7 Blogging Lessons from Time Magazine

I am a subscriber of Time Magazine. There are 7 important lessons you can learn from this influential magazine.  

1.       Ads: Apart from subscriptions, advertisements are an important source of revenue for magazines. Time magazine is no exception. However, you don’t find advertisements everywhere. Most pages are focused on content.  Too many advertisements will kill subscribers. Likewise, you don’t plaster banners ads all over your blog. It tells the readers you care more about yourself. Have one or two advertisements to support your effort to write more useful articles for your readers.

2.       Subscription postcards: You will always find subscription postcards inserted inside a magazine.  It is a clever way to make it easy for readers to subscribe to a magazine. It is post free. You do the same for your blog. Prominently display a widget for readers to subscribe to your future blog posts by RSS feeds or email easily.  

3.       Catchy headlines: This is one of the headlines in the August 20, 2012 issue: Go Glocal. Like they have coined Linsanity previously, it is an effective way to attract the attention of readers to read the content. Are your headlines attractive enough to entice readers to read your posts?   

4.       Quotes: There is a page devoted to sayings of famous people inside the magazine. This page is called Verbatim. People love to read quotes especially wise sayings from famous people. I post a daily quote to inspire my visitors. You should do the same  to spice up your blog

5.       Stunning images: A magazine without pictures is boring. Time is filled with breathtaking images and it adds more meanings to the words in an article. Upload a relevant image to strengthen the message in each of your blog posts. 

6.       Interview celebrities: There is another section called 10 Questions whereby a famous person is interviewed with 10 questions. I have yet to do so for my blog. I think it is a great idea to increase the popularity of your blog.  

7.       Short articles: I can finish a story in a Time Magazine by just turning to the next page. It is just nice for a magazine article. It is informative and entertaining.  You should allow your readers to read a blog article without scrolling or clicking more pages. Online readers do not have the patience to do work and look for things. They will move on to another blog in just a few seconds.    

Pick up a magazine and look for ideas to improve your blog.