From my short experience on steemit, you can tell in a way people are trying to find their feet on the platform, there is really hard hitting stuff, as well as quite a lot of crap to wade through.
As I read articles I find myself thinking I wish they had not written it like this or checked it over more throughly (or not just pasted a YouTube video!). So here are my 5 tips for writing better articles.
Write Original Content
It may seem obvious, but steemit is designed to reward original content. I find it really frustrating when you read an article, which at the bottom links to another article on the web, which it then becomes obvious this article is just an inferior rewrite.
It's fine to reference someone else's content, or write about the same topic, but add some originality by giving your readers your own slant on the topic, doing some extra research, or giving your opinion on what is going to happen next.
Best of all though, try and think of your own article ideas, and then work them up into a post.
Structure your Article
Our attention spans these days are quite short, people like things in succinct bitesize chunks.
Splitting your article up into subsections with headings will make your article more digestible, and will help your article flow through each point you want to make.
Keep it as short as you can
You don't want to lose your readers halfway through your article because you are covering the same point multiple times, or going off on tangents that aren't relevant to the point your article is trying to make.
Read your article back over a few times before you post, to make sure you are saying what you want to say as clearly as possible, and in as few words.
Make your text beautiful
A good article not only reads well, but also spaces it's text out nicely to make it easier to read. Try not to make sentences too long, use punctuation, and make sure there is even spacing around paragraphs and headings.
SHOUTING is also not a good idea unless appropriate. Especially in headings.
Sell the article in the title
The title of your article is the shop front to your content, and getting it right could mean the difference between your article trending or sinking. The best article titles always promise to give the user something, either directly, or through intrigue.
Take this article as an example, I could have titled it "I wish people would write better content", but that sounds like I am just going to rant at you!
"Steemit: 6 tips for writing better posts" is positive, specific to this platform, and tells users "this article is going to give you six easy things you can do to improve your post writing on steemit, it's going to be easy and quick to read and digest, and you will be better at writing posts afterwards".
Check for spelling mistakes
I find them annoying, perhaps you don't. But for me when I see spelling mistakes in an article, especially obvious ones, it makes the article seem more amateurish, and may suggest the author hasn't taken much time to improve the article before clicking post.
I write a lot of my articles on my mobile by drawing the words (Swype). Any autocorrect system can introduce incorrect words or missing pluralisations, so watch out for this.
Just make sure you read over your post a few times to make sure the spelling and grammar is correct before hitting the button.
How do you think Steemians could improve their articles? Let me know in the comments. And if you liked this post, please upvote, resteem, and follow me @hexydec.