What writing skills are required to create blog content?

What is writing?  What is blog content? What is informative and engaging content?

One can express their thoughts and ideas basically in two ways – speaking and writing. Speaking is expressing orally and writing is through an electronic  media and print.

Content is information written in a systematic way adhering to the rules of the language. When it comes to english language, content is expression of thoughts  in structured sentences with in the framework of grammar, punctuation and vocabulary. Vocabulary helps to write sentences without grammatical errors.

Informative content is an elaborate answer to a query which will clear all doubts about the topic in question. Informative content for a buyer about the product is the features, products and customer reviews and the informative content for visitors seeking help to get traffic is, workable, tested and proven leads to websites that offer information on that topic, According to Roger Bryan, an entrepreneur in his article in Huffington Post on quality content on digital marketing makes a distinct observation on relevant, informative and interesting content 

Engaging content will keep the visitor get interested in the topic and keeps visiting you content often. In short the visitor become a fan to your content.Experts define engaging content in different ways.  Newt Barrett says engaging content is falling in love at first sight.  Shelly Bowen says that engaging content gives your reader a peek at something he or she hasn’t seen before, but can relate to in some way. Heidi Cohen feels that engaging content must be relevant to the reader’s interest so that they can share the content with their friends and colleagues. David Drickhamer says that Hyperbole and exclamation points do not engage readers. Engaging content starts and ends with telling a good story. Good stories need compelling characters, insider details and tales of challenges overcome. Many other content marketing strategists opinions on engaging content by Michele Linn in her article what does engaging content means consolidates their observations and comments.

What is content mix?

Every business need content to promote their activities. They require different skill sets to create different content to meet the goals. Content creators are classified as researchers, copy writers, editors, video and photographers, technocrats and writers. All of them create content but for different purpose. Their goals and goals are different.  So content mix is important for a business enterprise. These content creators will have different skill sets and common characteristic feature is content creation. 

Prerequisites for blog content creation:

• Interest in writing field
• Command over the language
• Knowledge of the topic

Interest for writing will not come to all people. Very few love writing. Once you have interest you can mould interest into passion. You can then develop  other prerequisites  even  if you are not masters in them.

Getting down to basics of the language will improve your command over the language.Practice makes a man perfect. Practice makes you understand language basics like grammar, structuring sentences, styling the content, presenting the content in a systematic way. A brief first paragraph highlights what you wanted to tell, an elaborated follow on content with information clears all doubts on the subject and then the leads to other blog information to support your content claims.

Reading great writers will improve the style of writing. To name few writers from various fields concentrating on various topics with international recognition for their work are 

• Dr. Reza Aslan, an internationally acclaimed writer and scholar of religions, is the author of the #1 New York Times Bestseller Zealot
• Dan Richmond, authored SEO in Practice after 8 years, is now Optimization Specialist at Link-Assistant.Com. Dan initiated development of SEO SpyGlass tool at link assistant Link-Assistant
• TechCrunch started in the year 2005 and the founder is Michael Arrington. A blog started at home to share information of Web 2.0. The blog was drawing several million page views every month and attracting the attention of top entrepreneurs. TechCrunch  deals with profiling startups, reviewing new Internet products, and breaking tech news.
• Innovative bloggers: Amit Grover is an IIT IIM alumnus passionate about entrepreneurship. His vision is to create 1000 startups and 20000 jobs in next 3-5 years across India. He is CEO of Nurture Talent Academy.

Skill Set required to create blog content:

Blog is altogether is a different ball game. The writer here is not a journalist or columnist or author of a book. The blogger writes posts because he likes to express himself. That is how blogging started. Now the scene has changed. There are varied reasons why people blog. Business tycoons also entered the blogging arena to promote their products and services. Blogging content is now spread to various fields covering A to Z topics. Now content is not specific to a topic but a mix of various requirements. Except a personal blog, the other blogs need a team of experts to crate content for their blogs. The skill set need

1. Command on the language,
2. Skills to express the ideas in a systematic way.
3. .Ability to do in-depth research
4. Proof reading abilities
5. creative thinking
6. Ability to understand target audience

To summarize the article the following points are to be noted while creating  blog content. Blogs content is for unknown audience. Blog content creation is not to earn money or to become rich. Blog content  is to offer valuable information to readers. The required skills are to write elegantly, clearly and to the point without errors. The skill set should prove repeat visitors  to your blog, no matter what topic the blog is aiming. Researches, copy writers, photographers, video specialists, skilled writers. social media promoters, search engine optimization experts contribute to blog content creation. 

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