Effective political blogging includes a number of features. While not all of these are included in every blogging article, you will find them liberally used by the best of the best in political blogging circles. This article will provide the very basic elements to effective political blogging.
The Elements
Title. The title is crucial to effective blogging or writing of anykind. It is the first thing the public sees, and a great many will decide whether or not to read further depending on what that title says.
Make is Short, Make it Simple! Make it Hot!
Four to seven words is ample for almost any political blogging article. Research has shown that web site surfers are scanners. They scan a page until their eyes and brain click on some combination of words that piques their interest. The normal brain process only a few words in a single scan. Therefore, Make it Short.
For the same reason, brain scanning capacity, you want to make the title Simple! Simple and easily recognizable words easy to process without digging deep into old memory for definitions, are most likely to be processed in a scan of web site page. Therefore, Make it SImple.
Make a title hot by making it current. This week the word Georgia no longer refers to a Southern State next to Alabama or Mississippi, but, to an Eastern European nation which has been invaded yet again, by Russians. Similarly, if the public is all in a tither over education, the economy, or Iraq, those are words that will make you title HOT!
Caution. Avoid tricks. Tricksters mislead the public by including Hot Words in their titles which have little or nothing to do with the content of their actual article. This kind of trick, may get your article a lot of scans, but, in the long run, will ruin your potential for creating a following of regular readers.
Introductory Paragraph. Your opening paragraph, on a majority of blogs and web sites, is all the reader sees on a political blog site main page. To read the complete article, the reader typically has to click on a link to the full page article.
Like the Title, this introductory paragraph needs to grab the readers interest and hopefully, leave them wanting to read more. Generally, you will want to use the same rules as for a Title. Short, simple, and hot. But, you also want to give careful attention in this paragraph to which readers this article will be of interest to, and appeal to them in these few sentences.
One of the hardest things for beginning writers to master is how to target an audience. Which, of course, requires first that one define their audience. This may at first appear to be an academic exercise, but, it is far more real world based that one would normally suspect. If you don't define your audience and their needs and wants, you can't possibly fulfill those needs and wants in the body of your article.
Always consider your audiences education and reading level. It is a commonly found sin amongst political bloggers to fail to anticipate the education and reading level of their audience. The use of Wa. D.C. insider acronyms like CBO and GAO, will gloss over a reader's eyes in a heartbeat if those acronyms are not immediately spelled out and given meaning to the reader who may not be familiar with them. Metaphors and analogies must also be carefully selected for commonplace understanding amongst readers. If in doubt, spell it out.
Partisan viewpoint. Let readers know up front whether this article is liberally biased, conservatively biased, or relatively independent of bias. This harkens back to trickster-ism. Fooling your readers into thinking your article is independent oriented only to have them discover that you are pedaling a far right or left agenda, will not grow your readership. If you are writing for Liberal views, then write for Liberals and don't worry about the independents and conservatives. They will peek in on occasion just to keep tabs on the opposition, especially if your readers are quoting your articles as ammunition. Be honest. It is the best policy in the long run.
Links and Sources. Effective political bloggers avoid writing books and doctoral theses through the small L liberal use of hyperlinks to sources where readers can both verify and pursue more in depth information or knowledge on your topic if they are interested. Where and whenever possible, research the internet for web sites providing deeper detail or more authoritative references, and hyperlink to those sources in your article. (A hyperlink is those few words of a different color in a paragraph which readers may click on to go to the source of the information for those words of a different color. (My apologies to the Wizard of Oz.)
Summary Paragraph. If your article takes readers on a twisting path to your conclusions, or provides a lot of details to get there, the summary paragraph is extremely important. Readers can forget what the point of the article was by the time they get to the end of the details.
A good, short, summary paragraph, reminds readers of the point being made, and gives them a yardstick by which they may applaud how well you supported and reached the conclusions you did. It also provides the reader the what they will take away with them when they go to another blog and write, "You know, So and So over at PoliWatch has this great article that proves 'This Gospel' is the real truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
It is the "This Gospel" which they will take with them and spread around, and "This Gospel" is what you provide them in the summary paragraph. When it comes to web surfers, it is often a case of LIFO (last in, first out). What they read last in your article, is most likely what they will write about first on another blog in spreading the gospel according to YOU.
Incidentals. The blog or web site software takes care of the rest, your name, web site address (URL), date, etc., so that you the blogger, can concentrate on making your point and influencing readers in high and low places to get off their high horse, or, come up to the level of pre-human in their political thinking.
Forgive me for stating the obvious here, but it bears infinite repeating. Spelling and grammar! If your writing is a puzzle, the pieces are missing. 'Nuff Said !
So, in summary, the elements are Title, Intro, Sources, and Summary.
Good tips. And pictures are worth a thousand words.
PwMgr, I want to thank you for these tips and tricks. I have been working to lern a lot of this stuff, and searched around but, a lot of what I read just didn't make sense after the first parapraph or so. Your instructions and examples have been a real time saver and made this stuff simple enough for even me to understand. Thumbs up mgr. I voted a star on both items that helped me.