One of the worst things a headline writer can do is try to demonstrate their cleverness at the expense of clearly piquing the prospective reader’s interest.

It all goes back to “what’s in it for them,” not “how witty can I appear.”

Lots of very interesting stories need to be made compelling before they will be read.

Tips 3-5: links, re-introduce core ideas, and lists?

I don’t understand the logic behind Tip3; four is wrong – you need to put the actual date and not a temporal reference, and 5 seems to provide no guidance.

Your thoughts.

Yes, you’re right, I could’ve put this somewhere in the first paragraph or the title.

By the way, as a general thought, titles that clearly indicate what the post is about don’t have to be boring at all. For example, a title could be “Nude Brad Pitt Caught in Bank Robbery”. While there’s no pun and the title isn’t smart etc. etc. the story itself sounds mighty interesting. (If you’re into Brad Pitt, that is.) Sure, you can title this “What a Pitty: Little Brad Exposed” and get 2 points for smartness, but people may simply ignore your story this way and read up on it somewhere else. The right place to include this kind of humor if it fits, IMO, is somewhere in the post body itself, or if blogging software/ RSS ever supports subtitles, then maybe put it there.

The former advice assumes that if the reader has an interest in the subject matter, then they will naturally read the content if you simply tell them what it is about.  Decades of headline testing shows conclusively that is not the case, and because it’s even noisier in the blogosphere, writing “descriptive” post titles is not enough.  Your opening should be also more enticing than the “inverted pyramid” method advises.

Mark, I’m obviously biased, but I think copywriting is the discipline that business and marketing-oriented bloggers should look to, not journalism. But you knew that.

Brian said, “Bloggers can do anything they want. . . . Many bloggers are not writing news oriented blogs, at least in the journalistic tradition.”

Perhaps bloggers can do anything they want. But if they want to write well, they are going to make use of many many techniques from journalism. Good writing follows rules. Period.

Of course, there is some variation in the rules of each genre. Business writing and news stories and poetry and fiction and religious writing and narrative nonfiction are not exactly the same. But they are certainly the same species of communication–with only minor genetic differences.

Good writing is concise. It is clear. And its puts its meat upfront–even when the meat is on a big hook.

For example, 1. “Write descriptive headlines”. This seems to me just inadequate compare to the headline advice you and Darren routinely show in your headlines. Was your point that writing descriptive headlines is not a call to action?

No, I don’t know much about you at all. I was responding to Danny’s implied assertion that your audience size qualified you to give blog writing advice.

As for the news angle, maybe your title should have specifically mentioned “news” — it would have been more descriptive, just like your first tip advises, right?

A headline makes a promise to the reader, and yours promised unqualified “Good Blog Writing Style” tips. I’m sorry I had to take issue with the post based on what I see as a failure to deliver on that promise, but it’s nothing personal.