Blogging Tip of the Day: Vol. 88

Today's Tip: Here's a "harp on" item, but it never ceases to amaze me how many people refuse to get this, or say they don't care. Presentation of your posts on social media mean a lot. Seriously folks, you are spinning your wheels if you can't make your posts appealing to the 20 second attention span of the average browser of social media, and the saddest part of it all is that it is really easy to fix. I am not saying this because I am an expert at these things I am saying this because I am an expert at failure, especially when my ego jumps out in front of my need and desire to be popular. Yes I have at one time or another stamped my feet and said "People should just come and read my crap because they want to!" and yes some do, but MOST DO NOT. If your presentation of your posts looks like garbage when compared to all of the other content that floats past everyone on a feed, then you will not be noticed. Now of course there will be some examples of people that can prove me wrong on this, and if you want to take their advice or example then feel free. I just wanted to get that out there before I point out the common presentation mistakes that I see, and how to fix them.

Presentation Mistake #1: You post in a way that minimizes your posts.

You see that little weenie graphic to the left and how it compares the the big bold graphic to the right? Barely visible to the average person who is just streaking through their feed? I had to go all the way back to July 10 to find an example of when I did that. The part that made me grumpy about it was I passed by about 150 things that I had re-posted of others that looked like that to get to the last time I did it. Again a lot of people would say that they don't care, but assume you are losing about 2 times as many hits because of that. Don't believe me? Look at the differences in +1s  ...

The only thing that was changed was the resolution of the image. Instead of having it set as 400 X whatever, I had it set as 800 X whatever. Of course the image has to be a high resolution to begin with or none of the social media will do anything but shrink it down to a little thumbnail, and completely eliminate the description underneath. Of course you can see how it demands a much larger portion of real estate. To get the screen capture I had to set my browser to 50% just to fit it all on my screen, while the one on the left didn't even take up half the screen at 100%.

Presentation Mistake #2: You post something with a graphic so itty bitty that it grabs your profile picture instead of the graphic in your blog. Seriously again, people who do this tend to be ignored because the average reader who is graphically fixated will just assume that you are posting the same things over and over again. Chances are pretty good they will start ignoring you all together if they think you are just a spammer. When I do this I immediately change the graphic with something higher resolution and re-post (often I delete the post that just had my profile picture and no graphic from the post) and viola! All fixed! Yes it will take an extra few minutes of effort, but we need to remember that we are TRYING, and part of trying is actual effort.

Now go out and work on your presentation!