A little over a year ago, when we were only a few months deep into quarantine, I decided to do something random. I hadn’t done it before, so I had no experience doing it. I didn’t prepare for it, and I wasn’t even sure I wanted to do it. For most things in life, this isn’t a good sign when you’re about to start something new. But for me, on this very unusual occasion, it worked out.
I wrote my first blog post in May 2020 on a relatively new platform called Medium. When I explain what Medium is to people that don’t know about it, I tell them to think of something like The New York Times, but instead of news, it’s anything from psychology to programming to the latest TV shows. Instead of journalists and columnists writing, it’s anyone that bothers to sign up, and instead of being in print and online, Medium is a platform that resides entirely in the digital sphere.
What I love the most about Medium, but what is also one of the more tricky features of writing on the platform, is the fact that the platform is very visual. Similar to this blog, there’s a TON of features you can use to format your blog post. Embed images, italicize text, create block quotes like the one below, and so much more.
This is a block quote
It’s like you’ve got all this power at your fingertips, and as a wise superhero once said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” We have to know how to format and style a blog post, because even though one might think that doesn’t matter much, that the appeal of a blog post is only in its words, that kind of thinking is a bit outdated, and definitely not the mindset needed for Medium.
I remember when I wrote my first blog post. I had finished writing it on Google Docs, and I was finally putting it on Medium. But there were all these additional decisions I had to make. Do I bold this text or italicize it? Do I embed a link or an image? How do I give my blog post maximal impact? It’s a tricky thing, and it’s safe to say that I spent an additional hour or two formatting my post before I actually published anything.
In short, what blog post writing has taught me is that it’s not all about the words. It’s about how you present them, how you make them easy to digest for the reader, how you design each element to provide a pleasurable reading experience.
If you want to see my own attempts at blog post design, feel free to check them out here. Let me warn you though—I’m still learning, and if one thing’s for sure, it’s that I’ve got a long way to go.
