When it comes to blogging, how your words are visually presented to the reader can be just as important as what you write. People read differently on the Web than they do in print. And your blog post formatting should reflect that.
Here are five basic blog formatting tips that can help you improve your blog post presentation.
1. Use subheadings.
Subheadings break up your blog post text, making it easier for readers to visually scan the page. This lets them find the exact information they’re looking for, get the gist of the content before reading it fully, and find out whether or not your blog post is likely to interest them.
Blog post subheadings can be as simple as bold text, or they can be more elaborately formatted using heading tags (h1, h2, etc.) and your blog’s stylesheet.
2. Use numbered or bulleted lists.
Lists are another way to break your blog posts up into bite-sized pieces. That happens not only visually, but also contextually.
Lists help readers get right to the point. They can quickly browse a list of resources. They can scan a list of links for other interesting material to read. Or they can quickly identify tips that best apply to them.
Blog post lists can be handled in several ways. For example, you can:
- use bulleted lists (like this one);
- use indented numbered lists;
- use your subheadings as list items if your list is short (again, like this post does).
3. Keep paragraphs short.
When you write for the Web, your content shouldn’t resemble a textbook. Keep your paragraphs short (such as 1-4 lines on-screen). Remember, we live in an age of instant gratification. Make it easy for readers to get the information they want quickly.
Keep your font choices in mind here. What you see when you type your blog post won’t necessarily represent what readers see on your live blog. For example, on this blog I use a fairly large font, so paragraphs are only 1-2 lines in my post editor.
4. Use images when appropriate.
I’ve seen quite a few popular bloggers insist that you must use images in your blog posts if you want to appeal to readers. And that’s correct, some of the time. But it’s not true in all niches.
For example, several of my blogs target writers. Those readers care more about the text on the page than images. And after years of testing, I’ve not seen a single benefit to adding images to most of those blog posts. If anything, images for the sake of having images have been criticized.
That said, I’ve also worked on blogs where images were a must in every post (sometimes even multiple images). It’s about knowing your audience. By all means, if an image helps you illustrate a point, use one. Just don’t gratuitously litter your posts with images that add no value to the reader.
5. Choose fonts and colors wisely.
This one is a personal pet peeve. Please take your readers into consideration when you choose fonts and colors for your blog posts.
Light text on dark backgrounds gets very uncomfortable to read. Obscure fonts can be almost indecipherable. And tiny text will make your readers feel like their eyes are going to bleed (okay, maybe this one is just me).
Can you think of other blog post formatting tips for new bloggers? What formatting and design choices make it easier for you to read blogs posts, and what drives you away? Share your thoughts in the comments.
This post was written by...
Jennifer Mattern – who has written 15 posts on Writing for Bloggers.
Jennifer Mattern is a professional blogger and the owner of 3 Beat Media. In addition to blogging for clients, she runs All Freelance Writing, All Indie Publishing, BizAmmo, and more.
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{ 6 comments }
I like throwing in quotes to break up the content. Of course, it has to fit the content, but I think it’s another effective way to grab the readers’ eye.
Pull-quotes are a great example of a way you can break up text visually without using images. It’s something I usually think of with business documents or news stories. But if it works there, it’ll work on many blogs too.
Thanks, Cathy, I forget about pull quotes.
Great points, Jenn – I’ve been lazy about subheads recently.
Re images – I stopped using them for a bit and readers complained! I was surprised.
It likely depends on what they’re used to seeing on your blog (and how your blog as a whole is broken up visually). My most vocal complaints came on a social media blog. They loved things like infographics, but hated stock images there just for visual interest to illustrate something more generally. Readers also had a problem on the writing blog with stock images. And traffic to those posts didn’t change in any way. So I stopped. If something’s extremely relevant, I’ll add it. But I find in that niche, it’s rarely the case (or maybe just the case with the things I tend to write about).
My least favorite thing about blogging is images. For a long time, I just didn’t use them. Then I did. Then, I used them about half the time.
Now, I include an image in every post, but not for the reasons experts say you should. It’s because of Pinterest. It took a long time for me to start using Pinterest, because my mind doesn’t work quite so visually. Recently, though, I’ve been doing a lot of research on self publishing, and independent authors, and other book-related stuff, and I’ve been using Pinterest to bookmark sites. When there is no image, there is nothing to “pin.”
Pinterest is something I stay away from. There are too many copyright issues involved, and if I don’t want people stealing my content, I certainly don’t want to risk enabling folks to steal someone’s images.
If you take all of your own images and you own the copyright, that’s probably a good strategy. But for most bloggers, I don’t think that’s the case. They often use stock images. And when you use them — especially ones you pay for — you don’t technically have the right to let people redistribute them. And that’s exactly what Pinterest does when they include full-size images. Some sites might be fine with it and not go after bloggers or Pinterest users. But others very well might, and they’d be well within their rights. I don’t consider that risk to be worthwhile.
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