Five Blogging Lessons Learned From Newspaper Columnists - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career

Five Blogging Lessons Learned From Newspaper Columnists - Personal Branding Blog - Stand Out In Your Career If you want to be a thought leader in your field, to be seen as one of its leading authorities, you need to pay special attention to how you blog. You cant just splut out a blog post here and there, and expect people to take you seriously. You also cant have an overly formal writing style. You need to write like a newspaper columnist. In the past Ive said bloggers are citizen journalists who need to act and write like newspaper reporters, but Im changing my approach. The purpose of personal branding is to promote your self, but you cant do that by avoiding first and second person references, or reporting only facts without analysis. You need to adopt the writing style favored by newspaper columnists like George Will, Maureen Dowd, or the late Mike Royko who was the newspaper columnist in Chicago from the 1950s through 1990s. Or even gonzo journalism, as created by Hunter S. Thompson, where the writer is part of the story. Ive been a newspaper humor columnist for 18 years, and have used those skills and experiences to develop my own blogging voice. Here are a few of the lessons Ive learned in that time. 1. You still have to write like a reporter Newspaper columnists still follow the short words, short sentences, short paragraphs dictum. Its easier to read, which means people are more likely to finish it. Its also more likely to be shared. Plus if people search for your chosen topic, theyre going to use words they like to use, not the obtuse kerfuffle of the look how smart I am! academic writer. 2. Tell a good story, dont repeat someone elses One of the things I love about Royko is that he didnt spout stats or quote other columnists. He would tell a story about a single person, drop in one stat to help you realize that this person wasnt the only person suffering, and hed make you feel that persons pain. Many times, he would write a follow-up column a few months later about how the previous column had caused a reform in a government agency, or how a particular persons problem was solved when a high-ranking official personally got involved. All because they were moved by that story. Make your reader feel your excitement, sadness, or outrage when they read your piece. You can only do that with stories, not statistics. 3. Keep it short, but not too short Abraham Lincoln was once asked how long a mans legs should be. Long enough to reach the ground, he said. So it goes with blog posts. Say enough to make your point and reach the end, but dont blather on. The great thing about blogging is that you can revisit a topic again and again, examining subtle nuances, and plumbing its depths. Dont put every piece of knowledge into a single post. Split it up and spread the love. (If nothing else, it helps your SEO.) Shoot for 300 â€" 500 words for an average length. You can occasionally go longer, but dont drop below 200 words. Google just doesnt like that short stuff. Its too much like spam. 4. You dont have to write every day Plenty of bloggers post on a daily basis, but its hard work. I did it for a year on my humor blog, and finally gave up because I wasnt doing my best work and was just publishing to stick with a schedule. The only truly good work was my weekly newspaper column. So I had to make a choice: did I want to put up sub-par stuff that I didnt really care about, or focus on doing the best work possible. I chose the latter. 5. Have a strong lede* I truly will not give a shit about your story if you dont give a shit about your lede. If you open a blog post with I was having coffee with my friend Dave, and. . . or Take two parts enthusiasm, three parts hard work, and one part pure luck. . . no one is going to care, and will be gone before they know whether you had skim milk or 2% in your latte. And those recipe openers make me want to whack the writer with a rolled up copy of the Sunday New York Times. Read 10 â€"  15 newspaper stories, and focus on the opening paragraph and especially that opening lede. Better yet, go read some old columnists work. The art of writing good ledes is becoming lost as more newspapers are firing their experienced writers and replacing them with newbies. Ive talked on this blog many times about how important good writing is to your personal brand. And as you strive to build that thought leadership and expertise, its going to become even more important. Start thinking like a newspaper columnist and writing like one. Its one thats accessible to your readers, and can still speak to the greater truth of the issues youre trying to discuss. * In newspaper talk, the opening sentence is called a lede, not to be confused with lead, which is what the movable type was made with. Author: Erik Deckers is the owner of Professional Blog Service, a newspaper humor columnist, and the co-author of Branding Yourself: How to Use Social Media to Invent or Reinvent Yourself and No Bullshit Social Media: The All-Business, No-Hype Guide to Social Media Marketing. His third book, The Owned Media Doctrine, will be available this summer.