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How to use Magazines to Spice Up your Blog Posts

How to use Magazines to Spice Up your Blog PostsUsing magazines to help you spice up your blog post is so under used. Everyone is happy to stick with the standard. Using magazines to get headline inspiration, font style and page layout is something I love doing. Its the designer side peeking through. You can find so much great ideas from magazines that are spending loads of money to get their magazines sold. Take the time to have a look through some magazines to get some ideas that catches your eye. If you stop and read an article then that’s a good headline and layout that you could use for your own needs.

Time to spice up your blog post

I am going to share a feature that caught my eye straight away, that I thought would be great for a blog post on any niche. I am going to show you how to break down an article, so you can recreate it for yourself.

This is the featured article that I enjoyed reading. It’s a good design to allow people to scan over the information and take it in quickly.

 

magazine article
Taken from the Nov / Dec 2013 issue of Women’s Health Magazine

There’s 4 parts to every article no matter what the publication, they include:

1 The main headline

Look at how you can tweak and adapt this headline to fit your business.
Brainstorm some ideas before you move to any other part. You must create your headline first because the rest of the article is answering your headline.

2 Images

Ideas on what images you can use that reflect your business. Also look at size, shape and composition of each image used.

3 The content

How you can make it relevant to your business. Remember this part is answering your headline so keep it focused and to the point. Use the content from the feature to judge how much you need to write. Why, because like the example above it is answering the headline but also making the content be apart of the whole layout. Plus the content in this article is short and to the point. At most you are looking at 2 sentences. Of course each article you use will be different this is the beauty of using magazines as inspiration.

4 The over all composition

The way it’s put together. Look at how you can copy the layout, you may find that you have to do more than simply adding a few images and text like every other blog post out there. With the example above you would need to create the numbers pretty big and save them as images, to make this layout work for you. Graphic software like Adobe Illustrator or Adobe inDesign would be great to really recreate this an other articles.

However by simply following the guidelines above from 1 -3 in your blog post will breathe some fresh air into a standard blog posts.

 

Over to you

Do share in the comment, where you get inspiration for your blog posts?

Janet Walker has been a designer & internet marketer for over 16+ years. She established her creative biz on the 1st page of Google (+ other search engines) within a year of being online. Which led to international media coverage. Her analytical thinking, marketing know-how & break-it-down methodology, allows her to naturally align strategies, & more. She’s become the go-to for individuals, small & sought-after business leaders in various industries.  JWGInternational’s core is to empower, elevate & support those using their Gifts to impact others.



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8 Comments. Leave new

  • This is a great article Janet! I have never thought of using a magazine as inspiration for how to compose a blog post, I will definitely be considering that now!

    Tania

    Reply
    • Hi ya Tani,

      Thank you, i’m glad you liked it. Yes magazines are an under used resources that can really set your blog apart from the rest.
      Do keep me updated if you experience with this. Come back and share your links.

      Blessings Janet

      Reply
  • I really love this idea! Who would have thought that magazines would be an awesome resource for spicing up the blog!
    KalleyC recently posted…Finding The Perfect WordsMy Profile

    Reply
    • Hi Kelly
      I know right, we use and see magazine all the time. They spend huge amounts of money to set up there magazines structures, layout images etc.. Yet we as bloggers are missing all those free ways to set up our blog post. I am going to do more on my blog post as i only use magazines for my other designs projects.

      Blessings Janet

      Reply
  • As many magazines that I have piled up. Can’t wait to dig through for inspirations.
    Thanks

    Reply
  • Very timely post I have just restructured my business to include DIY projects and tutorials. I have only launched the free one so far, but the layout pictured is perfect for a tutorial. Now to make my WordPress do it. :). Thanks, Joy
    Joy recently posted…It’s time for a change!My Profile

    Reply
    • Hi ya Joy,
      I’m glad you found this article, especially this magazine layout useful. A way to recreate this layout in a basic way would be to create your images ie: your tutorial steps. Then write your instructions in mini paragraphs first. Then add the relevant image to that paragraph and either left align the image so it sits to the left of the paragraph or right align the image to do the opposite. If your text is the right number if lines or less than the size of your images, the text should sit nice and snug next to each image.

      I hope that helps
      Blessings Janet

      Reply

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