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Blog Challenge 24: Go Read a Magazine

Posted by in 31DBBB, Blogging, News & Media


This post is part of my ongoing series based upon the eBook 31 Days to Build a Better Blog. To read all of my other posts on the subject, check out the 31DBBB category. For more on the book itself, visit ProBlogger.

Years ago, one of the first television directors I worked with told a story about a terrible thunderstorm that hit during a newscast. The station was knocked off the air and he said he sat at the board literally waiting for anything to come back on. All of the lighted buttons were off. All of the monitors were off. The lights were off.

There was literally nothing they could do for a few minutes until the station’s generator came on and all of the equipment rebooted and reset itself.

Then the phone rang. It was one of the guys who worked at the transmitter, one, he says, who wasn’t known for having a particularly high I.Q.

“Y’all know you’re off the air?” the transmitter operator asked.

“No, we were just sitting around reading magazines,” he snapped in his inimitable sarcastic tone.

Maybe you had to know him, but the story — and particularly the way he told it — still makes me chuckle.

But sitting around reading magazines is the topic of today’s blog challenge.

There are a lot of new media types, I’m sure, who’ll bristle at the thought of trying to improve their product by reverting to old media. But let’s face it: that old media has been around a lot longer than the blogosphere, entertaining and informing generations of readers. A dwindling audience, to be sure, but for many years a quite loyal one.

So what can you study from a magazine to improve your blog? The text lists seven ideas. I’ll focus on just a few:

1. Marketing ideas: The way the magazine markets and pitches itself to readers can teach us a lot. Look particularly at what they do on the front cover—it’s all about convincing people to buy the magazine.

We all know the importance of headlines and grabbing a reader off the top. Magazines — at least, successful ones, are good at pulling a reader in with a compelling headline and a lede sentence that then pulls them into the article itself. If there’s a magazine that is close to your niche, you could learn a lot from how it handles the same kind of subject matter you’re dealing with.

2. Design ideas: Some magazines are better laid out than others, and the web is definitely a different medium than print. However, we can still learn a lot about design from a good magazine. Better magazines will give you an indication of what types of designs, colors and layout are popular and in fashion.

In some cases, you as a blogger may be restricted somewhat by blog’s theme. I chose one that is designed to feature a thumbnail on every post intentionally, because I think that even one graphic is better than none when it comes to making posts more visually appealing. There are times when I may add an image further down in the text when necessary, but this isn’t an automatic.

Still, it’s always interesting to see the layout options magazine editors employ, from photos to pull-quotes. And it can actually be fun to try to incorporate them into your posts.

5. Writing tips: A good article on almost any topic can teach you a lot about effective communication.

This is probably my favorite one, and it’s probably the one most people would be least likely to think of, in a kind of not-seeing-the-forest-for-the-trees way. Those magazines, even photographic magazines, still have actual writing as one of the most critical components. If you can write like a magazine writer, you can engage your audience.

So the interesting question for everyone would be which magazine would you use to study?

I subscribe, at the moment, to only one: MacWorld. My favorite magazine that I also pick up when I can is mental_floss. In terms of news magazines, Time would probably be my favorite.

If I were to choose one from that list that most closely matches my blog’s niche, it’d have to be mental_floss, which is about many topics and is designed to educate and make you think. That, I’d like to think, is what my blog tries to do every once in a while.

Your turn:
What magazine or magazines would you be most likely to pick up if you were going to try to look for ideas to improve your blog?