Reviews are becoming more and more common on the net. People are posting what they though about things, positive or negative. A problem with many reviews is that they are often not as helpful as they could have been, or lack personal opinion.

Here are a few tips to help you write a good review.

Make up your mind

Reviews are used to give the reader an idea of how good an item is or what can be improved. It makes it a lot easier for everyone if you make up your mind and decide if your review is going to be positive or negative.

Be constructive

Instead of using vague criticism, that is hard to solve, be constructive. If you say how specific examples could be improved, it will help make things better in the future.

Comparisons

Many of us will use reviews to make a decision. It would help a lot if reviews made explicit comparisons such as:

Unlike the movie xXx, the newly released xYz has a intriguing storyline about a...

Your point of view

State your point of view and why you have that point of view. To help people understand your point of view, it would be view helpful to state why you might be biased and have the knowledge or opinions that you do.

Research and background information

Show that you know your stuff and have based your opinion on research where possible.

Originality

It does not help anyone if you just repeat what others have said, unless your review is directed at a different audience. Find something original to say and tell people about things that others did not notice.

I have compiled a list of 12 tips I think should be helpful when you are writing articles on the Internet.

1. Use lots of white space. People like to read in 'chunks' of information so have lots of space in your background.

2. Use short paragraphs. Following on from tip 1 keep it short and let your visitor read little pieces of information at a time.

3. Use the occasional exclamation mark (!) to get your readers attention. But please do not over use this as many people now appear to be doing.

4. Ask a question so that your visitor will read on to find the answer. This keeps the readers attention focussed.

5. Put a lot of thought and effort into your heading. If the heading does not get the visitors attention straight away then they will just move on and not even read your article. Try 'The 7 Secrets to Successfully breeding Cane Toads' rather than 'How to breed cane toads'.

6. Use bullets to quickly outline a number of points that may be important in your article. Readers can scan through these.

7. Use numbers if this is appropriate for writing an article. For example the way I am writing this article.

8. Outline the benefits to your reader. They want to know what they can get out of reading the article so portray the benefits of what you are writing about.

9. Do not waffle. This is never more important than on the Internet. People get bored quickly and there are a million other articles they could be reading instead of yours. Get to the point quickly - in the very 1ST line!

10. Target your article. Make it on one topic only and stick to the topic. Do not try to write about 2 or 3 things in the same article. Keep your focus on one topic to keep the interest of your reader.

11. Conclude with a strong message. A message that summarises your article or gets your reader to take further action.

12. Finally, be humble. People admire people who are humble. Do not talk down to your readers.

Learn as much as you can about writing on the Internet. It really is different to writing in the offline world. Read as many articles as you can and see which ones you find easier to read.

Every now and then we all write bad blog posts. It is bound to happen to all blog owners and writers alike. Blog posts can be bad for various reasons:

• Incorrect statements

• Bad grammar or spelling

• Lack the interest factor

When these errors occur, we normal just fix them. If the post is really bad we are left to decide if we want to keep the post on our site. So how do we get ourselves into this situation?

Demand

When you have been posting regularly for sometime your users can begin to expect you to make the same number of posts each week. I am sure that if you have been posting for sometime now, you must have a regular method to check that your posts are up to scratch. What about people trying to build up a new blog?

When you create a new blog, you need lots of new content to attract regular readers and also the search engines. Without this new content all the time your blog does not attract any attention. This leaves you with a great need for new content.

With such a great need for new content people tend to publish incomplete posts on their blog. They hurry, miss out important points and post a bad blog post.

No idea

The other reason that a blog post can go bad is that the writer did not start with a good idea in the first place. When you have nothing to write about you can end up writing about the first thing that comes to your mind. These last moment ideas are often sub-standard and have not been fully thought through.

Improving your blog post

The key to better blog posts is to make sure that you always use good ideas and keep up with demand. Of course this is easier said than done. Here are a few ideas to help you:

Hire staff

If you have the finances to hire other people this may be a good move. Hire people that do the things that you can not do so well or not have time for.

Pay external writers

If you do not have the money to hire staff you may want to consider paying contractors and external writers to write your blog posts for you. If you want to write the blog posts yourself, you may be able to get them to do other things for you to free up some of your time.

Write down ideas

Great ideas are like lightning, they only strike once (That is why you brainstorm right?). When you do have a great idea for another blog post write it down. Have a pen with you all the time so that you can build up a large collection of ideas.

Get a good nights sleep

Make sure that you are getting enough sleep. Without a good nights sleep you can not expect to be able to fully concentrate and stay focused.

Write about whatever is on your mind

You must be thinking of something at the moment. It might be what to have for dinner or where to go on a date. There is nothing wrong with using a blog post to think things though and plan your life.

Organise your schedule

If you still do not have enough time to write, then you need to change you schedule. Decide what is important and what is not. If you are too slow writing blog posts late at night, you might just have to get up early in the morning to write them.

Proof read your blog posts later

Read your blog posts through later, a least a few hours after you have written it. You will be better at picking up mistakes when you have had a break from writing it.