Title

It starts with the title. Let's compare.

Bolt Thrower: XCOM Board Game, Dark Souls, Starship Troopers, Johnny Flynn

Someone talking about their random musings about four seemingly unrelated topics. I doubt that the article will be in any way more coherent that the title.

Opinion: It's time to give up on first and third person shooters for mobile

Woow! What a bolt statement! Someone claims a whole business industry must change their focus. They say people should not like what they like. I am already forming my retort in my head before even reading the first paragraph.

First impression

But I am a busy person. I don't have time to read an article more than a page long unless I know it will mention something which interests me. So I scroll down and skim the article. What do I see?

One picture of the box-art of a game, wall of text, the sub-headers "Video Games", "Films & TV" and "Music".

These are really broad topics. I am interested in some video games and some films and some genres of music, but not all. I have no idea if the article talks about those I care about. So better not take the risk that I could be wasting my time.

Screenshots of Deus Ex for iPad, Tomb Raider, Bioshock and a fourth game I don't recognize but sure looks interesting. Sub-headers "Performance issues" and "Stop it". There are also some links which catch my eye through their color. They also mention some games I know.

I know those games and I have strong opinions about some of them. I wonder if the author shares my view or dares to have a different (certainly wrong!) opinion. That fool - he will pay for his insolence when he reads my comment!

Content

Let's talk about the article content. The first one

tl;dr

The second one:

tl;dr

Sorry, didn't read either.

...

What? Why is your cursor moving to the downvote button? Does that not make my answer useful? My laziness makes me just like the vast majority of your visitors. The usual internet user opens an article, skims it, and decides within seconds whether or not they want to read it. Most of the times they won't. When you don't manage to immediately catch the attention of your reader, they will close the browser tab and move on.

Just kidding. I did actually read both articles. But really, the content doesn't matter as much as the first two points.

Some final tips for blogging

Appearance is everything on the web. Make your articles appealing with many images, sub-headers and links.
Links, links, links! Links help your users to find more informations and they help search engines to better index the web. But mostly, they are useful eyecatchers.
Pick a title which is already your conclusion. That way the reader already knows where you stand
When you write an article, write an article about one topic and one topic only. When you want to talk about multiple topics, create multiple articles.
When you would like to talk about multiple unrelated things, you should create multiple unrelated blogs. People who subscribe to a blog do so because it caters to their specific interest. A blog about everything and nothing will not gather a followship as easily as one with a clear focus. So when you like to talk about video games and about movies and about music, you should create three separate blogs, each one focusing on one of these areas of interest.

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