Blog writing as a science - trying to find the 'happy zone'

Writing for the internet, is a unique form of writing. It should be done in a particular way in order to attract the readers that the author wants to reach. If the writer does not practice and learn the proper structure for his/her message, then it will allow other writers a big advantage in the game of attracting an audience.

One of my favourite games, after golf, is baseball. Loved to play it, and like to watch it.

Ted Williams and John Underwood wrote THE book on where the baseball should be in the strike zone in order to get the best results from the swing of the bat.The analogy of the strike zone vs results and the writing of a blog vs results is a good analogy, I think.

Amazingly enough, though it is the "Bible" of how to be a good hitter, if you talk to many baseball players, few have read the book

The first goal a writer on the internet has is the amount of readers that reach his blog or website. Whether it be looking for a niche of particular readers, or going for the masses, the goal is the same - get readers to read what is written.

I myself would rather not think about the way my writing is done - key words, short and to the point paragraphs, and very concise. Yet , anyone who writes about blogs - "the sweet spot" for the strike zone, so to speak - says this is the way to do it. Why do I argue about this? My answer is that if I follow this advice, I have to think about what I write - the phrasing, the wording, the paragraph structure. This requires work and practice. I will be the first to admit, I would rather put off today, if I can do it tomorrow - in other words, I am lazy!

In Ted Williams book, he talks about going for outside the zone pitches. If the batter does that, the strike zone increases by 37%, giving the pitcher that much more of an area to pitch to. So it is with a writer for articles on the internet - go outside the rules of concise, to the point articles, and the competition gets that extra margin for getting readers by 37%. Once a reader is disappointed with your writing style, it is difficult to get that reader to look again!

In the research for the book,Prioritizing Web Usability, they found that people read only about 10% of what they agreed to read. They found that the average time on a website was 25 seconds, with a reading rate of 250 words per minute.This means that if you do not catch their interest in the first 100 words, you have probably lost them.

This is the problem that I have with scientific research - it is tough to argue with, and it forces me to rethink what I am doing If this writing for the web was a simple thing, everyone would be doing it and making gobs of money - kind of like the dot.com era of the 90's. Writing for hubpages, we know that it is not a simple thing to turn writing into monetization.

The suggestion I have for myself, is to study the principles for writing on the web and stick to them. I write this more for myself the anyone else. If you get something out if this, then it is an added bonus of joy for this writer.

Cheers for now.

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