The Secret to a great blog post

In my humble opinion, the secret to a good blog post, particularly a good travel blog post, comes down to two things.

1. Personality
2. Useful information

Of course, there are a billion other things but these two are at the top of the list.

One thing that should also be on the list is getting straight to the point. We bloggers have unlimited word counts and tend to have a habit of waffling. So with that in mind, I’ll get on with it!

1. Personality

Let’s start with personality and why I think it’s so important.

There are hundreds of thousands of books, magazines, newspapers, articles, TV shows and wesbites that are created by ‘experts’ and ‘professionals’. And I’m not going to lie, most of the content on these is going to be better quality than an average blog post.

(Don’t get mad. I’m not talking to you directly, I’m talking about the blogosphere as a whole.)

These people are being paid to produce the best quality content they can. They often have a large team working on research, design, marking, photography, video and advertising. They’re often specially trained and have lots of experience. As a solo, blogger, you can’t possibly compete.

But what bloggers do have over the big websites is one constant personality.

People like to read about people and while it’s interesting to know what the latest trends are, the ‘top things to do’ and all the historical facts are, there are already a million people producing this content (hello Wikipedia and Lonely Planet).

I like to follow blogs where the blogger has a strong and interesting personality. I’m not always looking for someone exactly the same as myself but someone who can give a unique perspective.

2. Useful information

OK, ‘useful’ is a bit vague but I really want to learn something or feel inspired to do something by a blog.

There are too many blogs out there with wishy-washy generalisations. Hundreds of words that don’t actually say anything.

Blog posts that aren’t useful

An example of a really un-useful blog post was one I read recently called, ‘How to become a morning person’. One of the tips was ‘set your alarm clock’ and ‘have a morning coffee’. Well no shit, Sherlock, why hadn’t I thought of that!?

I was expecting to be transformed from a morning gremlin to a morning goddess by the end of the article and some airhead is telling me to set an alarm clock.

Other un-useful posts include:

• Beauty bloggers reviews of lipsticks where they show one photo of it smeared across the back of their hand. Job done. This would be useful if I wore lipstick on the back of my hand but unfortunately I don’t. Would you review a car by sitting in the boot? Sort it out beauty bloggers.

• Photo of the day posts. You know the type, where it’s just one fairly average photo with a short, non-descript caption. Unless it has a great story to accompany it then save it for Facebook.

• Vague hotel reviews. There’s a reason why TripAdvisor is so popular and that’s because the combination of unbiased reviews provides all the information you need. Unless you’re writing a really in-depth or original review then leave it to TripAdvisor.

A few other things that contribute towards a great blog post include:

3. Entertainment

4. Beautiful photos or videos

5. Great layout

6. It must be well-written

7. Not too much waffle…

8. ….but more than two sentences

What else do you think makes the perfect blog post?