Todays task is a little different - you're not going to do any blogging.... in fact you don't have to be online at all.
Grab a coffee (or a beverage of your preference), a copy of your favorite magazine and a packet of sticky notes and you're set to go.
Read how to do today's task here.
Once you've done the exercise - tell us how you went below. What magazine did you choose? What did you learn that could impact your blog?
ProBlogger, DPS & TwiTip
No doubt, this was THE most helpful (to me) tip yet. Thank you, thank you.
Mike Wilke
Wow, what a great idea! I never thought of how something like this could help, but it really does. I am going to go to the library so maybe I can find a smaller more related magazine to look over.
I will have to do this over the weekend when I have more time. Something I have always loved to do is go to the magazine section and immediately grab the one that sticks out the most to me. Which one has the biggest headlines? Vibrant colors? Which ones sparked the most emotion? Then I would pick it up to see what I can learn and if I can apply it to my writing. It's always funny to see the same stuff over and over. It keeps on selling.
The biggest issue I have with most magazines is that they have stuff going on all over the place. So much in fact that I often don't know where to look, being bombarded with all sorts of images, words and colors.
I did however find a magazine more into my niche called "Happinez".. A "mindstyle magazine" (In Dutch..) that seems less chaotic. Key to any magazine is a proper content page so you can easily know where to navigate to (if it were a blog). Vibrant pictures, short stories and longer stories combined. Highlights of parts of the texts to draw you in. I think that's the biggest thing I've learned from the magazines. Take small parts of the text and highlight them in some way.
Take small parts of the text and highlight them in some way
This will draw people's attention to what is going on. Now it's the art of choosing exactly what to highlight to get people to read the whole text. Even if it's just so they can find the context and discover what the phrase really is about.
Small boxes with info also seem to be a great way to get quick reading. Anything goes to make the reader want to read more and make things as appealing as possible.
The last thing I've noticed is the column width, it significantly speeds up the reading speed to where you can almost scan an entire sentence at once. Use columns in your blogposts or at least, format it in such a way that it's an easy read. (Not to wide)
A lot of info from this one, and I'll be sure to use it all when I transfer my blog to its own domain. For the time being I'm stuck with wordpress.com and its limitations.
Mind the beginner A blog on beginning, it sounds so simple but it’s quite complex
It will be easy to pick up a fitness magazine for my fitness blog.
Hmm..I'll have to think about the magazine for my social media/real estate/internet marketing blog. LOL I think it will be a combo as I have magazines for all three that come to mind...
I'll have to check back in and report my findings..
I added this to the comments section of today's challenge post but am pasting it here in the forum thread too as I think it could be really helpful.
One other tip is that you can use magazines for your BLOG and WEBSITE COLOUR SCHEMES.
A male fashion designer took a workshop I attended a few years ago that illustrated this perfectly.
He suggested making an approx 5cm x 5cm garment stencil (ie a dress or a top etc) in (grey) card and using that to look at magazine pages through. Simply lay the stencil on a page and move it around to see what there is to see.
The idea being that the magazines have already gone to all the trouble of figuring the colour schemes out for you, so you don't have to.
Don't limit yourself to fashion magazines though - the images in nature, wildlife, and photography ones are perhaps the most inspirational.
I'd love to hear if this helps someone here.
Passionately supporting home education (aka homeschooling) law reform in Germany as a human right.
Thanks Darren! I've casually been thinking along these lines for my site about living a simpler, greener life. www.makingthishome.com I found myself doing so because I didn't have much access to print that was in English. I read the same two magazines over and over in Germany - one that's mine and related to my topic and one that's my husband's and not related at all... but it's in English.
I've just read through a magazine using all of Darren's tips and i'm not sure what more I have to offer that is unique? I write a personal blog, aimed at more women issues than men... I'm all over the place. I looked at a magazine targetting a similar market. I get ideas from this magazine and have previously used an article to write an opinion piece. So, from perspective it's great. Since i don't do advertising... yet.. that won't help and I'm using wordpress.com so blog formatting/changing not an option either.
I'll have to think about this.. The only thing that pops to mind, immediately, is that my blog allows real people with real issues to connect in a wah that's less glamourized? Excellent assignmetn, I'll have to look at ways it will add value to my blog.
I will say that this 31 day exercise is leading me to contemplate getting my own webpage and starting more independently!
df.
Oh, good timing! This month's Redbook just came in.
What a perfect excuse to spend my day filling up on my quota of filth!
Thank you!
"Long is the way, and hard, that out of hell leads up to light." // Web Development, Marketing, PR blog
I read as many magazine as I can get my hands on. I find it very interesting to read from Magazines that have a different life worldview than my own. It is wonderful to see what appeals to a broader audience, particularly people that I don't normally hang out with. I have read yoga magazines, pscychology today, The Oprah Magazine, Fast Company, and so many more. These are not magazines that I would ever subscribe to personally, but I find it eye opening to hear what is being discussed. I often can springboard an article with up-to-date topics and information for my own blog posts.
I find it more boring to read articles or magazine more in line with my own thinking because I don't want to copy someone else's ideas or phrases. When I read something that I disagree with I can effectively come up with my view and work it into a post in a positive way, not as a debate. It is good to be relavent to current trends.
I am a great magazine reader in general but hadn't honestly considered analysing one for my blog! I love this idea and have no doubt I'll use it a lot in the future. I have had ideas spark when reading but going through a magazine like this led to a lot more extensive thoughts and ideas. I used Community Care which is a magazine for social workers in the UK and exactly kind of articles and processes that I relate to. I actually link to a lot of their articles and have written for them as a direct result of them reading my blog - I had the assistant editor leaving a comment yesterday too! Anyway, obvious things are the stories which I can pick up on (and have done today) but more interesting to me were looking at the tangental issues like the layout, the offers, the choice of stories, and the headlines..
I will try and find some slightly broader magazines to look at over the next couple of days though as sometimes it can seem a bit too narrow in scope.
Excellent another excuse to go to a cafe.
One of the results of following this course is I've started using a lovely little cafe which I can people watch. The owner is a great guy with that classic Turkish hospitality and although I've only been there 4 times I feel I'm almost family.
He's happy for me to sit there for a couple of hours with just a coffee and maybe one of those lovely Turkish cakes. The food is excellent as well.
My next strategy is to start taking my laptop there regularly and write one or two posts. He hasn't go wifi, but I'm getting a gadget from my mobile phone company so I can sit there.
This is far better and far more sociable than just sitting in my spare bedroom typing.
ODTAA: One Damn Thing After Another Startups Let's Talk About Books &n
Magazines are a rich treasure trove of ideas, but I'm trying to find a way to keep them under control.
I subscribe to several magazines: Wired, Real Simple, Instructor, Writer's Digest. We also receive a bunch of magazines for other family members: Scientific American, National Geographic, Cobblestone, Odyssey, etc. AND, we get a few magazines as part of our membership in various organizations: Boy's Life, Girl Scout Leader, Natural History, the Metropolitan, etc. Oh, and let's not forget the ones that I've let lapse temporarily: The Economist, The Smithsonian, and Atlantic Monthly.
We're swimming in magazines! I've been trying to read and eliminate them, but the stacks are growing. Every timeI open a magazine I tear out multiple articles or pages with links to investigate.
Darren, I like the way that you are going through magazines critically. I will be using this checklist in an ongoing fashion, as those questions address a variety of potential problem areas, too many to address simultaneously.
For my own blog, I'm working on developing stronger introductions. That's the item I'm looking for as I read through stacks of magazines. Which articles draw me in, and which tune me out. I'm also curious as to how journalists deal with transitions and conclusions. I'm looking for less scholarly ways to achieve the same effect.
Thanks, again, for the excellent insight!
@sandrafoyt - Learn, Grow, Explore, Change the World - On Living By Learning</p
I'm looking forward to doing this assignment even though I'm still working on my list of imporvements from the first impressions challenge! The lady sitting next to me on a flight at the weekend gave me the latest Style and Real Simple magazines and I think they'll be perfect for this.
My son had a doctor's appointment this pm and that always means sitting in the waiting room. So I took my magazine with me. The first idea I got was to create a "contributor's page" - this would list each of my guest bloggers with a photo and short profile description. Real Simple does this for each issue and I enjoy reading about the different contributors.
this is something I happen to do regularly, it's fun and helpful.
Although I have used it to trigger ideas for articles and never tried it for blogging.
Great idea as always
We used used a popular Nature and also a Fitness magazine for our study.
Our Observations
The titles were always very short but are immediately followed by a short 10-20 word summary about what the article is about. This draws the reader in and lets them know what they are in for. The font used on the summary is slightly larger and bolder than the main body text. Sometimes a summary is super-imposed over a large graphic related to the article for added effect. The summaries are a great idea as they would force us to define our purpose i.e. ask the question "why someone would read this post?"
The use of alternating colors (light blue, red, black & dark greed) for section headings throughout posts looks really good - something we will try to reproduce.
On some posts, the first letter of the first sentence is made with an upper case letter - I always liked this but was never sure why it looks so effective.
Quotes and important extracts are highlighted in quote boxes (white text with bright red background) - a nice effect.
Overall we got some great ideas we will eventually incorporate into our blog.
Children are born ExcitedByLife. When did we forget?
So far, I used an online magazine. Then I was at a garage sale with free magazines. I almost took one until I noticed they were dated in the 1990's. I noticed they did not have some of the points you mentioned. They did not do a good job of pulling me in. Times have changed.
XD
I looked at four different magazines for this task. I learned a lot about targeting your audience, not just in subject matter, but also in the headlines, layout and front page.
For example, The New Yorker has no front page headlines, just a work of art. It seems to say "if you don't get it, you don't belong." Or something like that. Even the most serious articles are punctuated with off-topic cartoons or illustrated with cariacatures of the subjects. It projects exclusivity, superiority, and irreverance.
Every magazine uses a lot of pictures and illustrations to break up pages of text. I was surprised at how many pictures in Creative Screenwriting. The feature articles seem to have more image space than word space on the page. It makes sense that screenwriters need to be more visually oriented than other writers. I noticed when there was a page of three solid columns of text, they constrasting background colors for the columns to create visual interest.
I know I need to hire a designer for my blog. I just don't know where that fits in my budget right. now. :)
I came away with a better understanding that I need to add more photos to my blog. I have been adding one to each post, but I need to think about adding more, even if they are small, single color graphics, especially on posts that run to 600 words. I should minimize instances of solid text on the screen and not just count on my sidebar to break up the page.
Another exercise I plan to try is making a list of my favorite headlines and seeing how I can tweak them for inspiration on my own post titles and topics.
Write Fast - Eight Tips to Write Articles Faster is a post I am thinking I should add more images to. Within reason of course, I don't want to slow down the load time. Although, once it drops off the front page of my blog that will be less of an issue I suspect.
I didn't have a magazine. I used the local newspaper instead. My gawd.. I did not expect so many ideas. The exercise was quite overwhelming. Lot of stuff flying through my head.
Just made some notes: (thought will share it with all of you)
What I realized with this local newspaper was the strategic placement of ads.. The ads are so well used. Infact, what caught my attention initially were these ads.
Lot of them had sub-headline along with the main headline that gave more information about the article to follow.
Got an idea for a post as well. You've got to visit my blog to see the post, though..
Let me know some of your insights as well.
Cheers,
Vinil
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