What should my blog contain?

The Datapartners Daily Blog about blogs: 3 of 10

Once you’ve established why you want to blog and what your blog is going to be about, you need to consider your target audience. The subject matter and the type of people who will be reading it will affect what you put in your blog. The way you write it will also make a difference to the types of people who will read it and keep coming back.

For example, I keep my blogs relatively light-hearted and quite often make fun of consultants and other inherently stupid people. Therefore, the chances of a serious consultant enjoying my blog are slim, unless they are the rare breed of consultant born with a sense of humour and a personality. In fact the chances of a consultant being able to read is slim so forget everything I just wrote.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, content. While some blogs contain humour, it’s only worth doing that if the subject matter allows it and if you are actually funny. Don’t try to force it otherwise it almost inevitably has the opposite effect.

Images and video can also bring a blog to life. Certainly photos are the first things people notice on any website so if you’ve got a nice, bold image, it will almost certainly draw the viewer in, meaning there is more chance of them actually reading your content. Personally I use very little in the way of imagery on this blog because I rarely have use for it. However, I also write articles for other publications where images and photos are much more relevant (news sites and profile sites for example).

Perhaps embed a related video. Either one you made yourself or sharing someone else’s video. People are more likely to respond to something visual (like photos and video) because reading is more arduous for people (especially consultants).

So there you go; Your blog should contain words, photos, video and some light-hearted and easy-to-read material. Pretty obvious really. This blog was a bit pointless… I’d probably make a good consultant...