The Knowledge Network’s blogs feature contributions from a wide variety of sources, including the Knowledge Network team’s posts on In the Know; other ICMA blogs from the Center for Management Strategies, Life, Well Run, and more; ICMA Professional Fellows; and local government professionals and enthusiasts from around the world.

Each blogger brings his or her own unique brand of writing and content to the site. This post will tell you what types of blogs generate the most page views and draw the most readers, both on and off the Knowledge Network. It might surprise you to learn that the most popular blogs rely as much on structure as they do on content.

A Numbers Game…Some of our most popular posts on the Knowledge Network have been top 5 or top 10 lists. People like reading rankings. You don’t even have to rank your items; sites like Cracked have become enormously popular posting articles such as 5 Reasons Superhero Movies Are a Bubble That Will Soon Burst because people see a number and know there’s a list. Plus, pictures of puppies never hurt anyone’s page view count.

Listing is good for the following reasons:

1. People like lists. They just do.
2. Providing a blog that is broken up into sections rather than just a block of text allows people to skim for the information they’re seeking.
3. Listing items gives you a narrower focus for what you’re writing, which makes your own research easier and quicker.
4. If time constraint is an issue for a reader, providing the number of items in the post as part of the headline allows the reader to know exactly how much content is contained in the blog.

The Real Skim Shady: People who are researching on the Internet don’t always have the time (or attention span) to read an entire article. Give your readers links, bolded words, italics, and pretty colors often enough so that they can pick out items as they please—but not so often that the customization dilutes the power of your changes.

BEWARE THE MONSTER PARAGRAPH! A teacher in college once pointed out to me that, in an otherwise well-written essay, one of my paragraphs spanned four pages! Okay, they WERE double-spaced, but that’s still pretty extreme. 

Especially in a blog, where the goal is to synthesize information for your reader, you want to avoid huge chunks of uninterrupted text whenever possible. People can be put people to sleep just by looking at giant paragraphs.

And if you must include a big paragraph, try to have some variety in it and include a couple of links along the way. 

Don’t break my heart, break my text: Similar to the previous item, people like short blurbs of text that they can read quickly. If possible, avoid letting any paragraphs run longer than four lines. NEVER have a full page worth of uninterrupted, unformatted text, even if you have multiple paragraphs.

Motivate your devoted readers: The best blog posts have a call to action at the end. On the Knowledge Network, where comments on blogs are enabled, such calls to action can start a discussion or a chain of events that will help to drive your point home—or even add to it.

Looking for Knowledge Network blogging resources? Read some examples of popular Knowledge Network blogs with the most popular blogs of 2013 (through March).

Haven’t written a Knowledge Network blog post yet? Learn how to get started. And take a look through the ICMA Blog Directory or write a new blog post yourself!

The Two Faces of Social Media gives you advice on how to ensure that posts about your personal opinions aren’t mistaken for those of your organization, and it provides examples to show you how it’s done.

The Knowledge Network’s Social Media topic page contains numerous other resources for your social media and blogging needs.

Sources used:

http://weblogs.about.com/od/blogdesign/tp/10BlogDesignElements.htm

http://www.socialquickstarter.com/content/55-blogging_best_practices

http://www.echoditto.com/insights/blogging-best-practices

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20130429113637-15077789-how-to-write-more-successful-blog-posts