Writing blog posts and comments on blogs is actually very simple. The basic guidelines: keep your copy lively, factual, tight, clear, short and search engine optimized.

Here are basic blog style guidelines to follow:

Adopt a direct style. Declarative sentences are good. Web readers demand them.

Link like crazy. One thing that distinguishes blog posts from dead-tree journalism is that bloggers link prodigiously.

Link to any other blog or Web site you mention. Link to articles, books, products, bios, explanatory materials on other sites and anything you mention in your blog.

Always link to information that clarifies or gives background on information and opinions in your post.

Write less. Omit all unnecessary words. The best advice I ever got about writing was from my first boss, the late "press agent" Leo Miller, who taught me a game to play with sentences. He'd keep taking out words until removing one more word destroyed the meaning of the sentence.

For example: He'd take out words until removing another destroyed the sentence meaning.

Aim at keeping your posts at about 250 words.

Write good headlines. Most people use a news feeders like News Gator to scan blog headlines. They decide after seeing the headline to click into the post. Tell as much of the story as you can in the headline:

Before: Pakistan: NA body on S&T meets [Huh? Who's NA? What is S&T?]

After: Pakistan National Assembly Calls Water Resource Problems the Nation's Major Issue

Before: The B. B. King Book

After: I'm Writing The B. B. King Biography

Keep sentences and paragraphs short.

Don't take yourself too seriously. Blogging isn't brain surgery. Don't get pompous or dictatorial.

Never lose your sense of humor.

Write like it counts. "No matter what your audience size, you ought to write as if your readership consisted of paid subscribers whose subscriptions were perpetually about to expire. There's no need to pander. Compel them to re-subscribe," said Dennis Mahoney on A List Apart.

White space is your friend. It makes reading from the screen easier. Nothing is harder to read than a solid block of copy on a computer screen.

Use the simplest possible word and sentence structure.

Read your post out loud and make sure you don't get stuck on complex construction. If you trip on a word the midst of reading a sentence aloud, rewrite the sentence.

Forget what you learned about business writing in school if you graduated before 1990. Go ahead! Start sentences with "and" or "but." Don't be afraid to break archaic rules. But, jeez, follow all grammatical rules that provide clarity to your content.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

B.L. Ochman is a social media marketing strategist for S&P 500 companies, including McGraw Hill, IBM, Cendant, and American Greetings. She publishes What's Next Blog and Ethics Crisis, where readers can confess their worst ethics transgressions and others can rate them on a scale of one to ten. She also blogs for MarketingProfs Daily Fix Blog.