Blogging Bootcamp with Penelope Trunk: Day One

Last week I reached out to Brazeen Careerist and they offered me a pass to attend this week’s Blogging Bootcamp with Penelope Trunk. The first course was last night and I gathered around my computer to learn about how to choose a topic for a blog post.

I was really excited about the chance to learn from Penelope because I am an avid reader of her blog and was not disappointed by what I learned.

The first lesson Penelope taught us was that everyone shows up to your site expecting your content to suck. Think about how many blogs there are on the internet and how many of them actually offer good content. People show up to your site expecting your content to be less than great. This is why you must:

1. Start Strong

The most impressive part of your blog post should be in the first two sentences. She suggested writing a blog post and taking the two best sentences and putting them at the beginning and then re-writing your blog post. Starting strong will keep your readers around longer.

2. Keep it short

No blog post should be over 600 words. She explained that even the op-ed’s in the New York Times are never over 600 words and your blog post is not better than the New York Times so it shouldn’t be longer than 600 words.

3. Have some research

People love research and smart little tidbits. Include one piece of research into your blog post and think of it as a present for your readers.  She suggested using Reddit or Digg to find new and interesting research.

4.Take an opinion

You should not try to compete with news organizations to report new news. The only way to interest your readers is to have a unique opinion about a topic. Take an opinion that is unique to you to keep your readers interested in whatever topic you are covering.

Lastly, Penelope discussed how to structure your content and she really pushes writers to choose one topic and stick to it. As a career writer, Penelope, has been able to link a variety of non-career related topics back to careers. She also discussed the importance of having a good title for your blog post. Not sure what a good title would be? Take a look at the titles AOL and Yahoo use. They have an entire team dedicated to naming their posts.

I will be sharing recaps from Blogging Bootcamp all week. Do you have any questions I should ask Penelope? Do you have any tips or tricks for your own blog?