You know what’s better at paying attention than a homo sapiens with a mobile phone?
A goldfish.
I wish I was joking, but goldfish have an attention span of 9 seconds.
Your average visitor gets distracted after just 8 seconds.
Kind of like this:
More...
Statistically, most of you won't make it this far... But I'm happy YOU did!
This is rather depressing when you’re a content creator.
And it’s getting rougher...
Did you know a visitor reads on average only 20 to 28% of your content and 80% of their time is spent above the fold?
Basically you’re spending countless hours researching and writing this epic content just to realize nobody actually reads it.
You get zero comments to cheer you on, no shares on social media and your online business is still in the same spot when it should be growing steadily considering all of your efforts.
You start to believe that this content marketing stuff is not working.
Wait, don’t commit content marketing suicide just yet!
There is one thing you’re completely overlooking when creating your content, and I’m going to teach you how to make your articles so hypnotizing your readers won’t be able to stop reading…
How to Make Your Articles So Hypnotizing Your Visitors Won't Be Able to Stop Reading
Your role as a content creator is to help your readers consume your content.
The truth is that most people will first skim your article, before deciding if it is worth their time reading.
After this first scanning phase, they should:
- Know what the article is about
- Get the most important message
- Be tempted to read the whole article in detail
- Be willing to share the content on social media
Making your content hypnotizing is not about making it look pretty. It’s about helping your readers skim the article quickly, grab their attention and make them read and share.
Ready? Let’s take a look at the different steps!
STEP 1: Let's Breach the Wall of Text
Has this ever happened to you?
You go to bed early and you just want to read a little bit before dozing off. You open up a novel and 30 minutes later you want to go to sleep. But the story is so captivating you’re tempted to read the next chapter.
You browse forward to see how long it is… perfect, it’s only 5 pages.
“Just one more chapter” you think to yourself.
Before you know it, you’re 10 chapters further and you’ve lost another hour of sleep.
Which one seems easier to read?
To captivate your reader you should do the same with the paragraphs of your article as the chapters in the book. Make them short (3 to 5 sentences), this will make the text seem less daunting to read.
Once you’ve divided your article into short, catchy paragraphs, you can add subheadings to group several paragraphs.
The right way to use subheadings in your blog post
Using subheadings the right way will not only help your readers scan through the content and help them decide what paragraphs they want to read, it’s also useful for SEO purposes.
When writing online, you should use the HTML title tags (<h1> to <h6>) for your headlines and subheadings.
Michiel Heijmans
Using these HTML title tags in your articles gives a hierarchy to your page for the reader but also for the search engines.Use one H1 per page, of course being the main title of that page. H2 is for subheadings of that H1. Use it to divide content into scannable blocks; both Google and your visitor will like it. H3 is for subheadings of that H2.
STEP 2: Don’t Dodge the Bullets
You’re at a cocktail party, you look around the room and something grabs your attention. You notice her. She is the only women dressed in red, while all the other people are wearing black and grey.
She grabbed your attention because she stood out.
As Patrick Renvoise explains in his book Neuromarketing: understanding the buy buttons in your customer's brain.
"The old brain is sensitive to clear contrast,... It is wired to pay attention to disruptions or changes of state."
Use bullet points to put a red dress on your content.
Bullet lists make your content:
- Scannable
- Shorter
- Comprehensive
Use bulleted lists when the information has no hierarchy and numbered lists if the order of the elements is important.
You should not use bullet points when you need several phrases to explain a point, when you cannot start every bullet the same way grammatically, if you’ve already used lists several times in the text before (too many lists kill the purpose of using a list to stand out) or if you need semicolons to make sense of your bullet points.
You should use a list to:
- Create a visual break for your readers.
- Easily show a lot of information.
- Give hierarchy to the information.
- Pull out the significant parts of a text.
You should not use a list if:
- The information needs multiple phrases to explain.
- You can not start every bullet in the same way grammatically.
- You’ve already used lists several times in the same text before.
- You need semicolons (;) to explain the text.
Tell me, did you read the bullet list? Or the text just above it?
Have You Heard About the New Content Block Feature?
We added new a new feature to the Thrive Editor to help you build better looking content faster with far fewer editing steps: the Content Blocks.
Check out the pre-designed pros & cons lists in the Content Block gallery, that you can add to your posts with one click.
Learn more about this new feature in this post!
STEP 3: Be Bold
I bet you probably read these words, and what about these ones. I bet I got you to read these ones, too.
That is the power of bolding. You can direct the reader's attention.
Once you’ve used subheads, numbers, bulleted lists and other formatting to highlight the key elements of your post, read through it again — looking only at the text you’ve called special attention to.
Does the reader get the gist?
Have you pulled out the most interesting and relevant words, the words that will pull your scanner in and turn her into a reader?
When you’re scanning and you only read your headline, sub headlines and bullet lists, what information is still missing?
This is the text you should bold in your paragraphs.
Pamela Wilson from Copyblogger.
As you can see, bolding certain words in the text allows the message to come across even without reading the whole paragraph.
Don’t overdo it!
Too much bolding will just make the text harder to read.
STEP 4: Think Outside the Box
With more than 2700 titles, chances are you’ve read a “for Dummies”-book.
What makes these books so popular?
The Dummies-books all use the same structure. And they master visual elements to facilitate the reading and the consumption of the information of the book.
Heck, they even explain what you should not read (the grey boxes in the sideline) or what you should read only if you’re interested in the technical stuff!
This gives them the opportunity to make the information interesting and easy to read for many types of people. Total beginners will appreciate skimming only the most important information without getting overwhelmed, and more advanced readers will use the “grey boxes” and the “technical stuff” icons to get the most out of the book.
And you can do the same with your website content!
How to use text boxes in your blog articles
Use text boxes to make content stand out and grab attention or conversely, show supplementary information they can ignore without missing out. You can use these boxes anywhere in your content, and put as much information in them as needed to help your reader have a good reading experience.
Fun fact (that you can ignore completely):
Photoshop CS5 all-in-one for Dummies has been illegally downloaded over 74000 times on torrent websites.
But stick to this one rule: be consistent.
If you want to “teach” your readers how to read your content, you should always be consistent with the use of your text boxes.
Take a look at this “Bonus Tip” text box from the Yesware blog:
Thanks to the text box, the bonus tip stands out.
To make sure the reader knows how to interpret these boxes, every “bonus tip” should appear in the same green box, with the same colors and fonts.
One way to make sure to keep this consistency is to save your different designs as a content templates. Creating content templates will allow you to use the exact same text boxes in the future quickly and easily.
Another way of highlighting important information in the text is by using quotes.
Have you ever read something on a blog or in a book and thought: “This is brilliant, I wish I would have written this!”
Unfortunately, you cannot just copy the phrase, that’s called plagiarism…
But you definitely can borrow their wisdom by quoting!
5 Good Reasons to Use Quotes in Your Blog Articles
- They help you boost your credibility.
- They act as a second voice to reinforce your ideas.
- They can lead the way into a new subject or idea.
- They add variety to your articles.
- They are memorable and shareable.
But don’t take my word for it…
Kenneth Williams
"The nice thing about quotes is that they give us a nodding acquaintance with the originator which is often socially impressive.
The Social Quote: Click to Tweet
When a statement stands out to someone, they are more likely to share it.
That’s the power of a Click to Tweet quote.
You select an interesting piece of information (that’s less than 140 characters long) and you format it so your readers can share it with the click of a button.
The more reasons you give your readers to Tweet, the more chance they will actually do it!
The chances of sharing are bigger, and you add an interesting visual element to your article.
It’s a win-win!
STEP 5: One Image is Worth a Thousand Words
Let’s play a game… Look at this picture:
Now try to explain this to me in words!
It would take you several sentences to explain everything that is happening in the picture and it would be hard to convey the same emotion.
When used correctly, images can illustrate your point quicker than words.
But watch out…
Not all images are equal and some can hurt your article’s readability more than helping it.
The 4 Commandments of Making Your Blog Images Not Suck.
Rule 1: Thou shalt not use stock images.
Feel free to ignore me!
Irrelevant, generic stock images will do more harm than good. They lower your social shares and are ignored by your readers.
Your readers don’t want you to fluff up your text.
If you insist on using stock photos follow the instructions Tommy Walker is sharing on Conversion XL
- Check who is using the same picture.
- Get the proper rights to the picture.
- Alter the picture enough to really make it your own.
But there are other ways to use images in your articles that will actually help your readers.
Rule 2: Thou shalt look for opportunities to illustrate your text.
Your brain processes images
times faster than text!
This gives you 60,000 reasons to look for opportunities to illustrate a part of your text with a visual.
Create a graph for number heavy information.
Take a look at the example of the Busting the Exit-Intent Myth article.
Which one is easier to understand?
OR
In the second trigger test, we’ve tested showing the lightbox on exit intent, after 10 seconds and instantly on page load. The exit intent had a 1.73% conversion rate, which was the worst of all triggers. Triggering the lightbox after 10 seconds had a conversion rate of 3.27% and the instantly triggered lightbox converted at a 4.07% which is 235% better than the exit intent trigger.
The graph allows you in a split second to understand and process the information, while the text demands a lot of effort.
Another way to show data is to put dynamic visual elements in your articles. These elements can showcase data heavy information in a visually attractive way.
Use screenshots when appropriate.
Screenshots are perfect for tutorial style articles.
To make your screenshot really interesting, use annotations.
Here is an example of an opt-in form and how to improve upon it that Shane used in the article How to Improve Your Opt-In Form Conversion Rates.
Look for relevant multimedia content.
Often you’ll be able to find multimedia content to support your message.
You can add:
- Youtube, Vimeo or Vine videos.
- SlideShare or Prezi presentations.
- Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google+ or Pinterest posts.
- Infographics (You can find tons of them on Pinterest, Visual.ly or Alltops)
Rule 3: Thou shalt include an image every 350 words.
After analyzing 100 high ranking blog posts, Blogpros found out that they all had, on average, an image every 350 words.
To give you an idea, 350 words is about the equivalent of 5 paragraphs of 5 lines in Lorem Ipsum.
Rule 4: Thou shalt add captions.
This carrot told me I was fat. So I started my new healthy diet with him, and his family...
Your images attract the eye and the captions underneath your images will get a lot of readers.
Captions are an effective handbrake.
We’re used to seeing pictures and quickly scrolling by them. But the moment there’s a caption, we’re practically compelled to read the content under the caption. That’s because we want to be sure we’ve interpreted the image correctly.
It’s also why having photos and illustrations on a web page or sales page is very important.
It keeps the reader from skipping quickly from the start of the page to the end. The photo gets the reader’s attention, and the caption makes sure you keep that attention.
Sean D'Souza of Copyblogger
Use this real estate wisely to make the scanners want to read the complete text or to help them get the content.
STEP 6 : Where Most Content Creators Miss Out.
Reciprocity in social psychology refers to responding to a positive action with another positive action, rewarding kind actions. (Wikipedia)
This means that after reading your article, your readers are more likely to do something kind for you.
But you have to ask.
If you're not asking anything at the end of your article, you're missing out on an opportunity to connect with your readers and deepening your relationship.
What Is the Perfect Call to Action?
The action you’ll ask from your readers will entirely depend on you and your style.
Ask yourself:
- What would be the most valuable for you and your business?
- What is the next logical step for your readers to take?
Don’t try to ask for the moon.
After reading a blog post, your visitor probably isn’t ready to buy.
First, try to get them more involved with your company.
You could ask them to:
- Share your article on social media
- Subscribe to your newsletter
- Become a fan on Facebook
- Follow you on Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, …
- Leave a comment
- Sign up for a free trial
- Download an ebook
- Read another article
- Sign up for a webinar
- ...
Choose one call to action to include in your article.
Multiple call to actions will dilute the effectiveness because when your readers have too many options on what to do next, they won’t do a thing.
So avoid the “Share this article and comment and follow us on social media and read the next article and…”
Amazing, you’ve come to the end of the article!
Now it’s up to you.
Get more readers without writing more content.
The fastest way to start optimizing your blog is by reformatting content you’ve already created.
A good place to start is an old post you know has good content, and is still useful to your audience, but that your current readers probably never read because it’s hidden in your archives somewhere.
Reformatting this kind of content will help you to get more readers, more traffic and more shares without having to write any line of text.
Don’t just take my word for it, test it!
- Choose an article
- Go through the 6 step process
- Bump the article back to the top of your blog (by setting the publish date to the current day)
- Share this article on social media and send it to your subscribers
Next, let me know what happened!
If you enjoyed this article, take a second to share it on your favorite social media channel.
And if you have any feedback or questions, please leave a comment below!
Thanks Hanne – lots of very useful information – and all in one place 🙂
Just wondering if there is any way for more preformatted Content Boxes to be made available in TCB? They look great and I often see them in the Landing Pages but it’s not straightforward to incorporate them in our own posts.
Shane has demonstrated lots e.g. review boxes, pros and cons, product feature comparison tables and it would be wonderful to have easy access.
I guess it would be a bit overkill to add them all into TCB options, but might there be a way to copy them and we could then choose the ones we want and then add them as bespoke elements into our specific site? – Hope that makes sense.
I have the same problem but now solved. Yes it is possible. You just open the Landing Page and save the elements which you like to have on your page as content template. and when you are finished than go to the page or post and just copy paste the content template you have saved on TCB to your page or post and than you can modify the content of the page.
I hope this will solve your problem.
Hey Sanjay,
I’m happy you discovered a way to make it work for you 🙂
Did you know that you do not even need to go to landing pages? You can just click on the triangle in the right corner of any element on the page and save it as a content template.
Thanks for giving a new tip to me. But I am going to Landing Page template because I got readymade elements which I think good for me. If I select the Elements from the TCB than i have to format them in certain way but in Landing Page it is already formated and ready to use so saving them is a good Idea.
A
Hi Sandra,
Thank you for your comment.
Making more of these available is something we’re working on, but for now you can already make, safe and reuse your own content boxes.
Design them once, exactly as you want them to be and then click on the triangle in the top right corner, this will allow you to save the element as a content template and reuse it easily in all of your blog posts!
8 seconds…
O those good old days, when it was 8 seconds…I’m afraid that research is already old…
…but then again, our brain have already almost made up a decision in the first fractions of a second…long before it has actually read something…and that is not any recent development, but a hardwired survival mechanism that has been there for thousands of years.
There are ways to shift that almost instant judgement, but it has to be deliberate, and done in a way that creates a sharp break with what was believed…and that has to happen fast…often well within the first 8 seconds, because otherwise the person is gone.
Just a few thoughts. 🙂
Hi Peter,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
You’re completely right to say that we make an instant decision when presented with any information and this is a good thing, imagine we would have to pay attention to every single information we see or hear!
Grabbing the attention, even for only a second to help people make this decision consciously is one of the goals for marketers 🙂
I was actually looking for a content formatting guide. This will come in quite handy. I am going to save it and refer to it each time am writing a blog post. Thank you Hanne.
Glad you found it useful, Sumit!
Hanne, this is an excellent article which I will print out for future reference. It is a prime example of the principles which you enumerate in the article. Like the articles at Quicksprout, it is jam packed with useful information which is easily actionable by the reader. Thanks for writing it.
Thank you for reading it Simeon 🙂
Hanna,
Blown away with this Real content article. .. actually all of three Thrive articles are quite good…. and this is one if the best.
Taking your advise…. seems like a no brainer … and reformatting and embellishing my main site this weekend.
Will measure and post back results.
Pure Excellence!
Thank you!
Thank you Stephen! I would love to see your results!
Another excellent article, Hanne – thanks for sharing 🙂
Thank you Matthew
Thanks Hanne for sharing.
My pleasure David
Cheers to you folks, boy did I learn a lot with this article, great information.
I’ll put it to good use, and certainly bookmark this site.
Thanks again,
Jim E. Novak
Hi Jim,
Thanks for commenting! I’m happy you found the article useful!
Great post Hanne and full of seriously great info.
I actually read somewhere that attention spans are actually going down every year so these kinds of methods should hopefully offset some of that!
Also interesting about the amount of pictures per set amount of words. I always thought that only a few pictures per post was enough.
Hi Harry,
Yes the attention span was still 12 seconds in 2000… So we already lost 4 more seconds 😉
This has to be the most complete guide to formatting. While a lot of these were known facts like including images that are engaging, using quotes, adding a tweetable quote etc. the addition of statistics in some of these in the post above stamps the fact that these really work.
There were quite a few mentions about Copyblogger and it is indeed a fact that 2 blogs that I find to be the best formatted are Copyblogger and NeilPatel.com.. And probably that is what makes the posts on these blogs interesting to read..
Hi Dilip,
Those are indeed quality blogs that know how to engage their readers, formatting is without a doubt one of the ingredients 🙂
Thanks Hanne, I really liked – and could relate – to your example about reading your book at night and just checking ahead to see if you can read another chapter. And it was a good idea to do the same with the paragraphs of your article as the chapters in the book.
Hi David,
Yeah I lost a lot of hours of sleep because of that! Now let’s try to make our website visitors forget they wanted to do something else 😉
Thanks Hanne,
Another great actionable post from a blog that is fast becoming an authority in this space. Keep at it.
A technique that should be given much more consideration than it actually receives is the numbered list.
I am not talking about numbered lists such as -’10 best plugins for WordPress’ or ‘ 40 fantastic WordPress Themes for 2020’.
I am talking about those step by step numbered lists or ‘idiot’ guides with each and every number giving an actionable solution that moves people forward.
It is human nature to follow an ordered list. It is the simplest form of education and if it actively engages your reader and has a positive outcome that moves them forward then they are much more likely to share it and come back for more.
Google has picked up on this recently and many top results on page one are now occupied by a highlighted boxed numbered list, particularly if you are looking for a ‘how to’ or ‘step by step’ solution.
They may look ugly and fellow bloggers may feel a little reticent in using them but they work.
Jonah
Hi Jonah,
Thank you for your comment! You’re right about the numbered list being an excellent way to guide the readers!
I’ve seen the highlighted boxes in Google coming up lately and indeed these are numbered lists, so definitely something to keep an eye on.
What plugin do you use for that click-to-tweet box? It looks WAY better than the ones I’ve tried
Hi Daniel,
The Click to tweet box is done with our Thrive Content Builder (it’s what we use to create all of the text boxes, quotes, nice lists, …) You can find more about it here –> https://thrivethemes.com/contentbuilder/
So happy to be a member of the Thrive Family. This is so much more than buying some plug-ins. You do deliver so much more with your ongoing training in various ways. Thank you so much for that. Could you go a little deeper on how to create that tweet box with Thrive Architect? I guess there already is an article about that somewhere in the awesome Thrive Space.
Hanne – you ROCK! This is my new Bible of formatting and making my posts more readable!
Thanks Mark 🙂
Thanks Hanne, this article provide a really good guide line to write a blog post or news on a website. Love the way you simplify the steps and gave examples. Look forward to read more of your articles. 🙂
Thank you Sunny.
Great article Hanne! I love the way you pulled me through the entire
post, beautifully done…
> Super informative
> Visually compelling
> Instructional without becoming overwhelming
Please continue to enlighten us. You have my attention!
Thank you very much Justin, glad I got you to read 😉
Awesome stuff Shane! You never stop amazing me with the depth in your posts 🙂 Do we visitor behaviour on the page with heatmaps? do you think thats a good option that will allow you to split test and make tweaks…
I can’t take credit for this one, Vishal! This was all Hanne’s work.
Heatmaps can help you get insights, but only on pages where there’s a lot of interactivity. In a typical blog post, there’s a lot to read but not much to click, so a heatmap won’t provide that much useful info.
Great post Hanne – some very useful tips here and each point is well-researched.
Thanks Mark 🙂
Okay, how does one get these share buttons and make sure they direct people correctly. Call me a candidate for the Dummy Series on this topic, for sure.
Great post!
Where can I get those kind of images that you use in post featured image?
Thanks Artur,
Those images are custom made by our designers so you will not be able to find exactly the same 🙂
This is really valuable article, thank you so much for sharing it!
I would have one question about the use of quotes in Thrive Visual Editor. I can insert the quote with the Testimonial option, however, I can’t find where to change the color of the quotation marks. I changed the background color to white, but this makes the marks almost invisible. I would like to have black or grey marks. Is this possible? If not, could you add this to the next update? I also find quotes very important, but I can’t use them with red box.
I would appreciate your answer. Thank you.
Natasa
Hi Natasa,
I’m glad to hear this article was valuable to you.
To answer your question, for the moment you can not change the color of the quotes. If you want to customize every element of your quote box, the best way is to create one box exactly as you want your testimonials to look like and than save that one as a content template to reuse it every time you need a quote.
I hope this workaround can help you out.
Ok…I have been curious about this for some time now. Are your blog posts all made with the content builder from scratch or is this the way the ‘ignition’ theme posts look straight out of the box? There are some styling features in this post, such as the ‘click to tweet’, which I do not see in the Thrive shortcodes. If these posts are all made with the content builder then that would make sense (sense there is a quote/twitter function in there), but also seems complicated to do on each post. I can only hope to one day make visually stunning posts like you all do…keep up the great work!
Hi Andrew. I’ll satisfy your curiosity 😉
Yes all our post are made with Thrive Content Builder and actually this is not complicated at all!
Everything is drag and drop and super quick. It would have taken me an eternity to make this type of visual post in the WordPress editor.
Thank you Hanne. You make great suggestions in your post here… but what tool facilitates doing these basic word processing edits?? AND… stays out of the way of being creative?
This topic is deeper than most people give the time and attention to. If you would please, don’t dismiss my post here.
I’m going to suggest Thrive Content Builder (TCB) is not the tool for this task. And, your comment above to Andrew T that “it’s not complicated at all” is dismissive and unfortunate.
Perhaps TCB is not complicated, I’ll give you that… but it is just the wrong tool in the first place. That is the problem. Let me explain.
I have and use TCB and find it a real distraction to the task we are talking about here and that is: word processing creating blog posts. It is frustrating having the creative process interrupted by technical website formatting.
If you would, please follow the comparison to the common Microsoft tools of PowerPoint and Word. TCB is like PowerPoint… and the missing tool in the Thrive tool set is… a word processor.
Using Thrive Content Builder is like trying to use PowerPoint as a word processor… it is just the wrong tool. It is clunky, slow and far too technical.
Is TCB an amazing tool? A resounding YES!! BUT, for it is for building websites and PAGES… NOT word processing blog POSTS.
People never use PowerPoint for word processing. It makes no sense. Is PowerPoint complicated? No. Is it easy to use. Sure. But, is it even the right tool for the job? No. We are talking word processing here?
– bold
– italics
– quotes
– bulleted lists
– numbered lists
– text boxes
– insert an image every 350 words (I like that measure thank you)
– tweet quotes
We want to do all these things in a fluid experience.
When writing a post I’m immersed in content and word choice and grammar and communicating a message and research my topic. I don’t at all want spend a nanosecond on web page formatting to make a bulleted list. To do so totally disrupts the creative process I’m in.
To make bulleted list with TCB:
– let’s say 5 items in a list
– TCB forces me to create 5 separate text boxes
– click into each one, so 5 times separately
– change the formatting in 5 text boxes separately
– change the padding and margins of each separately 5 times
– change the icon in each one separately (and this can’t be done all at once, the icon must be changed in 5 separate and different text boxes)
Phew… then 5 to 7 minutes later I can continue with my writing exercise.
But wait… I’ve completely lost my train of thought. I’ve gotten out of a right-brained creative activity and gone totally to the logical left brain.
It takes me 7 to 15 minutes to get back to where I was. (That is according to experts and I would agree). This is crazy and a complete distraction from the creative word processing task at hand.
So when you say to Andrew T: “Yes all our posts are made with Thrive Content Builder and actually this is not that complicated at all” … you are really saying… it IS complicated but you want us to not worry about it and just be okay with it. This is dismissive. Sorry to say it.
To your other point, yes drag and drop is super quick… but you didn’t add the laborious format, format, format, format, format, that needs to occur after the drag and drop. Formatting is needed to get that elements you speak of in your blog post looking wonderful.
Do people use PowerPoint for word processing. Never. Why would anyone do so? Sure we could say that PowerPoint is not complicated at all… but the reality is that nobody actually uses PowerPoint for word processing… so why do you suggest that we all use TCB for word processing.
In my opinion this is what you and the Thrive team are asking us to do… use a website building tool to do word processing… but it is not the right tool in the first place.
Is it better than the WP editor… maybe… however, I am finding the editor to be quicker as the tools I need are right there and the clicks involved with going in and out and in and out of the TCB text editor are just not faster.
So… my question is…
1. Can the Thrive team pleeeease consider building a word processing tool to help us create blog posts. (Because once the site is built… it is worked happily ever after daily with blog posts).
WordPress is all about PAGES and POSTS:
– TCB is amazing for building PAGES… but
– Please make something amazing for creating POSTS?
2. In the meantime, what tool is out there that makes blog post writing a dream?
TCB does not cut it.
Hello Tom,
Thank you for your feedback.
First, I need to say right away that we are not going to create a separate tool for word processing. Having two different tools for such similar tasks would add enormous cost, cause a lot of confusion among users and probably not add anything significant to our bottom line.
I see what you’re saying with the comparison of Word and PowerPoint, though. At the same time, I’ve never had any of the issues you describe and I think I can make two quick points to show why:
1) I don’t recommend doing content research, developing, writing and formatting all in the same step. For me, the research part is completely separate and I use tools like Evernote to gather ideas, notes etc. Once that phase is complete, the writing process starts, where all I do is write. And I usually do this directly in TCB. Apart from very basic formatting (headings, bullet points), I only write, in this step. Usually one or two drafts that are then reviewed and only after that do I start inserting images, content boxes, layouts etc.
During the writing process, I just add notes in the text if I later want to insert an image or box or anything like that. This way, my hands never leave the keyboard, but I still end up with all the information I’ll later need to complete the post.
2) For the basic formatting, as mentioned above, the time I takes me to do it is equivalent to the time it takes in something like Word. You mention bullet points as an example. Here’s how I add bullet points in TCB: when writing the first point, I click on the “bullet list” icon to instantly change the pagragraph into a bullet point list. Then, I keep writing and hit “enter” every time I want to add a new point. In other words, exactly the way it’s done in Word.
If I want an icon, then I insert the styled list instead of a paragraph and repeat the same thing. Write each point, hit enter to add a new point. The styles and colors for all points can be changed all at once when you do it like this as well.
Having said that, bullet points are one of the weakest elements we have and you’ll see that vastly improved (along with many other improvements) in TCB 2.0.
I love that embedded twitter thing you have going on.
Taking your advice regarding paragraphs too.
Thanks Hanne. Super article. I already use some of the suggestions here but can certainly try some new ones too.
Great insights, Hanne! I’ve definitely got some great ideas for making my blog posts more engaging and fun to read.
I came just to read about the twitter part, but ended up reading the entire article! Thanks for the engaging post 🙂
Never thought to put captions on all of my pictures, but I think that’s something I will start doing.
Great to hear Westin
Hello, i use focus blog theme to my site but I use category as a page.When I visit a category it shows me this text in up of my category post.
Text is here:
Archive
Category Archives for “baby mattress reviews”
baby mattress reviews
How i can remove this area from my blog?
Thank you Hanne for this very helpful content. I admit I haven’t made even a single one blog, yet I really love to. My purpose is to pursue not just my career, but to help other people by sharing anything relevant in my life which they can do in theirs as well. God bless you!
Hello,
Nice post, i would like to ask which thrive builder element can be used for the Pros & Cons section. Or is there a tutorial on using every element of thrive content builder.
Regards
Hi,
For the pros and cons, I used a two-column layout with a styled list.
You can find some interesting hacks in this post and also a complete review post breakdown here.
Both will help you take your content builder knowledge to the next level 😉
This is all really useful material. There’s obviously so much to learn about how people view just about everything and images are so effective in spreading the message….take the mobile phone. Yet people still read books, so what are they looking for, really. Here you seem to have covered most of the angles, for the moment. Really effective material.
This is indeed a very useful article. I know it’s a bit old now, but I’m just setting aside some time to get to grips with Thrive Themes, so took a look.
However, I’m a bit stuck on point no 1. I’d love to add some sub headings to my posts as you suggest, but I can’t work out how to do this in TCB. There doesn’t seem to be an element for headings.
Am I missing something obvious, please can you point me in the right direction?
Hey Lindsay,
You can style any text element to be a subtitle.
Use the paragraphe/text element, write your title and click on it. You’ll see a dropdown menu “paragraph” this is where you can style your text and make it a header (h1) or subheading (h2 or smaller).
Hope this helps 🙂
Hello Hanne,
Awesome post. Answers almost every question I have as a newbie. One thing I like to do is just copy talented people until I get better. Could you please tell me a few thing not mentioned here. What is the font sytle / name. What is the body text size, and what are the 3 colors I see here, they look like grey shades to me not black. Love the look and feel and want to copy this until I feel that I have enough experience to even have an opinion.
Thank you Hanne for taking the time to teach us.
Jimmy
Hi Jimmy,
Copying is a good strategy, but only if you copy the important stuff. While font, font size and color might help readability of you website any decent theme should have good fonts/colors. This is not what will make your readers leave or stay.
That being said, we use Open Sans as a font and #555555 as the shade of grey. But we’re currently looking into changing some of these details 🙂
Thank you Hanne, this is helpful.
Hy Hanne!
Amazing!
I already use some of the suggestions here but can certainly try some new ones too.
Great to hear!
Awesome post!
Thanks Karine
I know this article is almost a couple years old already… But I still find it when searching your site and find useful things. Thanks for the good work!
Happy it’s still useful Craig!
Great article Hanne,
Thanks so much for sharing this awesome info. I can’t wait to implement your tips on my blog.
I guess my question is this, am new to Thrive Content Builder. I want to know is it possible to incorporate everything you explain without using TCB? That is, can all the above be added to a regular WordPress post without TCB? Let’s say “content box”?
Thanks again,
Kechi.
Hi Kechi,
Not without writing code 🙂 That’s why we only use TCB to write blog posts.
Thanks for responding Hanne.
Am definitely getting TCB.
Quick question: Do you guys have coupon codes for first timers?
Have a pleasant weekend.
Kechi.
Hanne I love your posts… always awesome
Thanks Deborah
Hanne, this is another great article with great tips for irresistible post formatting. I would like to have seen Shane’s revision of that opt-in box. Also, what program do you recommend for Comments?
I would suggest Thrive Comments
You practice what you preach and I was led through the whole post. Very activating! Thanks!
Outstanding info – as always. I had not thought about some points and didn’t understand others before.
Thanks for such complete and useful info I can use NOW.
Happy to clarify this for you Ali
Wow, Great information for laying out my message and cutting to the chase, which keeps the person engaged and requesting more info.
Thanks John
Some great suggestions. I will begin implementing some of these.
Really useful information. I knew half of this but you added some very useful tips. Been trying to make my articles more scannable. I like the idea of rewriting old posts. Will try this tomorrow. Thanks for this post.
Excellent article. A big help to my project.
Perfect explanation, very easy to understand with simple and objective terms, I liked it a lot.
I wish you much success.
Hello!
I just switched to Thrive Theme on my blog and love it!
My blog has a lot of blobkquotes which used to show up with a grey background on the old theme. Now with Thrive Themes there is no more background. Where can I style all the blockquotes? Thanks!
Hi Mary,
Happy you like it!
To change the style of the blockquotes go to typography and click on the edit pencil: https://share.getcloudapp.com/DOuxElwl
Then select the blockquote by clicking on it (you’ll see “blockquotes” selected in the breadcrumbs) and go into background style: https://share.getcloudapp.com/E0uneX8K
Hope this helps,
Hanne