Making A Point

Making A Point.

What every blog post should have.

 

Today I was going to write a ranty piece listing the excuses people have for not being interested in becoming digitally literate. Because although people call them ‘reasons’ they really are just excuses.

But a piece like that wouldn’t serve any purpose other than allowing me to vent. It also wouldn’t be very helpful. Finding Heroes encourages and celebrates librarians who dare to do different. What point did I want to make by writing that kind of piece? Because there should be a point, shouldn’t there?

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Of course there should. In communication or marketing lingo, it’s called the key message. Every piece of communication – whether it’s a media release, event poster, lecture, Facebook post or video – should have a key message and everything in that piece of communication should reflect and reinforce that key message.

Even though I KNOW this, I OFTEN FORGET.

I go round and round writing a few sentences and then get stuck on what to say next. So I write a few more sentences from a different angle and get stuck again. After two or three hours of this (I’m a slow learner) I eventually remember that my writing always flows better when I consider the following questions.

  • What’s the point?
  • What am I trying to say?
  • Is this the best way to say it?
  • What impact do I want to have on readers, students, clients or customers?
  • How will this benefit readers, students, clients or customers?

The answers to these questions need to be clear. And concise. There should only be one point and if I don’t know what it is, how do I expect readers to know what it is?

So after 3 hours of getting nowhere, I discarded the ranty piece and wrote this in a mere 40 minutes!

If you’d like to learn how to reduce the time you spend crafting blog posts sign up for Communicating Online: Blogs, a 60 minute self-paced online course that takes you step-by-step through drafting a blog post using five key communication components.

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