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Structure your posts for better impact

Have you ever given any thought to how you structure your posts? It makes a big difference in how much and how thoroughly they?re read. Here?s some clever tricks you can try to improve your post?s structure.

Don?t bury the lead

(Or bury the lede, if you want to be an anachronistic word snob. Which I do.)

Journalists are taught the inverted pyramid structure of writing, where you put the single most important statement at the top of the page, then flesh out in more detail further down. This works very well on the internet: most website visitors skim rather than read. If you put the most important points at the bottom, especially under the fold, you run a big risk of them being ignored.

To write like a journalist, note briefly the points you want to make in your post (There should never be too many. Just one is totally fine!) and rank them in priority. Take the first point and make it in the first paragraph. Make the second point in the second paragraph. Keep going until you run out of points to make.

Ask a question

A great way to keep attention in your post is to ask a question at the beginning of the article and answer it much later. Our brains hate unanswered questions. Have you ever kept watching a bad movie, just because you needed to find out how it ended? (I?m not suggesting your posts are like a bad movie, just that it?s a powerful motivator.) Your readers will keep reading to find out what the answer is.

Tell a story

Another thing our brain is wired to respond to is stories. If you can tell a story that ties all your points together, it will engage your visitors and keep them reading.

The common narrative arc goes like this:

Situation: Start with a bang! Describe the situation in brief and evocative detail.
Problem: What?s wrong? Drama and conflict are interesting!
Climax: The showdown: how was the problem solved?
Resolution: …and they all lived happily ever after. Wind the story down and make your points.

Headlines

You can use your headlines in three useful ways:

1. To provide a brief summary of the article (again, journalists do this). By skimming the headlines a reader should be able to get a good idea of the content.
2. To arouse interest in the next point by asking a question or making a bold declaration.
3. To be funny.

Do you use one of these formats, or a different structure for your posts? Tell me in the comments!

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Published by: Grant Griffiths

Full post as published by Blawg for Profit on March 09, 2010 (boomark / email).