A starter kit for blog writers in quarantine
Six things you should think about before you pick up the pen
So, you’re starting a blog.
This is a big moment, whether you’re going solo or you’re part of a team.
Whatever your backstory, you’re preparing for what may be the most exhilarating, heart-wrenching moment of your public life since stepping in front of your second-grade class with your pet snail, Alfred Molina, for show and tell.
If you’re worried about the timing, you shouldn’t be. For one, you’re not Gal Gadot serenading us with John Lennon. (I’ll also assume you aren’t documenting your new gerbil art museum.¹)
You’re a writer with a brilliant idea you want to share with an audience you truly believe is out there waiting to listen. The fact that most of your audience is now couch-bound doesn’t make you opportunistic. The global quarantine has just given a lot of us time to rethink life trajectories and really take inventory of our priorities and choices.
No matter what the rest of your family says, we’re with you.
We’re so with you that we’ve actually thought about you six months down the line, when we foresee your blogging future actually forking in space time.
Down one fork, you’re hitting publish on yet another ridiculously well-written article that in a matter of two milliseconds will be all the toast of Twitter and beyond.
In the other, you’ve given up your passion project and have enrolled in an online master class with Aaron Sorkin, wondering where it all went wrong. You were supposed to be the next Maria Popova.² Now you’re trying to learn how to write snappy TV scripts with at least one middle-aged online classmate named Dave who has just penned a whole series exclusively as a vehicle for Hafthor Bjornsson.
Ok, maybe learning to write snappy scripts with Aaron Sorkin isn’t the end of the world. But if you want to avoid that fate, and see your blog really take wing, there are one or two things (make that five or six things) to think about before you start writing that you might not have thought about (and Maria Popova almost certainly did).
Know your audience
It’s not what you write that will ultimately get your blog read, it’s who you’re writing it for. Now, if you hear those words and close your eyes and all you see is Keanu Reeves squatting next to a fire in the desert in a peyote trance, just remember this.
You should be thinking about your readers when you’re planning your blog and before every article you write. It’s just too easy to veer off the path and end up with great writing that isn’t speaking to anybody not to take this very seriously.
Which is kind of like plating a gorgeous bratwurst pizza for a vegan with gluten intolerance, isn’t it?
Practically speaking, writing your blog page SEO title and description will help you a lot. It will force you to think very clearly about why you’re really writing and who you’re writing for.
Another useful exercise that will help you keep focused on your readers? When you’re brainstorming for your weekly article ideas, don’t just think about interesting things you’d like to write about. Think about interesting things your audience needs to read, their pain points and ambitions.
Plan your categories
Starting a blog is a rush. The last thing you’re thinking about is whether your second post is about “writing” or “content writing,” or if it’s technically “writing advice,” which would be a subcategory of writing, right?
But you should be.
The general areas your blog will cover are your categories. Think of them as aisles in a grocery store. Your tags are much more varied, like the brands filling the shelves.
How does this work?
Before you start writing, chart out some general areas you want to cover with your writing over the next year. 10 to 12 major areas should do it. You can actually test them.
Just write down a few article titles you might try. If each is covered by one of your categories, your system is working. This is also a very good indication that you’ve got a sustainable focus for your blog.
Why are categories so important?
Because once your library grows, readers will be using those categories to find related articles. Which is exactly how you keep readers on your blog: by helping them find more of the good stuff they just read and liked.
Pick a nice body font and stick with it
I just discovered a typeface called Inknut Antiqua. This wasn’t a coincidence. Squarespace, a website building platform I write and design on, is promoting Inknut Antiqua on their new editor.
Inknut Antiqua is a gorgeous, very trendy-looking typeface with its knife-cut angles and high contrast stems and serifs. It makes for beautiful headers: large type you can admire from a distance.
But what happens when you try Inknut Antiqua for your body text, the text your readers will actually be reading?
Here’s what it looks like at 12.8px on a dark grey background.
Not very readable.
Beautiful headings make for a better blog experience, for sure, but the most critical element of a blog is readability: body type and how you use it. So make sure your blog is following the latest web typography best practices.
This means that when you choose a body font for your blog, it shouldn’t only look good and feel right, i.e. reflect the mood and spirit of your endeavor. You also need to make sure it’s the right size (minimum 16px), weight and color (for enough contrast), and that you set the right line length (about 75-85 characters per line).
We’re pretty crazy about type here, so if you want some more suggestions for great website body fonts, we’ve got some.
Put some thought into layout
Do you remember your university library stacks? The University of Illinois reading cubicles literally reminded me of Hannibal Lecter’s holding pen. You could read there, but you were always looking over your shoulder for the glint of a man muzzle. It was just a horrible place to enjoy the act of reading.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that what you have to say is all that matters. Give your readers a beautiful place to read too.
And do it early. Because, just like categories and your blog audience, once you do have a layout, it’s almost impossible to alter. This would literally mean reconstructing all your posts by hand.
The main things you need to think about are: the banner area (where your main visual, title and subtitle go), meta data (how you want to display things like date, category, author and author photo), and line length (but not just line length, also how your text behaves with different kinds of image blocks).
Don’t necessarily go to the blogs of fellow writers and bloggers for inspiration. Outside of a few notable exceptions — Maria Popova is one — writers don’t put as much effort or thought into their layouts as they should.
Instead, we recommend checking out great design blogs like Adobe’s 99U, It’s Nice That, WeTransfer’s WePresent, or the American Institute of Graphic Art’s Eye on Design for some solid ideas.³
Think about your visual style
Swallow the bitter pill. Unless you’re writing about the secret life of JavaScript, every article you publish is going to need, in addition to great type and layouts, a quality accompanying visual.
This means you’ll want to develop a visual style to complement your writing style. Not an easy task for a writer, but a smart investment.
Using stock photos from Pexels or Unsplash is tempting. It’s easy and saves a ton of time. But thousands of people are using the very same images for their own writing, so you can say goodbye to establishing your own visual style.
If you do start thinking about visuals, two places to get your feet wet are both free and online: Canva and Adobe Spark. You can experiment with typography, color palette and composition easily there. When you’re ready to take the next step, learning to use Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator (or Affinity Photo and Design, cheaper, non-subscription alternatives) is a must.
This isn’t the time or place to go deep into visual style. But if you’re curious, we’ve written extensively on how to use Google to find visuals for your web copy.
Otherwise, happy designing!
Consider an editor
Going from solo publishing to writing with an editor must be like switching from a toothbrush to a Waterpik. I’ve heard an amazing amount of gunk comes out of your gums when you start using a Waterpik.
Saying you need to have a good editor to publish quality blogs isn’t going to make any of us writers happy, but oh, what a difference it makes.
That said, is it feasible or even possible to work with an editor?
Here’s our take.
If you’re going into your blog as personal publishing and you forego editing, you’re in almost universal company.
If this is a business or team effort, there are plenty of good reasons to work with an editor and incorporate editing into your writing process. It isn’t just a matter of going from 95% to 99%, say. Many times it’s going from gibberish — one slip in logic or faulty assumption is all it takes — to sustained arguments that impact readers.
Final thoughts
It might seem like a lot of fretting, and, yes, there’s been zero writing advice (tag, not cat) this week, but really, solid legwork will save you mucho heartache when you actually get to writing your blog.
Even better, thinking about the design and functional underpinnings of your blog is like having a mini business plan. If things aren’t going the way you wanted, or if things are going better than you expected, you’ll at least have a control for tweaking variables: your initial roadmap.
Further browsing
- Read more about pandemic gerbil museums in The Smithsonian Magazine.
- Maria Popova’s blog The Marginalia (formerly Brain Pickings) is so popular it’s in the U.S. Library of Congress.
- You’ll find plenty of design ideas for your blog at 99U, It’s Nice That WePresent, and Eye on Design.
