I’m noticing a strange trend. It’s in my writing and it’s becoming more noticeable in the writing of many, many bloggers that I read. What am I talking about? Incoherent blog posts.

These have become the bane of my reading online. I am seeing it everywhere. People are posting short thoughts of larger principles, concepts and ideas that could be fantastic blog posts but turn out to be incoherent cyber-babble.

Let me elaborate before I appear to be a stark raving lunatic.

For me a post is simple (not always executed in such a manner but I always try) and consists of basic things to make it a readable blog post.

Cement an idea or concept in your mind and think it through. Pitch it to your reader in the first paragraph and then present more analytical opinion, fact or information that can substantiate your initial premise.

This could all happen in the space of 3 paragraphs, three sentences or three thousand words, but for crying in a bucket be sure to have an opinion, be conclusive, state things, back them up, do a tiny bit of a research and just pop in a link. You don’t have to rehash things that other people might already have explained, it’s the nature of the internet, hyperlink it.

On top of that, we are in South Africa in case you hadn’t notice, there are a fair amount of blogs that are probably going to be writing or have written about (in some manner or another) what you have written about so see what they had to say and reference them, pull their posts to shreds or applaud their logic, whatever you like, but use their writings to draw them in to your writing. This will entice debate and create a buzz around your writing or blog.

Tyler Reed did it a while back when he broke a story about Amatomu launching. It got him attention and launched him on to the local scene. If you hadn’t had screenshots, and opinion, a review of some sorts people would’ve picked up the story, done their own research and bettered the post. It can be done and has been done.

A couple of examples that I’ve found in the last few days:

Today Paul Slade blogged about social media experts carving their way in to the market and in fact, carving the market. I loved the idea of the post, it had so much potential but flaked out in to a very bland post.

Paul pitched a Pros and Cons kind of post but really wasn’t very decisive in the pros or cons. I would’ve loved to see a list, everyone loves lists. The cons were brief and could well have been expanded on to make for a really gripping post that would’ve done well everywhere. Same goes for the pros. My immediate suggestion would have been to get Mike to list his own pros and cons on the subject and then for Paul to develop what he thinks the pros and cons are or could be. Look I’m being picky on this article because I really think it was a good article but could’ve been great with a bit more care and research. I am sure there are lots of resources that Paul could have made use of and linked to.

The next example really set me on this blog post: “How Muti has successfully built a self-sustainable community“.

This blog post had all the potential to be a sterling analysis of what Muti is, was and might become. It could have been an in-depth look at the community of Muti and how it is self-sustaining. Instead I read two examples supplied in the post one of down voting on Muti and the other was the Afrigator/Regator debacle. Neither told me anything about the Muti community or it’s self-sustaining nature directly. By inference, maybe, but no statements.

The first summed up:

Whether Down-Voting should be brought back or not , but surely there seems to coexist amongst the users , a sense that the overall outcome should act in the best possible interests of the community.

The second in a nutshell:

Along came Regator — which in my opinion looks pretty much similar (but not so supreme) to Afrigator. The community was outraged to an extent that seven posts were seating at the top of muti expressing their disgust towards Regator … But as to whom emerged triumphant? Im not entirely sure.

The only mention of the Afrigator/Regator issue in relation to Muti is above. “Seven posts were seating at the top of muti,” and from that I must deduce how Muti has managed to establish a self-sustaining community?

All that I am saying is that when you write a fantastic headline like How Muti has successfully built a self-sustainable community and have a great idea, have the insight to follow it through. Yasser had the right idea, the right concept but lacked follow through. That’s all.

At the end of the day what you want to avoid is people reading your article and leaving your site while mumbling: “Hmmm that could’ve been a great read”.