Photography: Spirit in a material world by fabbio

One question I’ve been considering lately is: what is the best way to present content, regardless of topic? Is there a general set of principles that can be used to make any post better?

In this post, I want to explain some of the conclusions I’ve come to. It will outline several ways we can make our content beautiful, regardless of what we’re writing about.

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Photography: Small Bee-Eater 01 by Enigmatic-Halcyon

There’s a segregation between two types of content across the web. Content with lasting value, enduring use, and lots of meaning, tends to come in big packages. Its opposite — content which is disposable, easily consumed and discarded, entertaining once and not again — is often bite-sized.

This binary is founded on a misguided assumption. The success of Seth Godin’s blog is proof that length is not a prerequisite for usefulness, that less words does not equal more disposability. A Brief Message — a blog containing meaningful design articles under 200 words — is founded on the same principle.

Often, the less words we have to work with, the better the result. Every single word is made to count. In a Web 2.0 world, where all of us have too many choices and not enough time, this is more important than ever.

There are many occasions for length, but the ability to write short articles packed with meaning is a valuable one.

Here are some things to try, to help develop this skill:

• Can you say something meaningful in under 200 words?
• Can you boil your next article down to half its size without losing any meaning?

Photography: dirty hands by y ordan

There is an argument to say that, in the realm of the printed word, what is written is not as important as who writes it. When it comes to web content, however, most people write as if the rule doesn’t transfer — as if the web is the realm of information only, and authors are loathe to leave a mark on their writing.

Writing dirty, as I see it, is not the same as talking dirty. It means writing with humanity. It means encouraging readers to unwrap words and get at their source: the author, the person.

Your readers can’t build a relationship with information. They can build a relationship with you. In this post, I want to discuss how we can de-sanitize our web writing and leave a big, colorful, human smudge on our words.

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Photography: Arm wrestling in Bricklane II by fabbio

One of the most common pieces of web writing advice you’ll hear is keep it short. People aren’t interested in reading web writing, the most they’ll do is scan it (or so we’re told). Rarely do you hear the suggestion made that readers could be encouraged to do anything else.

Cue Coding Horror, a blog with upwards of 60,000 RSS subscribers and an average post-length of around 1,500 words. The in-depth discussion occurring in the comments section also suggests readers aren’t scanning at all, but reading every single word.

In this post, I want to outline a number of ways you can create content of substantial depth while gripping your readers from beginning to end.

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Image source.

Aggregating links to content by other authors has been a staple item on the web content diet for years. Unfortunately, it’s an area almost completely devoid of innovation. Links are returned like results from an intelligent search-engine: a title, a description, a recommendation — as if things couldn’t be done any other way.

In this post, I want to suggest a number of new and interesting ways links could be both aggregated and interacted with.

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