Blogger’s style guide: How to structure long posts

Structure: manageable chunks!

People don’t tend to read online. They scan the screen for what they find interesting, which means long posts of running copy are often skipped over. A short-form, three-paragraph post noting, explaining and presenting one particular issue is often the ideal for the reader (as noted in the first post of this series How is blogging different?)

But sometimes you need to write a little more, especially when explaining a complicated subject. Luckily, there are many different ways to break up a long post and create some ‘white space’.

7 ways you can package your thoughts:

• Snappy sub-heads – such as the one above!
• Lists – a top three, five or 10, for example.
• Q&A – create questions (which you then answer).
• Images – pictures and graphics provide a nice visual break.
• Quotes – block quotes are longer quotes that can be styled differently.
• Bulletpoints – ideal for short lists like this one.
• Use shorter paragraphs (and shorter sentences) in general.

[FYI: Last year I wrote a Blogger’s Style Guide to help people in the organisations I was working for start writing posts and publishing them on the company blog. Many had never written anything beyond an email before but they did know their subject far better than I, so they just needed a good briefing in style, tone, structure and so on. This is that starter kit for company bloggers, consisting of  10 mini-posts in all.]