You can learn a lot from a good example. That’s why every week I highlight one great business blog. This week, it’s Ed Batista’s blog. It’s one of those blogs where I always learn something and that “something” grows out of Ed’s thoughtful way of examining his experience. On his blog, Ed describes himself this way.
“I’m an executive coach, a change management consultant, and a Leadership Coach at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.”
Actually, those are simply the tips of three different icebergs and they don’t even reference a background that gives Ed the rich experience base to be good at those three things. For more, you can read his bio page, since this post is about his blog per se.
I advise most bloggers to keep a regular schedule and write relatively short posts. Ed does neither of those things. Instead, he offers a great example of how to produce long posts that people want to read all of and more of. There are two keys.
If you’re going to write long posts, they’d better be good. Ed does that. He draws on his own experience and uses concrete examples. He uses sub-heads to let you scan the post if you need to. The reasoning is lucid and transparent and the writing is clean. He often shares other resources.
If you’re going to write long posts, you’d better get good at capturing a reader’s attention. Since many of us use blog readers, you must have a compelling headline and a good opening or teaser paragraph. Ed does that. As you review his posts, pay special attention to the headlines and the opening paragraph.
There’s one more thing to watch for. Ed does a superb job on posts that summarize someone else’s work. Those posts are very helpful to readers like me, but hardly anyone does them well. Ed does them well.
Here are some representative posts from the last year or so. Read them with an eye toward what you can learn from Ed Batista’s example.
Hammering Screws (Bad Coaching)
Don’t Build a Castle; Put Up 1,000 Tents
Antonio Damasio on Emotion and Reason
Read, enjoy, and learn.
Was that helpful? If it was you may want to check the complete list of blogs I’ve reviewed.