Attractiveness of Blogposts

This morning I’ve asked myself about what kind of posts are more attractive for the readers of my blog posts. I ended up creating my own quite subjective list of what attracts me to continue to read. This includes a simple hierarchy of these five nice standards.

1. Images
An entry with at least one image in the first paragraph is quite tempting for further reading. Why shouldn’t I continue to read an article if there’s already a picture, image or screenshot that directs me to the main idea behind the author’s writing? If it’s only one image, the better it is placed in the first paragraph aligned to the side, and if it’s a screenshot, it’s preferably placed between the first and second paragraph. More than two images are listed with thumbnails below the article or in paragraph alignment. However, a good separation between posts that do include images and posts that do not rely on image shows me that an author can separate between the usefulness and the redundancy of images.

2. Quotes
Once there’s an entry that separates a quote from the original text, the more I value the author’s work of acknowledging other people. On the other hand, while blogging about a specific event which can be seen on TV, it’s quite impossible to quote or sometimes link this source.

3. Links
Now while speaking about linking, I personally require links for most articles. As much as the links enhance the usability of articles, to link to other resources becomes a major factor for reading a post. In concern to quotes, this is imperative and must be done (next to trackbacks). Quoting without sources? A paper without footnotes? Not worth reading…

4. Media Casting
I like to listen to or view any kind of media including all kinds of Media Casts even if it does not originate from the author (just as a link to another ressource). One thing I do hate is if these multimedia files are embedded into the blog and start to auto play. One thing I like is a small screenshot of the video and the information about the size of the file. Last night we’ve been downloading the video to the iFlea, and it happened to be larger than we expected due to our current ISDN lag.

5. Text
Well, that’s what the blog is all about. But unless the text is part of an academic paper or a longer useful post including reports, documentations, (breaking-)news – it’s clearly showing in my behavior that I don’t read an endless portion of „yadda yadda“. Three paragraphs are the maximum for me to be attracted to the daily burnouts of some folks‘ brains. I’m not going to judge how the text is written or what kind of style the author chooses, since I do prefer language and lingo – but not slang or crap-lingo as found in the „yadda yadda“. One last thing: Paragraphs!