Fast Company excerpted a chapter from a new book, The Art of Doing: How Superachievers Do What They Do and How They Do It So Well, by Camille Sweeney and Josh Gosfield. The chapter is an interview with me about what I’ve learned so far about writing for a blog.
5. Don’t waste people’s time. People are busy. They resent it when you waste their time. When the reader comes to our site, they’re not going to land on a post that says, “This is amazing,” and forces you to click on the link. Our posts explain what’s important about what you’re reading and why. It may be tempting to write cute headlines but the most important function of a headline is to sum up what the post is about. If you’ve developed a trust with your readers that they’ll get good value for the time they invest in visiting your site, they’ll be back.
Camille and Josh interviewed a bunch of other people for the book, including: Laura Linney (How to act), Cesar Millan (How to be a dog whisperer), Ken Jennings (How to be a game show champion), Alec Baldwin and Robert Carlock (How to be funny on TV), Will Shortz (How to create a mind-bending crossword puzzle), Jill Tarter (How to find extraterrestrial life), Ed Rosenthal (How to grow killer weed), Stephen Dubner (How to write a runaway bestseller). I’m interviewing Camille and Josh about The Art of Doing next week on Gweek.
10 Tips From Boing Boing on making online content sing | Buy The Art of Doing