Great writing — great blogging — is not easy.  It’s an emerging literary art, and the people who are really good at it are creating work that will last beyond their lifetimes.

Unless you want to spend 100 hours a week on your blog, that’s not you.

Good blogging can be learned.  It takes practice, some basic skills, and a little courage.  But once the basics are mastered, good blogging is great business.   So it’s worth a little investment to get the return.  Here are five basic elements of good blogging for great business:

1)  Make sure your post is technically correct.  Spell check it, read it over carefully, ask someone else to read it, too.  A good, clean post makes you look like a sharp professional.  A poorly-worded, badly punctuated mass of verbiage will do quite the opposite;

2)  Keep it short; keep it tight.  Long posts are snoozers.  The blog is a short form.  Your reader wants information, she wants it now, and then she’s on to the next;

3)  Always give them a takeaway:  your readers are coming to your blog for information, enlightenment, entertainment.  Give them some.  Even if you saw a link to something interesting, or you wanted to set their minds at ease about a news article everyone’s talking about.  Just one tidbit that your reader takes away will make her come back for more;

4)  Don’t sell on your blog.  Don’t talk about your products, your pricing, your genuis, your great press or how generally fabulous you are.  There’s a reason people go get a drink during the ad.  Keep them in their seats by offering them substance, insight, something they can use.  If they can use it, then they know you’re the guy to go to when they need to buy the service or product you’re writing about;

5)  Write in plain English.  Avoid fancy words or the appearance of genius.  Just tell us what the heck you mean and sign off.