My father was Lutheran pastor. Over the years there were many opportunities for him to advise younger, less-experienced pastors on how to do the job well. One piece of his advice will work for you if you blog.

Dad’s advice was: “If you visit your parishioners during the week and talk with them, you’ll never have to wonder what to preach about on Sunday.”

If you talk to your customers and potential customers and people like those who read your blog you’ll never have to wonder what to write about. Have conversations. Take some notes. Then let your natural creativity take hold.

This has worked for me for years. The great majority of my posts were sparked by a conversation the week before. This post is one of them.

Here’s my writing about writing for this week. There were posts on effective and easy to read blog posts, advice from John Pierce, and this week’s selection of posts and articles to give you “The Writing Edge.”

Blog Posts: Tips and Wisdom
Two great sources of short posts are tips from you and wisdom from others. Be careful, though, it’s easy to over-commit.

Advice from the Masters: John Pierce
John Pierce was a great engineer and some of advice to engineers is also great advice for writers.

5/17/13: The Writing Edge for Business Writers
You may not think of yourself as a writer, but you know that writing well can boost your results and your career. Naturally, you want to do better. Here are some recent blog posts and articles that might help. This week I’m pointing you to pieces on building a relationship with your audience, digital book signings, the Ten Commandments of Twitter, and five must-have apps for writers.

You’ll find my writing about leadership and talent development on my Three Star Leadership Blog.

Current Client Projects

I’m writing blog posts for two clients. I’m helping working on a book about what Professor Clay Christensen says could be “more important than disruption.” I’m writing a training manual for a client and coaching two authors through the process of writing and publishing their first book.

If you’re interested in writing a book, hiring someone to write for you, or just improving your own writing, you should read my Zero Draft blog about the writing that makes a business or career grow.

If you want to get a book done or improve your writing, let’s talk about options. My coaching calendar currently has space open.

Information Products

If you’re a boss, you should check out my Working Supervisor’s Support Kit.

Short, quick and easy to write posts are just the thing for those days when you’re wondering what to write about. Two of the best kinds are wisdom posts and tips.

A wisdom post is a short post that shares wisdom from someone else that will help your reader. Quotes are the most common. I do them on this blog as “Advice from the Masters” posts.

A tip is a short post that makes a specific suggestion for your reader. They should be able to use it right away. You can do tips posts two ways.

The most common way is to do them without any defined schedule. There are plenty of writing tips on this blog that you can get to by searching the “Writing Tips” category. I wrote them as they came to me, but there’s no commitment to post on any schedule.

I do tips posts differently on my Three Star Leadership blog. There, I do a series called the “Boss’s Tip of the Day.” That sound like it would be a great traffic builder and easy to do. That’s true.

But beware. If you do a “tip of the day” you’ve committed to posting a tip at least every business day. There are days when I seriously repent doing that. First, try tips posts without committing to a specific schedule or frequency to see how they work for you. Then make the decision about whether to commit to a schedule.

Here’s my writing about writing for this week. There were posts on blog post tips, writing list posts, and this week’s selection of posts and articles to give you “The Writing Edge.”

Writing Blog Posts: 6 Tips
Last week a friend asked for advice on writing blog posts. Here are six tips.

Writing List Posts
Readers love lists posts and they’re some of the easiest posts to write.

5/10/13: The Writing Edge for Business Writers
You may not think of yourself as a writer, but you know that writing well can boost your results and your career. Naturally, you want to do better. Here are some recent blog posts and articles that might help. This week I’m pointing you to pieces on ebook prices, improving your writing, and promoting your book.

You’ll find my writing about leadership and talent development on my Three Star Leadership Blog.

Current Client Projects

I’m writing blog posts for two clients. I’m helping working on a book about what Professor Clay Christensen says could be “more important than disruption.” I’m writing a training manual for a client and coaching two authors through the process of writing and publishing their first book.

If you’re interested in writing a book, hiring someone to write for you, or just improving your own writing, you should read my Zero Draft blog about the writing that makes a business or career grow.

If you want to get a book done or improve your writing, let’s talk about options. My coaching calendar currently has space open.

Information Products

If you’re a boss, you should check out my Working Supervisor’s Support Kit.

Readers love list posts. That’s good. What’s even better is that list posts are some of the easiest posts to write.

Just combine a number with whatever it is you’re writing about. You can do a simple, numbered list or a list of key points that you flesh out in detail. Here are some examples using posts I’ve done on this blog.

6 Steps to Becoming a Good Writer

7 things you should know if you’re writing your first book

5 tips for using links wisely

3 Ways Outlines don’t Work

Three Kinds of Testimonials

5 Reasons Why People don’t Finish that Book

Last week I was chatting with a friend who’s going to start blogging. She’s never written blog posts before, so she asked me for some tips on how to write good ones. Here are six tips that I gave her.

Write as if you’re talking to a single person. Blogs should be conversational and the best way to make that happen is to write to a single person. I don’t mean a demographic description or an imaginary person. Write as if you’re talking to someone you know who is or would be an ideal customer.

All first drafts are crap. Writers who produce good posts consistently revise their first drafts. Plan for three drafts at a minimum.

Letting the post rest adds perspective. Try to schedule so you don’t have to publish right away. If you let your post rest for a few hours or a few days, you’ll see ways to improve it.

Reading your post aloud lets your mouth catch things your brain will miss. As William Zinsser told us: “People read with their ears, whether they know it or not.” That means you should do some of your writing with your voice.

Spell and grammar check before you publish. Trust me, this will save you from some awful embarrassment.

You won’t get good all at once. Learning to write good blog posts, like learning anything else worthwhile, takes time. Don’t expect miracles. Do expect improvement.

Here’s my writing about writing for this week. There were posts on grabbing your blog reader’s attention, advice from William Zinsser, and this week’s selection of posts and articles to give you “The Writing Edge.”

Blog Writing: Get going!
After the headline, you’ve only got a few seconds to grab your reader’s attention. Don’t waste it on preliminaries.

Advice from the Masters: William Zinsser
William Zinsser is the writing coach I aspire to be.

5/3/13: The Writing Edge for Business Writers
You may not think of yourself as a writer, but you know that writing well can boost your results and your career. Naturally, you want to do better. Here are some recent blog posts and articles that might help. This week I’m pointing you to pieces on landing book endorsements, finding your writing voice, how Jeff Goins writes, and blogging tips from fourteen bloggers.

You’ll find my writing about leadership and talent development on my Three Star Leadership Blog.

Current Client Projects

I’m writing blog posts for two clients. I’m helping working on a book about what Professor Clay Christensen says could be “more important than disruption.” I’m writing a training manual for a client and coaching two authors through the process of writing and publishing their first book.

If you’re interested in writing a book, hiring someone to write for you, or just improving your own writing, you should read my Zero Draft blog about the writing that makes a business or career grow.

If you want to get a book done or improve your writing, let’s talk about options. My coaching calendar currently has space open.

Information Products

If you’re a boss, you should check out my Working Supervisor’s Support Kit.

You’re a businessperson. You may not think of yourself as a writer, but you know that writing well can boost your results and your career. Naturally, you want to do better. Here are some recent blog posts and articles that might help.

This week I’m pointing you to pieces on landing book endorsements, finding your writing voice, how Jeff Goins writes, and blogging tips from fourteen bloggers.

From Dana Lynn Smith: 8-Step Plan for Landing Book Promotion Endorsements
“Endorsements are recommendations from authors, experts or celebrities, in other words people whose opinion can influence sales of your book. These are the quotes you typically see printed on the covers and inside of books and they are sometimes referred to as /blurbs.’”

From Jeff Bullas: 7 Tips to Finding “Your” Writing Voice
“I don’t have a process or a magic potion to finding a writing voice or an expression formula but let’s have a look at what happens when you start to create, write and express yourself in an online world.”

From Kelton Reid: Here’s How Jeff Goins Writes
“Thankfully there are trailblazers — allies that arrive in times of uncertainty — our fellow writers and teachers who offer their wisdom, courage, and assistance. Jeff Goins is one of those guides, an author, award-winning blogger, and coach, who stopped by The Writer Files to share some of his battle-tested stories from his own journey as a writer.”

From ProBlogger: Do You Know These Time Saving Blogging Tips?
“When I asked these 14 bloggers about their routines I also asked if they had any tips for other busy bloggers. I’m glad I did because collectively they give some great insight below.”

Sources I Check Regularly

I find the posts and articles that I share with you on The Writer’s Edge in many places. But there are a few that provide insightful pieces again and again. Here they are.

The CopyBlogger Blog

Problogger

Digital Book World

Tools of Change for Publishing

jeffbullas.com

Becky Robinson’s Weaving Influence

“First the Earth cooled. And then the dinosaurs came, but they got too big and fat, so they all died and they turned into oil.”

Do your blog posts start out like that line from Airplane II?

You’ve only got a few seconds to grab your reader’s attention before he or she clicks off to something else. Don’t waste that time.

Lead with a quote that gets them thinking.

Lure them in with a question.

Make them laugh.

Make a provocative statement they may want to dispute.

Just don’t bore them. Get to your message quickly and powerfully.

Here’s my writing about writing for this week. There were posts on why writing a book should be a great learning experience, why you shouldn’t wait for perfection, and this week’s selection of posts and articles to give you “The Writing Edge.”

Writing a book: The Great Learning Experience
Writing a book is hard work. It should also be a tremendous learning experience.

Writing tip: Don’t wait for perfection
People won’t be impressed with the book or blog post you haven’t published. So go for excellence, not perfection.

4/12/13: The Writing Edge for Business Writers
Writing well gives you an edge in business and in life. Here are some posts and articles that will help you write better. This week I’m pointing you to pieces on making more time for writing, using relationship marketing to promote your book, and Chris Brogan on what he’s learned from 15 years of blogging.

You’ll find my writing about leadership and talent development on my Three Star Leadership Blog.

Current Client Projects

I’m writing blog posts for two clients. I’m helping working on a book about what Professor Clay Christensen says could be “more important than disruption.” I’m writing a training manual and coaching two other authors through the process of writing and publishing their first book.

If you’re interested in writing a book, hiring someone to write for you, or just improving your own writing, you should read my Zero Draft blog about the writing that makes a business or career grow.

If you want to get a book done or improve your writing, let’s talk about options. My coaching calendar currently has space open.

Information Products

If you’re a boss, you should check out my Working Supervisor’s Support Kit.

© 2013 Wally Bock's Zero Draft Suffusion theme by Sayontan Sinha

Warning: Unknown: open(/var/chroot/home/content/65/5091665/tmp/sess_1iahnjs3hr55cnrroioff4eed0, O_RDWR) failed: No such file or directory (2) in Unknown on line 0

Warning: Unknown: Failed to write session data (files). Please verify that the current setting of session.save_path is correct () in Unknown on line 0