How to Write your Genius Hour Blog Post 

Step 1: Understand your assignment.

Before you start to write, have a clear understanding of your requirements.  Your blog is designed to chronicle your journey through your Genius Hour project.  

• One reason you are writing a blog is to help you recall the steps you are completing daily and to help you make sure that your work-time is productive.

• Another reason is to allow your classmates, parents, and teacher to follow your journey to solving your problem or engaging in your passion. 

Step 2: Start with a topic and working title.

In each blog post you will need to decide upon your focus.  You do not need to list every single move you make during each work day.  Perhaps one day you want to focus on the failure that turned your whole project in another direction.  Or, perhaps, another day you want to focus on your learning because you had an incredible AHA moment.

Once you have your focus, create a working title.  This title can be changed after you finish writing and before you hit publish.

Step 3: Write an intro (and make it captivating).

We've practiced writing introductions for essays, for speeches, and now, yes, for blogs.  Every time you address the public, you must introduce what you are about to talk about. Click the following link to the post, "How to Write an Introduction [Quick Tip]." 

First, grab the reader's attention. If you lose the reader in the first few paragraphs -- or even sentences -- of the introduction, they will stop reading even before they've given your post a fair shake. You can do this in a number of ways: tell a story or a joke, be empathetic, or grip the reader with an interesting fact or statistic.

Then describe the purpose of the post and explain how it will address a problem the reader may be having. This will give the reader a reason to keep reading and give them a connection to how it will help them improve their work/lives. 

Step 4: Organize your content.

Sometimes, blog posts can have an overwhelming amount of information -- for the reader and the writer. The trick is to organize the info so readers are not intimidated by the length or amount of content. The organization can take multiple forms -- sections, lists, tips, whatever's most appropriate. But it must be organized!  Check out some blogs to see how other blog authors have organized content. 

To complete this step, all you really need to do is outline your post. Since you have pre-ordained information to include, this should be rather easy.  You must include the following points in each blog post:

• Your driving question (Yes, in EVERY blog post!)
• Summarize what you learned today about your topic and about yourself (Do not copy and paste, but do include links to sites you used today)
• What were your successes and failures from today?
• What do you want to learn next time / future plans?
• What adjustments do you need to make for your project?
• Include a picture (of today's work, or one that you may want to include in your final presentation)  
• You must cite your picture (picture from ___________.com)
• They must be legal for you to use on your blog.  Go to a Google Image Search and enter what images you want to search for.  Then, click on “Search Tools.”  Go to “Usage Rights” and select either “Labeled for Reuse” or “Labeled for noncommercial use.”

Step 5: Write!

The next step -- but not the last -- is actually writing the content. 

Don't worry about the length of your post. Just make it as long as it needs to be to be high quality and helpful.

Step 6: Edit/proofread your post, and fix your formatting.

The editing process is an important part of blogging -- don't overlook it.  consider enlisting the help of The Ultimate Editing Checklist. Then check your formatting for the following ...

Featured Image 

Make sure you choose a visually appealing and relevant image for your post. 

For help selecting an image for your post, read "How to Select the Perfect Image for Your Next Blog Post" -- and pay close attention to the section about copyright law.

Visual Appearance

No one likes an ugly blog post. And it's not just pictures that make a post visually appealing -- it's the formatting and organization of the post, too. 

In a properly formatted and visually appealing blog post, you'll notice that headers and sub-headers are used to break up large blocks of text -- and those headers are styled consistently. The style stays consistent from post to post. Maintaining this consistency makes your content (and your brand) look more professional, and makes it easier on the eyes.

Topics/Tags (optional)

Tags are specific, public-facing keywords that describe a post. They also allow readers to browse for more content in the same category on your blog. Refrain from adding a laundry list of tags to each post. Instead, put some thought into a tagging strategy. Think of tags as "topics" or "categories," and choose 10-20 tags that represent all the main topics you want to cover on your blog. Then stick to those. 

Step 9: Pick a catchy title.

Last but not least, it's time to spruce up that working title of yours. Luckily, we have a simple formula for writing catchy titles that will grab the attention of your reader. Here's what to consider:

1. Start with your working title.
2. As you start to edit your title, keep in mind that it's important to keep the title accurate and clear.
3. Then, work on making your title catchy -- whether it's through strong language, alliteration, or another literary tactic.
4. Finally, see if you can shorten it at all. No one likes a long, overwhelming title.