Five Ways to an Atrocious Blog Post

With everybody blogging these days you really need to stand out from the crowd. You're probably sick to death of blogs telling you how to write a great blog-post, so here's one telling you how to write an appalling one.

Don’t deliver on the promise of the headline

Nobody likes to feel like they've been led up the garden path, so what better way to alienate your potential readership by luring them in with a killer headline, only to completely undeliver on the implied promise?

Make the post as long as possible

Life moves pretty fast - most people are lucky to get 45 minutes to eat lunch - why not completely cheese them off with a post that takes 50 minutes to read? If people realise they're going to be eighty by the time they finish your masterpiece, they might just move on to tauter, punchier and more energetic posts.

Include an image that is completely unrelated to the post

The web is a visual medium right? So it makes sense to have an image. Creative people will pick an image that resonates, is striking, and adds some kind of value to the content – therefore best to spend as little time as possible on selecting one - here's an even better idea, why not have a picture of a generic random female in the hope your readership will relate? Hands up everybody who considers themselves a generic random female? Quelle surprise - zero – which with any luck is about how many hits you'll get for your post.

Make the image much larger than the content

Nothing to say? Why not just stick a massive image to hide the fact? Nothing will rile your potential follower more than having to root around your blog only to think – I clicked through for that?

Leave an unwarranted question in the hope of generating comments

No matter if your content doesn't inspire ideas and comments – you can always leave a completely unwarranted and patronising question to at least give the impression you want feedback. Make the question as insincere as possible, you don't want readers to think you actually want their answers. An example follows.

How atrocious do you think this blog is, and do you really care?