Think of the essays you wrote as you attended grade school or a university course. Consider what your teachers told you as they outlined the components and purpose of an essay. Trace how you felt as you wrote your essay and submitted it for revision.
What do you remember?
Perhaps you recalled the need to argue for a point. Maybe you found the myriad paragraphs you wrote intimidating, whether you had too many or too few. Perchance you dreaded the red blots of ink that would populate your essay after you submitted it.
Now, let’s blot out those feelings. You’re not in school anymore. You’re not going to be grilled.
Instead, we’re going to introduce you to the blog post, a great way to express who you and your company are. We used the essay analogy because a blog post is like an essay in many ways. Blog posts comprise paragraphs, present a logical flow, and convince an audience to take action regarding a topic.
Even so, writing a blog is different from writing a research manuscript, a thesis, or a school essay. For one, more than a handful of people will read it once it’s published. Blogs also exist for specific audiences that may extend beyond what you originally intended. Last and most importantly, blogs are formatted differently.
For this blog, we will show how you can take liberties when writing a blog post. The key, as you will see below, is to write in a way that suits your audience best.
The components of a blog post
Much like the essays you wrote growing up, a blog post comprises strings of sentences and blocks of paragraphs that form a cohesive story. However, unlike an essay, a blog post has several unique features you can leverage to bring out your creative side. Let’s look at some of these features below:
- Short paragraphs: Remember how your school teachers said that you should keep your paragraphs five sentences long at most? Remember how your professor told you to scrap that rule? Well, your schoolteachers were right for the most part. Readers want shorter paragraphs. It’s easier to read.
- No run-on sentences: While this rule is true with academic writing too, shorter sentences flow better. It maintain your readers’ attention. And you ramble less. You won’t accomplish any of this with run-on sentences. As a general rule, vary your sentence structure, but keep your sentences less than 25 words long.
- A compelling headline: If you want readers to click on your post, you must have a headline that draws them in. A typical university essay has a dry title page, something like “The importance of writing blog articles for your business.” You’re not constrained by anyone here! You can make your title anything you wish so long as it resonates with your intended audience.
- Bullet points: Your university professor will probably eviscerate you for using bullets in your essay. Not so with blog posts! Bullet points provide an easy way to list things in an article, like what I’m doing now. They place components of a big idea into smaller, digestible chunks that your readers can access easily. In turn, your readers will spend more time on your site.
- Font styling: Adding bold, italics, or underlines to a font is called a typographical emphasis. You can use it to highlight key terms like this, add bold points as headings like this, or underline hyperlinks like this. Each emphasis can point your readers to the most important takeaways of your article and keep them on your site.
- Internal links: How long your readers stay on your site is a key metric of how successful your blog post is. To encourage readers to stay on your site, you’ll need to add internal links, such as this one that shows you how well my approach to writing blog articles is! It may feel like showing off, but you’re just demonstrating what you can do. Nothing more, nothing less.
- A call to action: A good blog article has a directive. A way for the reader to take action from what they learned from your article. That’s where the call to action comes in. At the end of the article, encourage your reader to do something. You can use a banner at the bottom that directs your readers to a Contact Us page. You can supply internal links that lead to other blog articles. You could also add a call to subscribe to your newsletter.
But what about SEO?
As you’ve researched about blog writing, I imagine you’ve encountered a term called search engine optimization, or SEO. SEO is important to consider when writing a blog post, acting as another point of distinction compared with writing an essay. Some of the points I brought up above help with SEO, but such a topic needs a separate blog post. That’s because SEO is much more than the blog posts you write. It also covers the other pages you host on your website, for one. As such, I will cover SEO in more detail on a future post.
Things to note when writing a life sciences blog post
Writing a blog for the life sciences isn’t the same as writing a blog in other industries. Most importantly, you’re likely going to target scientists and business professionals with advanced degrees and substantial business experience. Marketing to them with blogs will come with unique challenges that stem from balancing skepticism with imagination. Let’s delve into some of these facets in greater detail:
- Addressing skepticism: Scientists are naturally more skeptical than other readers. Any claim you make will require evidence to back it up. Your evidence can’t be just any reference, however. You will need to read through the literature, select the most accurate references, and avoid sensationalist claims. Any technical mistake you make in your copy will hurt your reputation.
- Inspiring imagination: Scientists are naturally curious and creative. That’s how they can learn more about the world we live in. This can sound paradoxical, but it stems from their desire to realize their innovations reproducibly and safely.
- Translating science: This component is even more important than the other factors listed above. The subject matters you’re writing on are highly esoteric. This is not a point of shame; it just comes with the territory. It just means that despite how important your work is, the general public, including the scientists, may not fully understand that. That’s why you need to write in a tone and style that encourages understanding.
Writing a blog for scientists is a delicate balancing act. You need to spend time distinguishing fact from fiction, truth from falsehood, and substantiation from exaggeration. And you need to do all of it while being engaging and inspiring. Being able to strike this balance ensures that scientists and other life science experts are willing to work with your new technologies and discoveries.
How GenoWrite writes blogs that inspire research
GenoWrite has an established track record for writing blog articles that speak to life science professionals and inspire action. We understand the work that goes into preparing and formatting a blog and keeping readers as engaged as possible. And we have written for diverse audiences, from scientists to the general public and investor teams. Put together, when you work with us, you will receive writing that engages with readers and sparks imagination. As you gain traction on your online presence through blogs, you will soon find your lead generation boosted and your sales numbers elevated.
