small business

Over the past few months I have written a series of articles on how to more effectively write and manage your blogs. This is the final article in this series. Let's take a look at the prior articles before a few final thoughts:

Part One - Introduction: When asked to review a blog for a colleague I started thinking about what makes an article/post interesting enough for me to follow the blog or reply to the post. In general, be illustrative and opinionated on a regular basis.

Part Two - Illustrate: The human mind and its imagination are powerful things that are often hard to stop. Write your posts in a way that triggers memories and thoughts. By relying not on your own experience, but your readers experiences, to prod them into making a response you can hit a broader audience while being more specific yourself.

Part Three - Consider the Scope: Now that you have your readers' imagination running wild you need to frame questions that will get them to answer. Be careful to not ask questions so broad that it paralyzes your reader, but also to be so specific that you alienate much of your readership.

Let's keep this simple. I didn't write the following article. It was posted on Smashing Magazine. I just loved it so much, I had to post the link. Here are a few thoughts to get you started:

• Less is more: If you decrease the amount of "stuff" on your page, you will increase the eyes on the most important things.
• "Start with nothing, add what you NEED, and make it look nice." Yang Kim from People Design gave me that advice, or something like it a while back. It stuck in my head.
• In high school my band director always yelled at us when we could come in too early or play too late. We interrupted the silence and silence was the most important part of the music. Translation: White space provides focus.
• To make a gunshot sound louder in a movie, a producer might decrease the overall volume of the soundtrack prior to the shot or explosion. Elements appear large or prominent in comparison to their surroundings. Busy sites drown the best things.

Enough from me. Please read the Smashing Magazine article
How Simple Web Design Helps Your Business to get the full and qualified story.