Blog Entries, Content, and Commentary

What stories are to a city newspaper, blog entries are to your Blog Empire. And while your layout is important, readers will not return again and again to admire your layout or ruminate over your clever title. They’ll return again and again to read your writing or view your artwork or check the links that you provide. In other words, while they may read because of your layout, they will return because of your entries.

An entry is simply a published piece of material, and your readers will have definite expectations for your entries that you will need to meet, again and again, in order to woo them into coming back tomorrow. Luckily, most of those expectations are set by you in prior entries. Those expectations are insight, relevance, timeliness, accuracy, and consistency.

Insightful and Unique Content

Whether your blog provides photographs of the rain forest, reviews of Pacific Northwest restaurants, or the largest collection of ethnic jokes on the planet, your readers expect that every time they come there, they’ll find something new, unique, and worthwhile. They’ll expect to find something they can’t find anywhere else or find by themselves without searching all over.

In short, they’ll expect you to provide insightful and unique content on a certain consistent subject or issue. Your insight and your dedication to providing quality are what will draw them back.

Links and Commentary

On a news blog, for example, your readers expect that your commentary will provide interesting and relevant news, probably with a link to an original story or a source site. They will also expect you to provide expertise that they do not possess, information they have not found elsewhere, and an up-to–the-minute take on relevant trends and rumors.

They want to read the entry and come away feeling they now know more than they did, that they learned something interesting, and that they leave with a reason to return.

A blog that reviews restaurants will meet those same expectations in a different manner. Timeliness is less a factor – restaurants don’t change as quickly as the daily news – but relevance and thoroughness become more important. Your readers are not going to return for your reviews of Portland’s collection of Subway restaurants, nor for your fifth review of Kell’s Irish Pub, even if you think it the best place in the world to eat. They demand an expanding collection of useful content, and they want each entry to tell them everything they need to know to make an enjoyable dining decision. They want you to be clear, honest, and thorough.

Perhaps your blog is a reference blog, collecting and publishing links by subject. While readers may not have expectations for your commentary, they will expect the links to be accurate and present a thorough overview of the subject from all angles – or at least from the angle your readers have come to expect from prior commentary. Consistency and thoroughness are again the watchwords.

• Whatever the theme of your blog, your readers will expect every entry to be timely, relevant, and accurate.