How to Make an Attractive Blog

So! You want to make a blog that gets a lot of reads, right? I'm sure you've seen many blogs that had potential, but only got... maybe 20 reads before flying off into the void. You don't want that, right? Follow these few tips I've gathered just from looking around, and you'll do fine. They're the big, important ones that people somehow manage to miss.

1) Make sure your writing is legible (aha, and you thought this was only for handwriting--no!), and grammatically correct. Some people can glaze over it, but others will have their train of thought seriously derailed by a grammatical error, weird word, a stumbling run-on, or an awkwardly phrased... phrase. (My train of thought tends to spontaneously combust when I see this.)

2) Holy crap, people! Use paragraphs! I've seen way too many blogs which I might have been tempted to read--but I see this huge wall'o'text. Unless I can tell it's pure gold that I HAVE to read--it's way too intimidating and way too much. There's no way I'd dig through that--it's also extremely confusing if you mess up and have to track back to see where you fell off.

3) Topic! Topic is extremely important. There seems to be two kinds of topics that really get people going: sad, emotional or powerful ethos-related (appealing to one's emotions) topics, or very controversial topics. If it's just your random hayway opinion, unless you happen to be a great writer and can rivet your readers with a stunning description of baby spittle, then people aren't likely to care what your opinion about this or that is. Sorry, it's true.

4) Almost most importantly--A GOOD TITLE. It should provoke an insane amount of curiosity, enough to make people want to click-click-click. After all, that's what would cause a person to click it in the first place. Unfortunately, we really don't have a choice but to "judge a blog by its title". I think I had a good example of this in my blog, "Dancing on God's Grave".

I'm going to add a few things on the spur of the moment for ratings. (Not for YOUR RATINGS for ME, but for how YOU to GET RATINGS... oh, you know what I mean.)

1) Don't wander too much. Keep consistent and focused--if you jump around, make sure to fill a hole in your argument. Never assume that somebody else already knows what's in that hole--there's nothing more irritating than a vague teacher who assumes that everybody knows what he's talking about which leads up to the concept (my Chemistry teacher does this, grr).

2) Try to have a fluid, good handle on your diction and speech...type-speech. It's important to have the kind of flowing narration that people can slide over easily, and is pleasing to read. Read a lot of books! It's also generally unwise to use "ye olde speech", since it can throw off a lot of the modern generation. Unless, of course, that is your intent--in which case, full steam ahead. ;)

3) Don't be overly profane, condemning, or vindictive--people don't like it. Try to look at it objectively--and if you have to be strong in your words, please, at least MAKE SENSE. Don't be profane--it really isn't necessary, unless you're handling a blog or type of story, or whatever such thing that requires it.

4) You could try begging for ratings. *cough* No, don't do this--it'll probably get some bad reverse-psychology reactions.

5) Addendum: Make sure not to mention religion in your blog, unless that is its topic. It generally rubs the atheists the wrong way when you start preaching God in your blogs. Even some other religious types. Trust me on this--it's a real turn-off.

So, that concludes this quickie blog. I hope it helps. If you have any other tips--feel free to comment and post them!

Addendum added in the second section, see new 5).