Blog Writing, Part 1 On Form

Your blog post must be written to catch the readers interest within the first sentence or two! Your opening must be compelling and well written. Remember that your blog reader is always crunched for time and bombarded by other media. Respect your reader and given them your information in a concise and readable format.

At the same time, while respecting your reader, you should be writing for them at around the sixth grade level. Your average reader, like the average newspaper reader, has the reading skill and attention level of a 6th grader. People have come to expect material to be written for them at this level.

Your blog should be between 350 and 400 words. The average newspaper story is about 550 words. This size is not an overwhelming task to read or to write.

Keep your paragraphs on the short side. Aim for three to four sentences. Using more, while necessary at times, will decrease the readability of your post.

Whenever possible, break up your text with visuals. A graphic or photograph will make your text more readable. A quote from the text works too. Never have one long dense block of text. No matter how interesting, the average reader is just going to pass on it.

The visual does not necessarily have to relate to the post, but if it can, so much the better.

Along the same line, lists and numbered items help move your readers eye through the text, while at the same time breaking the text into readable pieces. Numbered items also provide your reader with a specific end point, so they can know how much time they will have to allocate to reading your post.

While your information may be extraordinary, if you present it to your reader in a format they find difficult, the information will not get read. Keep your form simple. Keep your ideas readable.

The Biggest Shift Since the Industrial Revolution

Last week I attended SMACC2011 (#smacc2011). It was a conference at the Newhouse School of Communication at Syracuse University on the blending of Social Media and A Cappella singing. There was a lot of singing, but I spent my time in Social Media Marketing seminars. One seminar started on the phenomenal growth of Social Media. Some of the statistics and thoughts they revealed were, I thought, astonishing. Here are some of those revelations (the source of most of them are a book titled, Socialnomics dated May 5, 2010 - also found at www.socialnomics.com).

First, Social Media is called "The Biggest Shift Since the Industrial Revolution".

More:

Over 50% of the world's population is under 30.  96% of them have joined some form of Social Media

Facebook now tops Google for weekly traffic in the US

Social Media has overtaken pornography as the #1 activity on the web

Radio took 38 years to reach 50 million users

Television took 13 years to reach 50 million users

The internet took 4 years to reach 50 million users

The iPod took 3 years to reach 50 million users

Facebook added over 200 million users in less than a year

If Facebook were a country it would be the 3rd largest country in the world

China would be first, India second, Facebook third and the USA fourth

Facebook has more users than there are people living in the United States

80% of companies in the US use Social Media for recruitment

95% of these use Linkedin

The fastest growing Facebook segment is 55 - 65 year old women

Generation Y and Z consider email to be passe

YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world

There are over 200,000,000 blogs

34% of bloggers post opinions about products and brands.

(34% of 200,000,000 is a very large number)

Only 18% of traditional TV ad campaigns generate a positive ROI (return on investment)

90% of viewers skip TV ads completely by means of Tivo/DVR

where as, 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations

(such as they get on social media)

and only 14% trust advertisements

On Facebook, there are over 60 million updates a day.

And, a couple of quotes:

"Social Media is not a fad, it is a fundamental shift in the way we communicate".

and

"The ROI of Social Media is that your business will exist in 5 years".

(These are powerful words - and the emphasis is added).

These numbers are compelling evidence that if your business is not involved in Social Media, at the very least, it is missing a huge opportunity to be more profitable.  Further, this opportunity exists for every type of business, be it professional or store front or creative.