bottledworder

I am rather new to this genre called the blog but in the past few days I’ve  been able to figure out a few stylistic conventions of blogging, which, no doubt, have some roots in necessity. If anyone knows more, I’d be very interested to know what you figured out through experience.

Here’s what I found:

The first few lines: Since people scroll through millions of blogs, if you want your stuff to be looked at, those first few lines have to be eye-catching. Although the opening of a short story is similar to a blog in that it has to be eye-catching too, the blog is different in that it has to tell the reader what it’s  really about within those first few words. Simply eye-catching lines which aim for a reversal of expectation later may not  be that appropriate.

The main photo: A picture may draw attention but a very long picture is irritating because the reader has to scroll a lot to reach the bottom of it and gives the impression of non-seriousness as you’re searching through blogs. Anyone disagrees?

Chunking of information through text: Very long paragraphs that may be appropriate in print feel very tedious to read and I feel like leaving out the middle of long paragraphs. Bulleted sections or small sections with subheadings feel much easier to read.

Chunking of information through pictures: Perhaps I’m old-fashioned, but captions help me a lot. Also, all pictures and no words make me feel lost. Alternating text and pictures is most helpful.

Background colour: Unless the font is huge,  white print on a black background is killing for the eyes. I know lots of people will disagree with me judging by the number of such blogs.

Content: Funny blogs seem to have most hits. Or blogs about mundane stuff. But you’ve got to follow your heart regarding subject matter I guess.

Language style: There are all sorts of styles out there but don’t conversational styles read better in blogs?

Organizing the content: I wonder if more experienced bloggers have ideas here. I have to read through many more blogs before I can make any generalizations. I wonder if the blog genre itself defies any structure.

Will surely figure out the nuances as I go along.