CONTENT MARKETING
As always, test it for yourself.
But here on Blog Tyrant I rarely
publish anything less than
around 2,500 words.
The way it looks matters as
much as what it says
When I’m drafting my posts (I
always do that in WordPress)
I’m constantly hitting “preview”
in order to see how the post is
looking from a visual point of
view.
Many writers out there will hate
this idea.
But the more I go on, and the
more aware I become of my own
blog-reading habits, the more I
realize how important it is for the
layout to be appealing, simple
and easy to read.
That means making sure you
have:
• A nice large font-size: I talked
about this a little bit last week
but you want to make sure
your font is easy to read and
matched to your brand.
• Quality images: Draw people
in with high quality (but fast
loading) photos and images
that add value to the post
and pull the eye down.
• Small paragraphs: Make sure
you don’t waffle on for lines
and lines of text. People are
used to skimming so keep the
paragraphs short.
Visual Contenting
• Bold text and bullet points:
Whenever you can break up
the text with burst of bold or
bullet points you should do
it. Just imagine this section
as one big bulk paragraph vs
how it is now.
• A narrow-ish content width:
Don’t make people read your
text over a hugh long line.
You want your content area
to be no more than around
700 pixels (mine is 650)
because tired eyes will get
lost.
A lot of this is not based on any
data I have from my blogs, but
more based on how I go about
reading blogs, and how I used
to design websites for clients.
Readability is very important, and
you want to develop a level of
consistency so that all of these
things add up to a blog post that
“looks” like one of yours.
The reason I say that this stuff
matters as much as what the
post actually says is because I
firmly believe that a lot of peop