There isn’t just one way to write a post — no formula will teach you how to write well. But in the course of my many years of blogging, even more years writing, and lots of years as a studious reader, I’ve found certain principles that apply to the writing of (most) posts.

As always, these are but general guidelines, meant to be broken. My recommendation with guidelines is that you should try to work with them when you’re getting started, and as you get confident, break them when you feel you know what you’re doing. Know that you’re breaking the rules, and why you’re breaking ’em, before you break ’em.

So, what are the principles? Let’s dive into them.

1. The title/headline is what brings in the customers.

The title of your post (what I think of as the headline) is a handful of words that draws your reader into the post — or makes the reader decide to pass it up. We’ll get into headlines in a later module, but for now just be aware that your title needs to make a promise (that you can keep) of something good in the post, or it needs to get the reader’s curiosity, or both.

2. The intro is where you grab the reader, and make them want to read the post.

Just like the headline, actually, but with more details. There are different ways to do this in the intro — telling a (short) story is a good way, as it helps captivate the reader, if done well. But even without a story, you need to tell the reader what this post has to offer her, and why she should care.

3. Make the post scannable.

A reader on the Internet, I’ve learned through lots of study, is in a hurry and will usually only spend a few seconds scanning a post before deciding to either (a) spend valuable time reading the whole thing, or (b) moving on to the next thing. You want (a) to happen, but if you don’t make the post scannable, the reader won’t have enough info to decide whether he wants to stick around.

How to make a post scannable:

• Create a clear structure through using subheadings and bulleted points.
• Make important sentences stand out through bold font.
• Use short paragraphs.

Now, not every post needs to be scannable — not every writer needs to follow this guideline. But you should know what you’re doing if you break it, and you should be good at storytelling if you do.

You need to be confident of your ability to lead the reader from the beginning to the end without boring him or wasting his time, and you should be aware that you’ll lose a lot of readers anyway simply because you didn’t make the post scannable.

4. Share lessons to help the reader.

This could be a section of tips at the end of the post that share easily-digestible lessons — something I do often. Or it could be the wisdom you’ve learned from your struggles, distilled into a few principles (like this post).

Or it could be sprinkled throughout the post, without being highlighted — that’s fine if you’re confident the reader will find them on her own. Or it could be one lesson, at the end of the post.

It doesn’t matter much — I’d suggest trying a variety of approaches in different posts. But do share lessons with the reader — without them, the reader might not find a point to the post.

Finally

It’s good to have a conclusion at the end of the post. This is where you wrap it up into one neat little package.

There is no one way to structure posts, but if you follow the four principles above, you’ll do okay. If you follow them for a while and then learn when to break them, you’ll do great.

Have fun and learn how to break free of structure — only after learning how to follow it.

Author: Leo Babauta