How to Write a Good Blog Post?（Or How to Write a Good Article? )

We say “writing reflects the person”. In fact, a person’s blog largely reflects how well they write essays or papers. It should be rare for someone to write excellent papers but terrible blogs.

We should benefit greatly from any good writing activity, and blogging is no exception. In this article, I intend to take blogging seriously and see what can be said about “how to write a good blog”. These points have general significance for how to write good articles.

Writing Goals

Clarifying the goals of a blog is paramount. Why write a blog? Blogging is just a hobby. This determines that we should not and will not invest too much time and energy in it. To write a good blog, we must make it easy for readers to understand. I believe that, in general, the goal of a blog should be: to improve one’s thinking through writing, and incidentally benefit the public.

Suppose I am a graduate student studying philosophy, often reading and thinking about some issues. So I write down the issues I have been thinking deeply about for a period of time. On the one hand, the benefit of doing this is that through writing, I organize my thoughts, make them clear, fix them, and mature them.¹ The biggest beneficiary of blogging must be the author himself. On the other hand, in the process of writing, I also need to consider, since I am making this article public rather than keeping it on my computer’s hard drive, what will readers gain?

The second question is actually another side of the first question. Writing is a dialogue, not talking to oneself. If thinking is just talking to oneself, it will never be clear. The main questions here are: first, who will be interested in the issues I discuss; second, what are their general ideas or opinions; and finally, how can I make it easy for them to understand.

If you don’t carefully consider the above three questions, it will be difficult to write a good blog. For example, some people recently read a book and wrote three or four thousand words of introduction or impressions, without considering at all who would be interested in this. The whole article is just saying, I have some feelings about this book. It is indeed important that you have feelings about this book, but why should others be interested? If someone is interested, how can you make them clearly and completely understand your thoughts, rather than just being told that you have certain thoughts, but what those thoughts are is unclear?

It’s best not to write a blog as if talking to yourself. A blog is not a diary. Writing a blog, like other writing, is both a kind of thinking and a kind of dialogue, and thinking is ultimately a kind of dialogue.

If you don’t consider the second question, it will lead to articles being either verbose or crude, or worthless. For example, many people’s introductions to things have no beginning or end. For another example, many people write things that others already know. Please remember, before writing, it is very important to think about how ordinary people think about the issues to be discussed.

The usual writing routine of a good article is: first, point out the problem to be discussed, then, summarize how ordinary people think (this actually shows great skill), then point out what is insufficient about thinking this way, and finally propose what my idea is and why this idea is better.

It’s easy to see that only by doing the above two preparations well can the article be clear. Clarity is the primary virtue of an article.

Let’s return to the example of the philosophy graduate student. His target audience can be peers of similar level, or people with general education. Whatever it is, he must first clarify his target audience: who does he want to dialogue with? If the target audience is professional peers, then the article can be written relatively obscure or professional, but very concise. Conversely, if it is aimed at generally educated people, the article needs to be written in a popular way, using less jargon, and explaining obscure concepts in plain language.

A bad practice is that the article has no clear goal or topic, only fragments. The authors of such articles don’t know why they are writing or what they want to convey; perhaps they simply don’t care about these things. They just say, ah, I watched a certain movie and it was very good, a certain plot shocked me, or say, I am very confused about a certain concept in a certain book.

Private life or professional thinking is not unsuitable for blogging; on the contrary, they should become the best material and motivation. However, be sure to make your writing have a certain degree of publicity.

If I am thinking about a professional philosophical question and want to express it to help me sort out this idea clearly and fix it, I need to make my article as public as possible: have a clear target audience, have certain preparation and explanation, discuss completely, so that the target audience can understand just by reading my article.

The more specialized the blog’s theme, the more it will write about topics that the public is not very familiar with, and this requires more publicity of the article, and the first principle of publicity is to make it easy for the public to read and understand.

To this end, you may usually need to assume that your readers are not your peers, but you try to make them able to easily and completely understand the views you want to express simply by reading your article.

The worst practice is to throw your messy and crude notes or even excerpts online. Recently, something called “digital garden” has become very popular. Some people understand “digital garden” as throwing their fragmentary notes or excerpts online. How many people will read those “digital gardens”? It can be said with certainty that such things are useless to others and are completely digital garbage. Notes and articles are two different things. Blogs should not be fragmented notes or excerpts, but articles with clear goals, complete structure, clear arguments, and clear conclusions, regardless of their length. Because only in this way can readers and authors benefit most from the writing activity of blogging.

Why shouldn’t you throw your fragmented notes or excerpts online? In addition to the lack of publicity mentioned above, there is also the “self-nature” problem we will discuss in detail below, that is, the problem of writing motivation.

Writing Motivation

Blogging is a hobby, and the blogger must be the biggest beneficiary of this activity, otherwise there will be insufficient motivation. Suppose we plan to express our professional knowledge in a way that laypeople can understand, then there are at least two problems. First, if what we want to say is something we have already thought through, why write it again? Second, if what we have already thought through is very useful to others, what can we gain from it?

For me, the biggest motivation for blogging is to write about issues that I have been thinking about recently but have not yet thought through clearly, whether they are life, social, or professional issues. Through writing, my thinking becomes clear and my thoughts advance. Writing about issues I understand completely will make blogging extremely boring. Writing a blog, like people used to write thought notes on paper, is a kind of thought exercise, thought adventure, and before writing, we don’t even know which direction we will go completely.

Of course, many people write about things they understand completely because such things are very useful to other people. For example, some people regard blogging as a means of knowledge dissemination or commercial profit. However, in today’s era when blogs are declining, this is very difficult to do well. Those who can do it are very few, and blogs do not perform as well as other activities in simple knowledge dissemination or commercial profit. Otherwise, blogs would not be considered declining. For most people, the biggest motivation for blogging should be to advance their own thinking, not to disseminate knowledge.

Some people simply regard blogs as personal life records. These bloggers naturally write about things they understand completely. However, even so, the following question still needs attention.

Limit the Theme

Through the above discussion, we have reached a conclusion that blogging should be a kind of thought exercise and adventure, while incidentally having a certain degree of publicity.

With this goal and motivation, we need to understand that a good blog needs to limit its theme. The thoughts we want to advance always have a limited field, and we should not write about everything. Whether starting from ourselves or considering readers, writing must limit the theme. Of course, this does not mean that we can only write about one theme. On the contrary, a blog can have many themes, as long as these themes are what you think deeply about and can benefit the public. Obviously, for most people, the fields of deep thinking are always limited, and even if simply sharing what you like, the themes are limited.

The Newsletter that has become popular in recent years requires that our blogs have limited themes. Blogs should not be a hodgepodge. Think about why others would care about your articles. A good blog should show what you are good at or have characteristics, and what a person is good at or has characteristics is always limited.

Not only the entire blog, but individual articles should also limit the theme. Each article should focus on one theme, propose clear views, and provide sufficient arguments for them. Simply put, explain a specific problem clearly (this is the most important achievement of blogging). Whether you are writing about a certain mood, a concept in a certain book, a certain current event, or profound philosophy, specialized technology, try to make it so that readers can understand just by reading your article.

Keep It Short

Many people complain that people are now unwilling to read long articles and attribute this to one of the reasons for the decline of blogs. In fact, the real reason is that most blogs are written too poorly. If you can really post your “Jean-Christophe” or “Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy” on your blog, people will definitely read it carefully and spend a very long time reading it. Nevertheless, given the nature and positioning of blogs, keeping it short is necessary. Blogs are mainly not knowledge dissemination tools, but thought adventure activities.

If we try to think through our problems as much as possible, make it as easy as possible for readers to understand, and limit the theme, then the blogs written in this way can also be the shortest.

Whenever you finish writing a blog post, you must think about whether this article is concise enough? Can you explain the problem in shorter words? If the blog post has 4000 words, can it be compressed to 3000 words or less? If you feel confused, then you can return to those two primary questions: who is my article for, and why do I write this article?

For me personally, the ideal word count for a blog post is under 2500 words. If the word count is too much, consider whether the theme is not focused enough, whether it should be explained in separate articles, and whether it is too verbose.

One benefit of keeping it short is that it forces us to control the quality of the article so that it has clear goals, clear structure, sufficient arguments, and clear conclusions. Of course, the incidental result is that it makes reading pleasant for readers.

Formatting

Some blog posts are very long, but there is not a single subtitle throughout, and there is also a lack of necessary transitions or logical connections between paragraphs, which is very bad.

To make the article short and clear, it is necessary to remove unnecessary water and keep the backbone content. To allow readers to read and understand the article quickly, efforts should be made to format the article.

So-called formatting means making the article structure clear in content and form. Before writing, you should plan your outline, clarify the points you want to express, the arguments you want to provide, and the conclusions you will finally propose. A formatted article allows people to quickly grasp the main idea of the article through subtitles at a glance.

Some advanced requirements are to maintain a certain logical connection between each section, and the beginning of each section should summarize the main intention or viewpoint of that section as much as possible. Also, a simple conclusion should be provided in the last section.

Avoid Grammatical Errors

Finally, let’s discuss specific writing issues. Whether writing papers, essays, or blog posts, the most basic virtue is to avoid grammatical errors. Writing reflects the person, and the article is the author’s facade. This goes without saying. An article full of typos and sick sentences is torture for readers and embarrassment for the author.

Although this is a basic common sense, it is ignored by many people. Let me say a few words off-topic. When we get rid of middle school teachers, many people are used to throwing away what middle school teachers taught us, especially Chinese teachers. In fact, as we grow older, we may increasingly understand that many things taught in middle school are what the previous generation believed to be the most useful and valuable things for children. It’s just that the “alienation” of learning and indoctrination without giving reasons caused children’s disgust or rebellion.

In reading comprehension training, we were repeatedly asked to summarize the central idea, structure, arguments, and writing techniques of the article. In composition class, we were repeatedly warned not to have sick sentences and typos. What middle school Chinese teachers taught us is basically these two most important skills: one is how to read, and the other is how to write.

However, many people, once they get to university, put these things aside, thinking that these things are “middle school things”, “things used for exams”, not “things of the free university”, “things really used for scholarship”. This leads many people, even if they become professors and doctoral supervisors, to still be used to looking for chapters and sentences when reading, looking for sentences or paragraphs that touch them, rather than summarizing the central idea, arguments, or evidence of the article. Reading is to find echoes of one’s existing ideas, not to figure out the ideas of the text itself. The resulting writing style is that they don’t pay attention to argumentation and structure at all, and use quotations of famous sayings to replace argumentation. I have discussed both of the above two problems in “How to Do Philosophy”², so I won’t repeat them.

In view of this, I strongly recommend that after writing a blog post, read it carefully at least once. At the basic level, correct basic grammatical errors. At the advanced level, optimize the writing to make the tone smooth and the logic coherent. The ultimate goal is for pleasant reading.

Conclusion

Blogs are mainly not knowledge dissemination tools, but thought exercise tools. The biggest beneficiary of blogging must be the author himself, incidentally having publicity. To this end, first clarify the writing goals, second grasp the writing motivation, and on the basis of the above two most important issues, handle several other secondary issues well.

Perhaps many people find that these discussions are equally applicable to writing in a general sense. Indeed, writing reflects the person, whether for blogs or papers.

Below are some key points:

1. Blogs are mainly not knowledge dissemination tools, but thought exercise tools.
2. The biggest beneficiary of blogs must be the author himself, incidentally benefiting the public.
3. If a blog is well written, it will definitely benefit the public, and good blogs start from one’s own thinking and life, but are oriented towards readers.
4. It’s best to write about issues that you haven’t fully thought through yet, rather than writing about things you completely understand.
5. To maintain motivation, the biggest beneficiary of the blog must be the author himself, incidentally useful to others.
6. To save the author’s and readers’ time, blogs should be as short as possible.
7. Discuss completely, and be sure to make it easy for readers to understand from the current article alone.³
8. Avoiding grammatical errors is the most basic virtue of writing.