12 Tips for Interesting Blogs

12 Tips for Interesting Blogs

Tom Vander Ark Tom Vander Ark

Tom Vander Ark

Building the future of learning

发布日期: 2017年5月12日
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Sometimes you have so much to say and sometimes…well, not so much. Our team has collected 13 tips for creating interesting and useful blog content.

1. Keep track of good questions. When a customer or colleague asks a good question, turn it into a prompt, start a doc and log it in a content pipeline so you remember them. Recent popular Getting Smart posts that began this way include:

2. Clip cool stuff (and pin it or email or text it to yourself ) and then turn it into prompt. Reading a great article or listening to a podcast with a topic you’ve never written about? Grab a few lines that will spur your thinking and start from there. Examples of recent posts where this happened include:

3. Do a self check–ask yourself “what do I believe right now?” That’s how Why I’m Post Policy and Pro-Innovation was created.

4. Our favorite tip is to visit schools and write about them (check out the many school visit reports our team has created). Having an in person experience with a place makes writing content about it much easier and passionate.

5. Sign up for an ambitious writing project (like a book or paper) and turn chunks into blog prompts and log them in your pipeline. That’s where the blogs Conspiracy of 10 Lessons and Innovations Drive Postsecondary Learning and Embedding SEL Across the Curriculum came from.

6. Take a long email you’ve sent to a colleague or peer about an interesting topic and turn it into a blog. Create a really cool presentation for a conference? Use that information to inspire a blog post. You can even screenshot a few of the slides to add a visual component to your text.

7. Snap a photo (or pictures, pictures, pictures). See something cool happening in the classroom or world? Use that as inspiration for a blog, and/or find a few photos that will help enhance what you’ve written.

8. Read three blog posts on a subject. What’s something they are all missing out on in terms important aspects of the conversation? Use that information as the basis for a blog post.

9. Use the “notes” section on your phone to write “in the moment.” Often you could complete the basic frame (or at least key points) for a blog while something inspiring is happening.

10. Have a clear goal in mind for the post. Make sure your intro, body and conclusion contribute to your goal in a way that makes the audience think that what you’re talking about matters, and that you know what you’re talking about.

11. Set the bar low. This may seem odd but it’s important to cut yourself some slack and just get to a publishable point. Blogs don't have to be long and won’t always be perfect. Stop fretting, post it and invite conversation around your post. Ask readers to share what you missed or what they might add.

12. Think of your blog in layers. Imagine a reader has only 12 seconds to read a blog–could they get 50% of the information simply by scanning headers and bullets? Now think of the reader who is deeply invested and intrigued by the topic: have you given them enough information and ample links to support their continued education of the topic?

Are you and/or your team interested in diving deeper into learning how to blog? We can help! Getting Smart can work with you through an interactive webinar on a personalized blogging workshop sharing blogging best practices. To learn more, contact Megan Mead at [email protected].

For more, see:


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