Blogging is one of the most accessible—and most terrifying—ways to enter the digital universe. Whether it’s written by an employee for a multimillion dollar corporation or by a college student with a passion for food, each post has the potential to capture or alienate millions.

Although the impact of a post may seem to be determined randomly, True Ventures Founder Om Malik believes there are certain ways to help keep the odds in your favor.

Engaging an audience starts before the first words are even conceived, according to Malik, a onetime journalist who founded the technology news website Gigaom in 2006. It’s essential to get inside the heads of your potential readers and try to understand their motivations.

“You start with the basic premise: respecting your reader’s time,” Malik writes. “Can they find the story somewhere else, and if yes, then why should they read you?”

Although understanding your readers is important, do not take this to mean that writing what readers want to read will equate to a successful post. It is just as important to find something that stirs a fire in you, as readers can be acutely aware of writers who lack passion for their topics.

The next step is to create the backbone of the post, which can be constructed with some basic writing skills and a bit of good old-fashioned elbow grease.

“A good blog post starts with a clever lead, or an anecdote, and in a very short space, makes a case for what you are trying to say,” says Malik.

Once the skeleton is set, the details are added, and the headline is catchy, look back on your story and see whether it incorporates the “3 Cs of a good blog post”: coherent, clever, and cryptic.

“An ideal blog post is the one, which has a kicker that is as strong as the lead, or elicits a reaction from the reader, encouraging them to keep talking about the subject.”

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