As a relatively new blogger, I’m still learning about what it takes to make a great blog and what will keep readers engaged and interactive. As part of my summer reading list, I picked up The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging. “Great bloggers all share one virtue in common: They infuse their writing with a triple shot of personality. Let your personality flow into your blogging and your readers will find you.” Why Blog? Here’s a better question: Why not blog?

• Rule #1: Blog Often- If you want an audience, you need to reward visitors to your site with new content, pretty much every time they visit. When you don’t have a reputation or a big following, you want people to judge you on the work you have produced. You need a lot of work sitting on your site by the time you start gaining a readership. Plus, blogging is like anything else: you get better the more you do it.
• Rule #2: Perfect Is the Enemy of Done- Because blogging is immediate, it’s also informal and that’s a good thing! It’s fine to write a bunch of OK posts. In fact, an OK post is probably better than a perfect post that took too long to compose. Whenever you have a thought, you can share it with your readers and get immediate feedback.
• Rule #3:  Write Like You Speak- Many of us have had the life beaten out of our prose through years of academic training and corporate Powerpoint presentations. Since the blogosphere thrives on authenticity, your blog shouldn’t sound like that either.
• Rule #4: Focus on Specific Details- Your best bet for building buzz is to go into the specific, gory details and keep returning there. You don’t have to explain the complete context of an issue in every post.
• Rule #5: Own Your Own Topic-  The more you know about your topic area, the better informed your opinions will be. A good blog errs on the side of being strong. Owning your topic area increases the chance that your ideas will be insightful and right.
• Rule #6: Know Your Audience- It goes without saying that you should try to write more of the kinds of posts that get your readers excited and fewer posts that don’t.
• Rule #7: Write Short- A lot of us have ADD, or at least can’t really focus for long periods of time unless we’re super interested in something. Unless the reader can see your post eight hundred words in, a good portion of them will stop reading. We could go on about this, but you get the point. Readers will too if you keep it short.
• Rule #8: Become Part of the Conversation with Like Minded Blogs- Spend some time reading and commenting on other blogs. If you ask for comments and criticism, you should also be willing to offer feedback when asked.

If you own a business, a blog can be a great tool to show that you are an expert in what you do and get involved with your community. As an event planner, it’s been a great way for me to share my events as well as tips and advice on being an entrepreneur.  Do you blog, and if so…are you following Arianna’s insightful rules?