How Not to Blog: A Case Study of a Post

I was planning to write about the release of WordPress version 4.0 this week, but since that didn’t happen I’m going to post something I’ve never approached before.

I’m going to rip apart someone else’s post.

Not that I have anything against the company that posted this load of crap. I’m just using it as an example of how not to blog.

This post does almost everything wrong. All the advice you’ve heard about blogging, the author has blatantly ignored. Therefore, it makes a perfect example of how not to blog.

Not to mention the irony of its content, purporting as it does to advise readers on how to blog with WordPress. And the not taking it’s own “Tips” part made me say, “wow.”

What’s wrong with this post? Let me count the ways.

Repetitive Images

It’s great the post has a Featured image and an Inserted image, but to use the same for both is simply lazy. Especially when the “Tips” the story contains are screaming for illustration. How hard is it to provide screenshots?

No Header Tags

Not only is this a bad SEO move, it make the reading hard. Readers who want tips on WordPress want to scan the information, not plow through the painful writing. Skipping headers is a sure way to make visitors click the Back button.

Repetitive Writing

This post is like a drunk uncle, disorganized in its thinking and swinging back to the same topic elaborated upon three paragraphs before. Another reason to sort information with headers. Also, when the post appears as cut-and-pasted as this one there is always a suspicion of plagiarism.

No Links

Forgoing links is the biggest sin that can be made online as it negates the whole purpose of the Internet. Without links, we would have a book, not a Web. How hard is it to place an internal link? If you want to know how not to blog, this is it.

No Creation Date

Sure, a topic and content may be evergreen, but since technology changes so fast, I think dates are damned important. I don’t want to take advice on something that might have become obsolete or irrelevant since the post was published.

No Author Bio

‘Who writes this stuff’ is always my refrain when I read or hear crappy writing. Even in the best post I want to know if the author is the company principal, a communications director or a contractor. Just so I know who’s talking to me. And, I want to see their face. Is that too much to ask?

No Categories or Tags

And what’s with the lack of category and any subject tags? Does the author not want us to click for more information to read other posts on the site. Bad form.

I’m not even going to go into the lameness of the title, since it did make me click on it, but only because it mentioned WordPress. Here’s How to Blog the Right Way.

So, other than the pictures, the writing, and the lack of headers, date, author, category and tags, this post is fine. It’s a perfect example of how not to blog, and for that reason, it served a purpose.

What do you think? Was I too hard on this blogger? How do you feel about crappy posts?

How Not to Blog: A Case Study of a Post