By Guest Author – DCMontreal lives in, not surprisingly, Montreal, Canada and is a freelance writer who blogs at http://dcmontreal.wordpress.com/
Blogging styles vary as much as the bloggers who use them. In this article I will take a look at some of the traditional blogging “rules” and how you can still maintain your blogging style. I once read a definition of fashion that claimed true fashion involves knowing all the rules, but not being afraid to break them. Just a little food for thought as you go about blogging.
Finding your niche; it could be a style
They tell you when you start out testing the waters of the Blogosphere that you should find your niche. Select a topic and stay within the bounds: maybe sports, or fashion, or cars or music. But perhaps your niche is a style rather than a topic. As I have written about before, humor can be a great means of attracting traffic to your blog, and you can be funny about all sorts of things. Your niche could be social commentary which covers a very wide spectrum of interests: from education to gun control, healthcare to women’s rights. All of these provide fodder for humor, or satire, or commentary. So don’t fear being painted into a corner when you consider your niche.
Long versus short posts
I understand some bloggers’ style is to compose long treatises on their subject of expertise. I’m not a big fan of long posts, books, films or winters (I do live in Montreal); think Hemingway not Dickens or Simenon not Proust. Cut to the chase as it were. We live in a world of virtually instant information; we carry iPhones, iPads, tablets and all sorts of devices that help us keep in touch. Many people get their news in 140 character Tweets, bite-size chunks of information. Consider for a moment how the use of words has changed over the years. Have you ever seen a newspaper from the 1890s? They’re chock-a-block with columns of words, not a graphic to be found. As technology developed and allowed for easy photograph inclusion in newspapers, the number of words dropped and pictures started to become more common – the old picture being worth a thousand words concept – right up to the USA Today style of newspaper that is heavy on photos and light on words.
It isn’t all that farfetched to think busy on-the-go people enjoy punchy, shorter blog posts that get to the point quickly. They say that a blog of less than 300 words doesn’t make it to the Google radar and thus affects your traffic, but I’ve had success with short posts in the past and hope to do so again. This concept of terse versus verse upon verse isn’t new. Haiku for instance, the Japanese poetry has been around for centuries. It counts sound units known as “on” or morae (sort of like syllables). Traditional haiku consist of 17 on, in three phrases of five, seven and five on respectively.
Frequency of posts
In keeping with short versus long posts is the issue of posting frequency. This really depends on your schedule and desire. I tend to post daily; sometimes I publish more than one post on a day if the spirit moves me. On days when I’ve been late with my post I’ve been contacted by followers
to see if all is well. So it’s up to you, but remember people are creatures of habit and if you get them interested and expecting a daily post, make sure you deliver.
Remember the competition for readers is fierce and you need to make an impression fast. The old sales adage that it’s easier to hold on to clients, in this case readers, than to find new ones is very true.
Happy blogging!
The Writing Corp 
I like a shorter post as well. Or if it’s long I like when it’s cut into numbered sections or bullet points.
Excellent post! Thank you….
Good advice. I like shorter posts too.