People don\u2019t like to read. People like pictures. People like to share.<\/p>\n
This past summer I worked as a marketing intern for a non-profit organization and I learned a thing or two about the way people respond to Internet writing. While testing different methods for Facebook and Twitter posts, I came up with three rules for social media:<\/p>\n
Though this experience was focused on social media, I think a lot of the principles that I learned carry over to writing for a blog.<\/p>\n
People Don\u2019t Like to Read<\/b><\/p>\n
As Rachel McAlpine<\/a> stated, people using the Internet are \u201cmonsters of impatience.\u201d Though I think this undervalues readers\u2019 intelligence in some ways, it is certainly true that while on the Internet, readers have less patience than when they are reading print.<\/p>\n To combat this impatience, it is important to make your posts engaging and to the point without, devaluing or dumbing down your content. It is not even necessarily required that your posts be short, but that they be easy to read. Some things you can try include:<\/p>\n Blogs that do this well:<\/p>\n People Like Pictures<\/b><\/p>\n \u201cA picture is worth 1,000 words\u201d is certainly a clich\u00e9, but an image really can help you draw readers\u2019 attention and illustrate your point more effectively. Imagine you were writing a post where you were describing some place or event. Describing that place or event might take some time, but a picture can show with exactness what you would otherwise leave to your readers\u2019 imaginations.<\/p>\n Another concept that stems from the idea that \u201cpeople like pictures,\u201d is that readers prefer looking at a well designed, attractive website. Some simple ideas to make your website more attractive include:<\/p>\n Blogs that do this well:<\/p>\n People Like to Share<\/b><\/p>\n In my opinion, this rule is the most important because what makes a blog unique is the ability for readers to instantly share, repurpose, reimagine, and reuse the writer\u2019s words. As Sean Michael Morris<\/a> states in \u201cDigital Writing Uprising: Third Order Thinking in Digital Humanities,\u201d<\/a> digital writing becomes useful when others reimagine it for their own purposes.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople like to share\u201d also communicates that people like to be able to easily share with each other. Your blog should have Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, etc. buttons easily accessible so that people can share content with their friends and followers.<\/p>\n Blogs that do this well:<\/p>\n People don\u2019t like to read. People like pictures. People like to share. This past summer I worked as a marketing intern for a non-profit organization and I learned a thing or two about the way people respond to Internet writing. … Continue reading \n
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