What did I learn at “How To Blog” School?

Short attention spans call for short posts.

Same as the headline above. My teacher advised me to keep my writing to a minimum. People won’t read anything too long, she said.

And, scrutinize the type font to insure a larger type is not scaring away a “short” reader.

I guess she is right. I see some posts that look so inviting, but I don’t read them. Not because of my attention span. I simply don’t have the luxury of time to invest.

I think one may try to break up a post into two or three segments. Let the reader get down to the bottom of the page before announcing there were two or three more pages to go. This one got me the other day:

dharma smackdown

It drew my curiosity immediately. But, here’s the “kicker.” (Journalism term for the small, 14-to-18-point headline above a 36-to-48-point main headline.) The writer enticed the reader to click a hyper link to enter another post that actually offered an in-depth look at Buddhists “duking it out” verbally over the ‘Net with other Buddhists.

Great copy, as we use to say in the newspaper business. Take a look at how they handled a longer article here (You don’t need to read it all, simply glance at the lead story and then go to the bottom line. [“To Be Continued” is what you would have read in your daily paper]): another tale

 The graphics grabbed me. I got hooked on reading what appeared at first to be a relatively short article. It turned into three pages.

The moral of this story is this old Army saying: KISS (*Keep It Simple Stupid).

(*printed with no permission from the Armed Serices)