Formatting a Step-by-Step. (Gonna Get to you girl)

I’m oak. You might remember me from the introduction and conclusion of this earlier blawgtips post by Chas. I’m a designer and in my spare time, I blawg about design here.

Why How-To’s Rock

Every time you come up with a trick or a work around that saves you time and effort (or is just generally cool) you are creating value. Collecting these tricks on your blawg in the form of “how-to” posts is a great way to build your personal brand and increase your reader base. If you’re creating value, and you’re posting that value, interested readers will find you. Once they’ve arrived at your site, it’s up to you to package that information so that the core idea is clearly communicated.

Having said that, step-by-step instructions can be intimidating. If I’m your reader, I don’t know how far below the fold your text is going to run. I have no way of knowing if I’m going to need a philips head screwdriver two thirds of the way through your process. Most importantly, perhaps…I don’t know what kind of a time investment your How-To is going to require, or how much effort is going to go into it. I won’t know any of the these things…unless you tell me up front.

Break Down (Go ahead…give it to me)

When you are putting together your process: Simplify.

Break everything down into the smallest reasonable steps and make each an unordered list element. The bullets will help visually separate each step making it easier for your reader to look away for a moment and then return to the browser window to move on to the next step. (If you have trouble with this one, just write “I will not write my super-complex process in the form of a long paragraph” 20 times on a sheet of paper).

As you are consolidating these steps, don’t hesitate to break things down further. As a ridiculous example: “Go to google.com,” could be further sub-divided into "Open your browser of choice. Type “Google” into the address bar. Hit return." Remember…this process makes sense to you because it’s your process…try instead to think like the uninformed Google searcher who just stumbled on it.

Tasks

Collect your steps into groups of steps. We can call these “Tasks.” Format your post with each Task listed as a a header, and the steps collected underneath the header as an Unordered List.

As discussed above, the Unordered List bullets will help your readers move visually through your process. Task headers will enhance this by breaking your long list of bulleted items into sets of items with a header acting as a visual cue that a new set is about to begin.

Tell’em What You’re Gonna Tell’em

My English teacher used to distill the process of essay writing to “Tell’em what you’re going to tell’em. Tell’em. Tell’em what you told’em.” (Blawgging is two thirds as easy because you don’t need a conclusion [emoticon]).

Here’s how you “Tell’em what you’re gonna tell’em:”

When you’re all done with your process, copy and paste all of your “Task” headers into their own Unordered List at the very beginning of your process (after your introduction text, if applicable.). Title this with it’s own header as “Process” or something like that.

Now, when you’re readers hit your step-by-step post, they’ll get a brief introduction of what you’re trying to convey, and more importantly: a visual cue before the process even starts of what your process entails. As an example, check out this post on my blawg where I discuss using Quicksilver to control iTunes.

I post some background, a bit of introduction as an explanation of what the post is intended to explain and then, under the header “The Process: 4 Easy Steps to Seamless Tunes” I collect all of the task headers from the process as an unordered list. I then begin the process with “Step 1” as a header exactly as I have it listed in the first bullet under “The Process…”

By doing this my readers will know at a glance that my process will have four “Tasks” (three if they already have QS installed) and they will be able to track their progress while scrolling through the rest of the post.

Remember (or…how I broke my own rule and added a conclusion)

If your work-around, or trick, or cool idea saved you time and effort, then it will almost certainly be valuable to others. Don’t self-censor because something seems too easy or too obvious, or because you read something vaguely similar elsewhere. Post it.