I have been saying it for years: there is still a place for blogs. Even while many new forms of communication have come our way in the past 10 or 15 years, and while each of them may have its own place in the media ecosystem, none can exactly duplicate the unique strengths of blogging. A few years ago I shared some Random, Granular Tips for Bloggers that were meant to help bloggers grow in their craft. Today I am offering an additional list of tips that I hope will accomplish the same goal.

Don’t botch the opening lines. The first line or two of any article are the most important because they are the ones that will determine whether people will continue to read or just go on to the next piece of content begging for their attention. A common but ineffective way to begin an article is with something like, “This is part two of a series on…” or “in the last part of this series I covered…” Not only are those uninteresting sentences, but they immediately tell readers that unless they have already read the previous articles, they won’t get much from this one. It is far better to begin with words that stand well on their own and will draw in new readers. After you’ve got them interested you can remind them of the previous articles. (Like in a sermon—first give a great introduction, and then remind people where you’re at in the series.)
Don’t botch your title. In a similar vein, make sure your title is strong—not clickbait or misleading, but also not drab and ineffective. One way you can go wrong is to put something like “Part One” or “Part Two” in your title. There is nothing wrong with writing a multi-part series, but by advertising it as such you may drive off people who haven’t read previous entries or who may not want to read the first part of a series when they don’t know when or if they will read the follow-ups. Make the article strong enough to stand on its own and let people know it is a series after you’ve proven that it will be worth their while to invest the time and effort in reading it. (Further to this, remember when you write a series to go back to earlier entries to add some way to navigate from one to the next. Also, remember that you can change titles later on to add “Part One,” etc.)
Consider not using the words “Book Review” in your title. I have covered this one before, but want to circle back to it. I suppose it relates to what I have already covered, but I will say it nonetheless. In general, I recommend avoiding explicitly titling an article as a book review. There are exceptions, of course, if the book is very well-known and the kind people are already interested in or if you are writing for a more academic audience. But as I explained previously, in most cases, a headline that beings with “Book Review:” is not going to make much of an impact. Consider, for example, two options for Tara Isabella Burton’s look at the rise of the “Nones” and how they are creating and adopting new forms of spirituality. The first might be “Book Review: Strange Rites” and the second, using the book’s subtitle, “New Religions for a Godless World.” I rather suspect the second option will prove more effective. (A book’s subtitle often makes a great title for the review since where a title is often clever, a subtitle is usually far more descriptive.)
Make sure readers can subscribe via email. Though many bloggers use RSS readers to subscribe to blogs, the average reader does not. If they want to be notified of your new material it is likely they will want to do so via email. For this reason it makes sense to have some kind of an email list that will push your new content to subscribers. For smaller lists and less frequent writers you may want to do this manually; for larger lists and more frequent writers you may want to automate this. Services like Feedblitz will do this for you.
Understand the medium. Blogs are (generally) not an academic medium. Neither are they formally published books. While you should obviously never plagiarize, neither does it make the most of the medium to cite sources as if you have written a term paper. The better approach may be to relate to sources in a similar way as a sermon, explicitly mentioning when you are directly quoting another person or leaning substantially on their work. But otherwise I think the medium permits a more casual relationship to citations, perhaps by simply noting who you have drawn from or been inspired by at the end of your article. In most cases, it is unnecessarily distracting to fill an article with this [1] kind [2] of [3] citation. For good or ill, most blogging platforms just haven’t developed good ways of creating helpful citations.
Make the ordered list your last resort rather than your default. I sometimes joke that there’s no problem a blogger can’t solve with 5 numbered points (and no problem he/she can solve without). The point is that the ordered list (or listicle) has long been a mainstay of blogging. Yet, in my view, it is rarely the best way to communicate. Listicles were created to be shareable, not to be helpful or edifying. So though there really are times to use them, there are often superior ways to package up your ideas. This is especially true when dealing with difficult, emotional, or controversial topics. So make that format your last resort rather than your default. You’ll become a better writer for it.
Mix content creation and curation. Most bloggers set out to create content. Well and good. But there is also a lot of value in curating content—pointing people to articles, videos, podcasts and so on that exist on other sites. While I’m sure there is a “business case” to be made for this, the best reason is simply to recognize and honor others for their hard work. Learn to spread your focus from just your site to others.
And finally, let me loop back to a key tip I shared last time: Ignore most of the “rules” for blogging. There are lots of sites (and even books) about how to start a successful blog and how to gain a large audience. But what you need to keep in mind is that most of these resources will teach you how to create a blog that primarily benefits you. They will teach you the rules that will gain an audience but not necessarily benefit that audience. They’ll teach you to create material that is viral but not necessarily edifying. As Christians, our main concern should always be loving others and doing what is beneficial to them. You may find the best way to do this is to toss many of the “rules.”

May the Lord be with you and bless you on this fine day.
(Yesterday on the blog: One of the Most Urgent Biblical Commands for Our Day)

Randy Alcorn considers the source of human rights and explains why it is so important that we get the matter correct.

John Benton explains how some of the alarming trends we see within the church can be explained by society’s obsession with individualism.

“How many people does it take to move the hand of God? I believe the answer is one. Anyone extra is icing on the cake.” This matters when it comes to prayer during times of sorrow or distress.

“While we cannot single-handedly be aware of every person and every need in the world, it should be a great encouragement to us to know that God is! And while God is certainly not limited to our meager gift-drops to supply the ocean of worldwide needs, he is able to take our individual, sack-lunch gifts and multiply them into a collective provision for the physically and spiritually hungry and weak and poor.”

This video from SBTS nicely complements the previous article.

Here are some encouraging thoughts for Christians who have the privilege of teaching children.

We need to have confidence that he is doing what’s right and best according to his inscrutable wisdom, that he is doing what most conforms his people to the image of his Son and what most honors and glorifies his holy name. We need to depend upon it, bank all we’ve got on it, go all-in on it.

Real freedom is the deep-seated confidence that God really will provide everything we need. The person who believes this is the freest of all persons on earth, because no matter what situation he finds himself in, he has nothing to fear.
—Jon Bloom

What does it mean to have faith? What does it mean to believe in God’s promises? What does it mean to have confidence that God is who he says he is and that God will do what he says he will do? What is the nature of that faith, that belief, that confidence?

There are times during this long and wearying pilgrimage when we undergo severe tests of our faith—tests that are often related to our losses and bereavements. Even if we are never tempted to cast off all allegiance to Christ or to throw away all desire to follow in his ways, we may still be challenged to believe—or not believe—that what God says is true—true about life and death, true about earth and heaven, true about time and eternity. We may face the kind of challenge that calls us to live in one way if we believe and to live in another if we do not.
There are days when we believe as an instinct, as the natural impulse of the heart and mind. In such days we easily and immediately regard it as unassailably true that heaven is real, that Providence is kind, that God is working all things for good, that even our deepest griefs will someday prove to be light and momentary afflictions when measured against an eternal weight of glory.
But then there are days when we believe as a decision, as an act of the will. While some days the most instinctual words out of our mouths are confident, other days they are hesitant. Some days we have all the boldness of Peter and other days all the hesitation of Thomas. On some days we proclaim, “I believe” but on others we plead, “please help my unbelief.” Or perhaps the best we can do is pose our faith as a question, a kind of self-interrogation: “I do believe, right?”
While we prefer the former days, we have to learn to embrace the latter, to learn that faith is not passive but active, not always an instinct of the heart but often an act of the will—and to learn that faith is no less real when it comes as a decision rather than a compulsion. Faith is often choosing to believe in the face of grief, the face of adversity, the face even of doubt. Faith is not less than intellectual, but is certainly far more: it is grasping and reaching toward divine promises, taking hold of what God has said to be true, clinging to it with whatever conviction we can muster, and pleading—pleading earnestly—that God will be powerfully present in his grace and comfort.
Trusting God, we learn, is not just a matter of recalling knowledge in a moment of need, but applying the whole heart, soul, strength, and mind to accept and believe it—even when the heart is broken and the soul weary, even when strength is sapped and the mind bewildered. Faith is complicated, not simple, and difficult, not easy. Like so much else in life, faith takes practice and rewards diligence. Faith brings us far beyond the end of ourselves and leaves us utterly dependent upon the goodness and mercy of a loving God.
What does it mean to trust God? It means that in our lowest moments we will resolve to believe that what God says is true. It means that even in our darkest valleys we will determine to take God at his word. It means that even when we don’t know what to do or where to go, we will look to God with faith and, as either an immediate instinct or a deliberate act of the will, anchor ourselves on the One who has promised that his every word proves true and reliable, that he will shelter and protect all those who run to him for refuge.