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  5. Blog writing guidance

Blog writing guidance

Blog posts are a great way to share information, as well as promote the successes of Queen Mary staff and students. Follow this guidance to ensure your blog content is impactful and follows our best practice rules. 

Word count

Try to keep blog posts around 500 words long, and for news round-up stories aim for no more than 600 words. The average web user reads around 100-200 words on a webpage, so the longer your post, the less likely people are to get to the end.

Intro text

Please use the Intro Text element within T4.  This should contain one to two sentences to spark curiosity and contextualise the subject matter. Eg how does it relate to what’s going on in the wider world? Or how does it relate to our target audience?

The Intro Text content type within T4 will also help boost your search engine optimisation (SEO), so make sure to include any keywords summarising the content on the page.

Here is an example:

Each year, tens of thousands of students use Clearing and Adjustment to get into a great university, study a programme they love and make friends for life. Here are some tips to make the process easier for you.

Breaking up the text

Headings

  • Avoid massive chunks of text. Use regular headings to break up the text into digestible sections. When writing for online, the more headings the better.
  • Editorially, headings are useful when indicating a change of topic or to reinforce a particularly powerful point.

Images

  • Try to include photos and relevant imagery where possible. You can use the Queen Mary digital asset library, Canto, to source these.

Quotes and attributions

  • If you have good pull quotes, break the blog post up with these. You can use a mix of loud and muted quotes. We recommend no more than three per blog. 
  • When talking about a student in your blog post, announce what they’re studying plus year of study in this format: Sean, Actuarial Science, second year.

Further reading

  • You may want to give your audience the opportunity to enjoy further material related to the blog post. This you can do via the Related links content type.

Note: 

The Content and Brand team can help you with your copywriting projects. We have a number of resources for you to use in the first instance on our toolkit page. If you need more in-depth assistance, email content@qmul.ac.uk. 

 

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