What Makes a Quality Post?
Newbie bloggers are hammered all the time with the advice to write “quality” posts. But, what constitutes a quality post? Let’s answer that by examining what a quality post is not.
Length
Some bloggers apparently believe that bigger is better. Well, sometimes bigger is better, other times brevity is better. Length in and of itself is not a measure of quality. If you ramble on and on, people will tune out. Do not say in five paragraphs what you could say in five sentences. Do not say in five sentences what you could say in five words. Do not get so wrapped up in keyword stuffing that you forget about your reader! People tend to read a number of blogs each day, and your post is not going to be read if it is long and boring. Get to the point!
That’s not to say that you shouldn’t have lengthy posts; just that your posts should be only as lengthy as they need to be.
Repetition
Newbie bloggers are encouraged to post frequently, daily if possible. That’s fine, but if you’re just rehashing the same material everyday, people are going to get bored. This is a great example of why recycling can be bad. You may think you’re doing your readers a favor by “emphasizing” certain things, but really you’re just encouraging them to skip your blog. If you write that “apples are red” on Monday and “red is the color of apples” on Tuesday, sorry! That is not fresh content. That’s yesterday’s leftovers you’ve reheated and dressed up in an effort to trick your reader into reading the same thing again. You’re only fooling yourself.
Useless Disguised as Useful
If you’re passing along a warning about the “I LOVE YOU” virus or some other ancient virus, scam, phishing attempt, etc., then–YAWN! If you’re going to share with us that Coke is going to eat our stomach lining, or pork chops are full of worms, or some ridiculous conspiracy theory involving kittens, bad lemons and 9/11, please don’t. It’s bad enough we get friends and family resending us this stuff on a near-daily basis, but now you’re going to post it to your blog as well? No thank you.
If you are guilty of any of these things, maybe now is a good time to pause and regroup. Don’t blog for a while. Claim solidarity with the striking WGA or something.
Those are great tips. Usually my max paragraph is 4 for each post.
Great advice
Oh, Dan…you nailed it. Useless disguised as useful/extraneous is just the kind of posts that send my google feed reader to 1000+
My highest on that so far has only been 44. It’s so nerve-wracking and almost always fall back down to 39 and have to slowly work my way back up into the 40s again, haha. Addicting, huh?
I was aiming for 50. But, the higher you climb, the farther you drop! I’ve been up to 46 and then got dropped back down to 35! It takes a long time to work your way up, but it only takes a few misses to knock you way down.
[...] What Makes a Quality Post? - The last comment was in reference to the point at which the list grew cynical, not to the point of the list we’ve reached. Try to keep up, please. [...]