So you’re writing a blog post?

Writing for the internet is not like writing a novel. Seriously, they’re galaxies apart. Writing an essay and writing a blog post aren’t galaxies apart; more like the distance between the nearest open cluster of stars and me.

Clearly, I’m referring to non-fiction here, rather than fiction or poetry or experimental writing. I’m not talking about writers who are using blogging tools to serialise their novels or continue to ‘journal’ blog (the origins of the internet weblog) because journalling is different – a more intimate form and less reliant on other people’s input and interactivity.

Much has been said of late – what with the Miscellaneous Voices launch, Jessica Au’s post at Spike last week about where blogging is at as a literary form, and the recognition writers (a category in which I include bloggers because they write) receive – about the nature, purpose and style of blogging. And while that is all worthy of debate, this is more a question of how to write for the digital medium.

Jessica Au asks:

Surely the more pressing question then is not whether poetry works better on print or as a digital text, but how it can work best according to the medium chosen?

Indeed. How are we negotiating the environment that is the internet? When we sit down to write a blog post, should we approach it in the same way as writing an essay – i.e. an essay with hyperlinks? An online writer can work with whatever style and content they prefer, but are they thinking about their medium and audience when they sit down to write – and are they adapting?

Nigel Featherstone reassuringly advises that there are 112,000,000 blogs currently operating in the world. ‘If my maths is right, and it’s often not, every fiftieth person around the globe is blogging.’ (That is a startling statistic.)

So what is blogging?

Technically, this isn’t what the post is about but it’s a bit hard to avoid a definition. So here it goes.

Originally blogs were seen as regularly updated content with an immediate currency. This is still true, to a degree, but let us pause to reflect on Nigel’s stat – how many of those 112,000,000 blogs are dedicated to reviewing, writing or journalling? Presumably a lot, but millions are also dedicated to news and commentary. Readers are now sifting through these blogs and sites for information used to interpret the world around them. Or as this video puts it, ‘blogs make the news a two-way street’:

Writing for the internet is structurally and functionally different to writing for print. It does not necessarily rely on the linearity of the printed page, and the beauty of the internet is that it’s interactive and dynamic – something that many commentators and bloggers seem to have lost sight of in recent debates.

Jessica’s post asks why these ‘bells and whistles’ and ‘digital noise’ factors aren’t considered part of the form? I contend that they are essential to writing for the digital medium, and have compiled a list of other tips to assist with the blogging process.

Thinking of audience

This is one of the most important considerations when writing anything, but I think we often forget how hard it is to cultivate an audience on the internet and how to keep them once they’re there. (There are 112,000,000 other blogs these people could be reading.)

And people read differently onscreen. Readers are less willing to give their undivided attention to the computer monitor, hence the arguments about long form. (Is this because the online environment isn’t as immersive as a book, with something always present, blinking and waiting? Feel free to discuss)

• Stick to your niche
• Put up markers to help readers identify what’s going on and where
• Write short, either by breaking up large chucks of text with pictures, quotes and videos, or breaking the text into more paragraphs – all to keep the reader’s attention
• Keep sentences short – 30 words or fewer is ideal
• Good posts generally consist of one strong idea that binds the post together – try not to cram too many ideas into the one post

Thinking of environment

This is practically as important as audience because blogging, as the video above demonstrates, is as much about a conversation with the internet as it is with readers. We are not writing in a vacuum; we are writing from the entire internet, and the world beyond.

• Links: use them. Posts can be expanded and strengthened by drawing in other sources or people who’ve already had this conversation, or research that’s relevant to the post
• More links: link to sources you have used in the post (to be taken seriously as a blogger and to avoid any plagiaristic grey areas)
• And on links: they need to make sense out of context of the post. This is why whale-dog 'here’ does not work as a link
• 'Here' is never a good link

This Jakob Nielsen article, Web usability: the top ten design mistakes, is a great post on what we’re doing wrong on blogs. Point four is devoted to links:

4. Links Don't Say Where They Go

Many weblog authors seem to think it's cool to write link anchors like: "some people think" or "there's more here and here." Remember one of the basics of the Web: Life is too short to click on an unknown. Tell people where they're going and what they'll find at the other end of the link.

Generally, you should provide predictive information in either the anchor text itself or the immediately surrounding words. You can also use a link titles for supplementary information that doesn't fit with your content. (To see a link title in action, mouse over the "link titles" link.)

A related mistake in this category is to use insider shorthand, such as using first names when you reference other writers or weblogs. Unless you're writing only for your friends, don't alienate new visitors by appearing to be part of a closed clique. The Web is not high school.

Thinking of interactivity

So if news is now a two-way street, readers have a right to respond, engage and challenge.

Comments are the thrill and bane of my blogging life. I am intrigued to learn what others think, while shocked that my job didn’t end with the blog post – I mean, I already said what I needed to in the post, what more is there left to say? (I should point out this is something I’m trying to improve upon.)

The idea of commenting is to introduce new material and ideas and to continue the discussion.

• Hear people and respond
• Admit when you’re wrong or reconsidering your position
• Post consistently so readers know when to stop by
• If comments aren’t working on your blog, consider introducing a comments policy or guidelines

(Incidentally, am I the last one to learn that CAPTCHA is an acronym for Completely Automated Public Turing Test to tell Computers and Humans Apart?)

So there is no fixed way to blog. But there are factors that need to be taken into consideration when writing for the internet in order to make it a collaborative writing/reading experience. If these writings are indistinguishable from our essays and novels, then we have failed to understand the medium.

Yet, as we writers are so often told, we learn the rules so we can break them. Who knows where that will lead in this digital frontier?

PS What do New Yorkers think about blogs?