Friday, August 22, 2014

Rock the Blog (3)--Jump breaks & emails


Rock the Blog is a "How To" for bloggers!

From graphics to html and all kinds of bloggery goodness!

Since I'm based on Blogger most posts will revolve around the Blogger platform though some ideas may apply to Wordpress as well.

Using Jump Breaks for posts & emails!

Alright! I was asked a bit back how I get only part of my blog posts to publish in my emails and 
on my blog page with a <read more> tag that you click and it takes you to the full post.

This is something I LOVE and that I'm really glad I started doing for a couple reasons I'll explain below and really appreciate when other bloggers have implemented them.


For yall with no clue what I'm talking about here are some examples.

 This is what the blog will look like on the home page without using jump breaks (on the left) and with them (on the right). 


And in an email sent out to subscribers they'll be shown this image with the "read more" prompt instead of the full body of the blog post.



Two reasons for me. 
  • Setting your emails up like this-- in my experience--can increase blog traffic and comments which is something most bloggers are hoping to do. Instead of just reading a review or guest post in their email a teaser is given and they have to click through to read the article. This will hopefully increase chances of comments since they're already ON the blog page now and can quickly comment after reading the article instead of reading and moving on to the next email.   
  • Some blog posts are just...LONG. And attention spans just... aren't. When I'm visiting a blog for the first time or just checking in on them quickly and scrolling through posts it's wonderful when they use the page breaks because you can quickly see quite a few posts and what's happening on the blog instead of having to scroll...and scroll... and scroll through blurbs and buy info and linky lists, etc only to get to the end of one blog post and then start your scrolling again. I personally give up quickly because it's just a time suck kind of thing.
Alright so how do you actually get this going? 
You've got two options for set up. 

This can be done as a whole "idea" where you apply it to both blog and email or you can 
opt for just on the blog. Verra handy.

For the actual blog posts...

In DRAFTS this is what you'll see.
On the left is with no page break. On the right is with a page break.
In each post you can decide where you want the page break to be and then just click that little button that looks like a piece of paper ripped in two.

It'll add a grey line where the jump will occur.

That will be where the post cuts off on your main home page and will have a <read more> link at the bottom of it.


For email subscriptions...

Again this is really easy and for this part something you only have to do once.

In your dash board go to Settings down on the left and select Other.
There will be a line that says Allow Blog Feed ?
Click there and then select "Until Jump Break"

Your emails will now only show up to that point and then have a link with "Read More" where followers can click through to read the entire post.


And...that's it! It's really a very quick thing you can implement.
I've really like how it's worked for my blog. 
If you've got any questions just let me know. Happy to help where I can :)

Do you use Page Jumps?


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~Anna

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