How about some quality standards from blog authors?
Wendy’s been looking through a whole lot of blogs this afternoon and, frankly, the quality of writing that she’s seen has been pretty dismal.
Now, I can accept that many bloggers are just scribbling down their thoughts and, yes, there will be spelling mistakes and no doubt gramatical errors that creep in now and again. Fair enough, but she’s been looking, by and large, at blogs that take sponsored posts and it’s a very poor level of writing from what are professional writers.
Yes, you count as a professional writer if you’re writing sponsored posts. You’re getting paid to write, aren’t you?
I’ll not single out any in particular but some of the writing is so bad that it amazes me that the advertisers actually pay for it. There’s people out there saying things like “i done this” when it should be “I did that” and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Frankly, I’d expect better work from a 12 year old. In fact, one of the better written blogs is written by a 14 year old so it’s not impossible to write decent stuff.
Now, I’m not saying that you have to write on high brow topics every post. It’s nothing at all to do with the content. What needs improving in a major way is the spelling and grammar used.
Some of the pay per post outlets are already hinting that quality checks are coming: it’s going to be better to improve your quality of writing before they arrive because many of the bloggers out there are going to find that their blog is totally shunned by advertisers if it’s tagged as being one that consistently falls down on the spelling and grammar.
If you find that your current efforts are the best you can do at the moment and you know they’re not good enough, then do something about it. Take a course to improve your English. If you’re taking sponsored posts it would probably even be a tax deductible expense and, in some countries, you can get free or subsidised courses if your English isn’t good enough.
But make no mistake about it: quality standards will come at some point and it’s better to be prepared for that in advance.
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