Did you know that how you format a blog post can be just as important as the content it provides? Offering top notch content is a major factor in the long-term success of your blog. And that depends not only on what you say, but how you display it.
Let’s look at why post formatting matters on your blog, and some tips on how you can improve your blog post format.
Why Post Formats Matter in Blogging
It’s not enough to ramble on about something your audience might be interested in. You need to serve it up in an easily digestible way that lets readers quickly scan posts for what they want to know and what they might want to quote when they come back to share your post with others. Always keep in mind that readers on the Web have shorter attention spans than someone who might look for similar information in a book.
5 Formatting Tips to Improve Your Blog Content
Here are five easy things you can do to follow basic Web writing standards that improve the formatting of your blog posts.
- Use short paragraphs. Ideally keep them to 3-5 lines.
- Make sure your font sizes are readable. WordPress theme designers are notorious for using itty bitty fonts that are painful for an average reader. Increase the size and the contrast if necessary. Think about readers on laptops and smaller screens — not those using external monitors with better resolutions. Your average reader shouldn’t have to adjust the font size when they open your blog.
- Pick a color scheme that keeps your content readable as well. Light text over dark backgrounds is usually a bad idea. Leave that for photo blogs with little text involved. On the other hand, light gray text over a white background is just as difficult for an average reader.
- Break up your blog content with subheadings. These should be laid out in a logical progression to let readers quickly scan posts to find the specific information they’re looking for. Not everyone will read your blog posts from beginning to end. That’s just life on the Web.
- Break things down further with bulleted or numbered lists when appropriate. This is another good way to make your blog content easily scanned by the eye, and people seem to love to share list-based blog posts via social media, making it better for traffic too.
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It doesn’t have to take a lot of work to improve the formatting of your blog posts. Put these simple ideas to work on your next blog article and help it stand out from the crowd.
Do you have other blog post formatting tips? Leave them below in the comments.