Moan on Monday - blog formats

When all you see on accessing a blog is a bunch of text, are you tempted to read further?

Much as I might admire the individual artist and be interested in their work and thought processes, this format really puts me off.  Call me lazy, but I'd rather see a photo and then be led on to read their words.

Possibly people with this format of blogs need to consider carefully just what to put in those first 100 or so words. It's like a news bulletin - important info first, then info of diminishing importance. This not only allows the end of the article to be chopped of to fit the page of the newspaper, but also takes into account that people will stop reading when they feel they "know enough about it".

Sometimes the title tells you all you want to know, and the block of words says to you "you don't really want to know any more" whereas the picture tells you "there is more to find out".

Even when I simply scroll down the current blog page looking at the pictures, occasionally stopping to read, I can easily be tempted to click on the "Older Posts" button at the bottom of the page.

And another thing - consider the potential of captions, to slyly insert information into the minds of lazy scrollers like me, whose eyes drift naturally to small, easy-to-absorb, bits of information -

this is not my cat!
the photo was part of a caption competition

Maybe next time I'll moan about silly things people do to mistreat their beloved pets...