Experienced blog writers will tell you that there are no one-size-fits-all solutions that will guarantee your blog reaches viral status. If you are working on your very first blog post, you might be wondering how to go about the actual act of sitting down to write authoritatively. Maintaining your site requires more than a list of great blog post ideas. It also means you need to choose the appropriate blog writing style.
If you have been wondering how to write quality blog posts with a style that suits your target audience, here are a few things to consider.
Why Does Blog Writing Style Matter?
You might be wondering why successful blog posts tend to take off on the web while others languish unread and unseen by the masses.
Your writing style can influence how many people read your work and can even impact your ranking on Google.
Showing up in the SERPs might just be a matter of blog posts having the right style.
First, blog writers should be aware that Google ranks web pages based on a formula known as E-E-A-T. This stands for Experience, Expertise, Authority, and Trust. It is the lens Google uses to see whether a webpage or blog is the right fit for a searcher.
Your blog post should be well-written if you want people to view you as an authority in your niche.
Second, your blog writing style might influence the amount of time people spend reading through your blog posts. If they found you on Google, you want to see how much time they are spending on your site.
Readers who click on your page, bounce quickly, and return to the SERPs indicate your pages are missing the mark.
A high bounce rate could signal to Google that your page isn’t relevant and damage your ranking.
For more information on bounce rate, consider these bounce rate benchmarks.
4 Tips to Find Your Own Blog Writing Style
Maybe you have your first blog post ideas already written down and you’re ready to start writing. Here are a few tips that can guide your writing style to keep readers engaged in your content.
1. Short Paragraphs and Sentences
Have you ever opened a website on your phone and realized that it’s nothing but a huge wall of text? Long blocks of text are difficult to skim and may not be user-friendly.
Blog writers need to think about the experience of their readers and how to capture their attention.
To this end, you should keep your paragraphs short – and your sentences short too. This makes it easy for your target audience to read through at a quick glance.
2. Write for Your Target Audience
Everyone can probably think of blog post examples where they read as if they were written for children. Worse yet, they might have been written for PhD candidates more so than the average reader.
In these early stages of crafting blog content, you need to consider who your audience is and what grade level they might read at.
A good rule of thumb is to keep blog writing at an eighth-grade reading level.
How can you ensure that your blog posts are at this level? Fortunately, there are tools out there that assess your vocabulary and sentence structure to make it clearer.
Hemingway Editor is a free tool that gives you a readability score and can help you improve your writing.
3. Get Organized and Clear on What You Want to Say
Writing blogs isn’t as easy as many people initially imagined it to be. Much like writing a paper for your English class, you need to know what you want to say and how you can support that idea or topic.
This is true, no matter whether your writing style is academic or confessional.
Keep your content organized by maintaining a clear focus for your blog posts. If you have multiple ideas you want to touch on, it might be best to write multiple blog posts so that each idea gets the time and attention it deserves.
4. Be Conversational and Engaging
No matter what blog writing style you ultimately settle on, blog content should always be conversational and engaging. A successful blog page will keep a reader’s attention and walk them through what you want to teach them, share with them, or think about with them.
So many blogs are out there on the web that your readers may bounce if your writing style doesn’t engage them in your content. Part of content marketing is ensuring that your audience loves your blog style, so do your best to draw them in.
Let’s take a look at the blog writing style you might want to imitate to engage your readers.
6 Blog Writing Style Tones that Keep Readers Engaged
Maybe you are looking for a blog style guide that can improve your on-page SEO. Before you craft an entire blog around one idea or writing style, you should consider how you naturally write.
This allows you to come up with your own style guide and allows you to embrace the most readers.
Here are six styles new bloggers might want to consider after brainstorming ideas.
1. Informative or Journalistic
If your primary goal is to share important points from research done in the field, then you might want to write in a more informative or journalistic style.
Think about how your article sounds and try to make it fit in with breaking news stories that might come out in The New York Times or your local newspaper.
Know what points you want to make, what research you have to support them, and how you want to structure your argument before you even begin writing a word.
Keep in mind that even if your writing style tends toward journalistic, it should still be easy to read.
Choose vocabulary words that resonate with your audience and still stick to that eighth-grade reading level or somewhere close.
2. Formal for an Academic Writing Style
Maybe your writing skills were honed in an academic environment. This can be hard to shake, but it doesn’t have to mean a death knell for your blog.
There is no hard and fast rule that blog posts have to be written informally. If you want to establish yourself as an expert in the field, an informal style might not work for you.
While a conversational style is appealing to most readers, some want the more instructive tone of an academic-inspired piece.
In this style, you aren’t likely to share personal experiences. Instead, you will be more focused on the argument you want to make. Much like a journalistic style, you are likely to find that you need to support your ideas with evidence.
3. Inspirational and Optimistic
On the other hand, perhaps you started your own blog to inspire and motivate others. This blog style is a little less formal than a journalistic or academic approach.
It tends to lend itself to a conversational style that motivates people to take action right away.
Blog content that falls into this more optimistic tone can encompass several topics. Under the umbrella of inspirational blog posts, you might teach someone how to do something that will improve their life. It might motivate them to start a business, take charge of their health, or anything in between.
If your own blog is meant to be a force for change, then you might want to consider how to make your written content more motivating.
Add success stories, tips, advice, and anything else you might be super passionate about.
4. Sarcastic or Pessimistic
Other blogs might find that their main points aren’t necessarily designed to inspire or motivate. Instead, their tone is biting, sarcastic, and even a little bit pessimistic.
This is particularly true for those who want to write satire about current events.
The truth is that if you want to embrace this tone, you need to be mindful of the language you use.
It’s good advice to make sure your writing style is not just negative but also informs. You will have to strike a balance between sarcasm and sharing information while writing.
The goal is to get your readers to act on something when they finish reading your writing and key points. If people read your blog posts and don’t walk away with a new perspective or something they can really act on, then it might be time to reevaluate your writing style.
5. Narrative or Confessional
This is perhaps the writing style that most bloggers are familiar with and gravitate towards. A narrative or confessional writing style shares personal experiences and key takeaways for your audience.
This gives you a platform where you can talk about anything that interests you, but it should all be shared with a point.
In other words, what can your readers take away from reading your blogs?
It should be about more than just entertainment value (though that is certainly important too). Often, the writing is a way of expressing a life lesson learned.
Write without shame and really dive deep to explore the depths of your emotions. Confessional writing doesn’t work if you hold anything back from the page.
6. Pictorial for a Visually Appealing Blog
Of course, writing style isn’t necessarily the only thing to consider when developing your blog. Some content creators will want to opt for a more visual way of telling their stories or sharing information.
This can take the form of infographics, but it can also mean sketches and designs that support your main point.
Sometimes, the right graphic can serve as a focal point and can even surface in search engines.
A pictorial approach allows you to share the step-by-step in a how-to article, display the finished product of a DIY project, or even a picture of a completed meal if you run a food blog.
Pictures of places you have traveled or lived are also fair game for a visual blog post.
Get creative with your camera or design software to come up with something that supplements your writing.
Using Jasper to Write a Blog Post in Your Desired Style
Freelance writers and bloggers alike are turning to artificial intelligence tools to help them show up on search engines and create in-depth guides.
One of the top AI writing tools is Jasper, and it can help you come up with style guides that suit your writing process.
All you have to do is give Jasper two to three sentences about what you want.
You may even be able to give it less than that if you don’t have a particular topic or end goal in mind.
One of the best features of Jasper is that it allows you to select the tone for your writing. While we only cover a few of the broader blog writing styles, Jasper goes a step further to help you refine your blog or brand voice.
They feature styles such as:
- Cheeky
- Bold
- Formal
- Pirate
It’s worth playing around with the tool a little bit to see what style guide you want to use to inform your writing. Jasper does all of the heavy lifting for you so that you can focus on running your blog and ranking in the SERPs.
See our full Jasper AI review here to see if this tool is right for you.
Final Thoughts: Choose a Blog Writing Style that Suits You
Whether you want to do the writing yourself or rely on a tool like Jasper, it is important to first narrow down what blog writing style you want to pursue.
Applying a style guide consistently lets readers know what to expect from your blog and gives them a better experience.
The result?
They stay longer on your page, act on what you ask them to do, and you get bumped up in the SERPs. It’s a win-win situation for everyone when you can select a style guide and stick to it throughout your blog.
Think about what style suits you and your blogging business model before you start writing your next post!
Check out some of these personal website examples for inspiration.
