Robin Blandford [ ByteSurgery.com - Digital Media Engineering ]

24/01/08 Post Structure: Branding Your Text

SINGAPORE - Working in a news agency, I am surrounded by news. Very quickly you get a deep respect for the organisation required to collate, edit and wire incoming submissions from the 2,400 Reuters journalists reporting from 196 bureaus across the globe.

While I’m involved in the technical delivery rather than the editorial, part of this influence on me is writing structure. Once you’ve seen enough, you can spot a Reuters news post without reading it. You know what to expect, to look for and where.

This made me think about my own blogging post structure, especially for Team Geared Up. I took some inspiration from Reuters stories leaving the next step to define a structure language, example below. The group of us settled on the following structure to keep posts recognisable across a multi-author blog…

[IMAGE] / [VIDEO EMBEDDED]
{blank line}
CITY,COUNTRY (Team Geared Up) - your text here. your text here. your text here. your text here. your text here. your text here. your text here. your text here. your text here. your text here. your text here. your text here. your text here. your text here. your text here. your text here. your text here. your text here. your text here. your text here. your text here. your text here. your text here. your text here. your text here. your text here. your text here.
{blank line}
-Author Name-
{blank line}
(Image Credit: Your caption here with link, by Photographer Name)

Do you have a structure? What is it? How do you define and communicate it?

Go on… tell me about the benefits.

1. People become familiar with your layout allowing them to scan/read more of your content quicker.
2. It’s easier to track your writing as it gets syndicated.
3. It makes sure you always remember to give credit to your sources.
4. It reduces silly, short, spur-of-the-moment, badly researched posts.
5. Signing off gives it a more personable feeling when a lot of niche blogs are acting professional/corporate.
6. It shows our locations, giving wider international appeal. We’re a travel related blog after all.
7. We have 280 people consuming via RSS Readers only. This is a way to brand your text.

Of interest, I’ve just noticed that official Reuters Blogs don’t use structure. Of note, I must really link to the Irish king of structure who has not yet past a un-structured blog post before my eyes.

-Robin-

(Image Credit: I snapped this shot while sharing a taxi with one of our Energy Correspondents this morning. Pictured is the Reuters Singapore Jumbotron, showing the falling (then recovering) Asian stock markets after Tuesday.)

Tags: blog, branding, Reuters, structure

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