You’d think that taking the time to proofread any email marketing you’re sending out would be a no-brainer. It really should be – proofreading and quality-checking is just as important for email as it is for any other form of marketing communication.

The reason I bring it up is because a few days ago I received an email from a major organiser of events, conferences and awards related to marketing and new media, which contained a glaring error. Seeing the name of the awards misspelt in the subject line of the email is not a very good incentive to opening the email and reading the content – it makes it all too easy for the recipient to delete the email straight away.

Mistakes do happen and typos sometimes slip through, but I can’t help but think that this particular mistake should’ve been spotted before the ‘’send” button was pressed.

For the last few years, the UK based National AIDS Trust has run a campaign to get websites and blogs to wear a virtual red ribbon to show support for World AIDS Day which takes place annually on 1 December.

The aim of the campaign is to raise awareness of World AIDS Day and to encourage people to visit the website where they can find out more about ways to get involved in helping to stop the spread of HIV and AIDS.

I’ve added the red ribbon to my sidebar as of today, and if you have a blog or website of your own, I’d encourage you to wear the virtual red ribbon too.

Advice for bloggers – especially those just starting out with a blog – has cropped up in several blog posts that I’ve read recently, so I thought I”d round-up the most interesting and worthwhile tips here.

Use descriptive headlines

Philipp Lenssen of Google Blogoscoped picks up on recent criticism of how the Official Google Blog often features cryptic headlines, and Use descriptive headlines that reveal the point of the article without further reading tops his list of tips for good writing style when blogging. Headlines will often be seen out of context – for example in a feed reader where the content may only be skim-read, or in search engine results – and a successful headline therefore needs to make sense when it’s read in isolation from the full post.

Think about your audience

Vincent Maher has come up with 11 tips for writing a good blog entry, with an emphasis on thinking about the audience’s perspective – what will interest and engage them, and what will make it easy for them to read and understand the post. His Link to the context tip is about placing your post within the wider conversation by linking to other blog posts, source material and useful information.

Be consistent

Pronet advertising has some great advice on what you should think about during the first seven days of your blog. The tips that stood out for me were Pick a topic and stick with it and Be consistent in how often you blog – heeding both of these tips will ensure that your readers know what to expect from your blog. If anyone’s wondering, I tend to post once or twice a week here, but more frequently at atelier455 (my other blog).

End your post in style

Over at Copyblogger, you can get some interesting ideas on how to go out in style with the ending of your post. A range of techniques are put forward, but the overarching message is that to have an effective ending, you need to know where you’re going with the post before you start writing. Many bloggers will be using some of these techniques without really thinking about it – I know I’ve used the Call to action on my other blog to encourage people to comment – but it’s useful to think about other ways to wrap up your blog post.

If you’ve come across any other good advice recently, or if you have some of your own advice to share, then feel free to leave a comment or get in touch by email.