Free Blogging Advice: Writing is hard. And easy. The goal of the Free Blogging Advice (FBA) series of short articles is to provide some free advice on… blogging! All you have to add is some time and effort. And love. Lots of love.
FBA Episodes
- FBA Episode 1: The beginning
- FBA Episode 2: What to write about
- FBA Episode 3: Develop your story
- FBA Episode 4: For whom are you writing?
Now that we have decided to start writing (see previous episodes), we need to develop the story of our site.
Story: The narrative that describes the intent of your blog. The story will explain to the visitor why he or she is here, what they should expect to read and what the blog will offer them.
You need to publish the story in your About page. In that way you will establish the identity of your site for anyone to see.
But what should a story look like? First of all it needs to be simple. If you do not have it clear in your head then your readers will be confused as well (and most probably will not come back to you site).
Secondly, it needs to be emotional. Emotions is what drive the world around and you need to invest in the emotions of your readers to capture their interest.
Last but not least, your story needs to be a… story! What I mean by this is that you need to convey your message to your readers through an actual story, i.e. an anecdote, a tale that will have a hero, a problem that her or she needs to overcome, a climax and a resolution. This is easier said than done. But you need the story element in order to reach to your readers with a compelling and attractive way. Just stating what your site is about is not enough. If you just just wrote down the goal of your site like a corporate statement then it would look like a… corporate statement. You need more than that to engage with the visitor of your blog.
Stories captivated us when we were children. And still do. Everyone likes a good story. It is more probable to remember something that you heard in a story than something you just read.
As an example you can read the story of Harmonia Philosophica here. It is a short one, as a story for a site must be. And it tries to convey the message of this site, i.e. that being irrational and non-thinking is the best way to think.
Whether you like it or not is another story…
To be continued…
