feelings about what you posted.  Don't write about things that bore you; that's worse than writing about something you dislike.  At least if you dislike something you can make an argument for why you feel that way.  If something just holds no interest for you at all, how can your audience hold interest in what you write?

While David never specifically says this, it seems to me that a big part of his post deals with a writer's personality.  David mentions several times that many bloggers focus their work on earning as many hits as possible.  Instead of just writing to make it to the top of Google's search listing, bloggers should write for the sake or writing and to hold a conversation with the people that view their blog.  Personality is what defines any writer's style, and according to David, highlighting your own personality "is the most important thing you can do to differentiate yourself from others."

Presentation is another key point that David makes, the website layout can make or break a viewer's decision about your blog in one glance.  David even says that having his website designed by a professional was the most important thing he ever did for the site.  Drastic measures like that may not be the way to go for every website, but making your blog look clean and organized can certainly help shape the opinion of anyone that sees it.  Along with the layout, having more than just walls of text can help.  It's very easy to just skip past large blocks of text with no breaks in between; adding pictures or videos can help give your audience a break from constantly reading.

David's own entry follows these ideas well; he presents his post with an excellent layout, separating diverse ideas while still keeping a good flow between sections.  He also breaks his sections up by providing a list of resources and links that let the viewer rest from continued reading.  He also uses quotes to connect different ideas easily and shows that he knows the topic that he is writing about.  Rather than just telling the viewer what to do, David provides suggestions and even explanations about things that may not be common knowledge (such as the information about taking pictures).  David's post combines many different elements of good web-based writings and uses them to give an excellent guidebook to writings blogs.