Remember when you were in fourth grade and you had to write your first mini-biography on a president of the U.S. or other famous person? One of my favorite parts of this was the timeline. It was a built-in outline that made it very easy to stay on track with the report. Before you ask me if I really thought like that in the fourth grade, the answer is yes. I have always been an academic nerd and loved writing of any kind.
I always took the timeline very seriously. I would spend a long time getting the line perfectly straight, perfectly measuring the distance between the years and carefully writing out the text. Little did I know that my love for timelines would later come in handy for blogging. Over the last couple of weeks I have come up with several ways in which timelines can be used to engage readers, add another point of interest to your posts and help you visually organize your goals.
We all know that when setting goals it is best to be specific. By creating a visual timeline, you can actually see what you have decided to accomplish. If you discuss your goals with your readers, this is also a great way to show them what you are up to. At the start of this month, I posted my goals. I certainly could have used a timeline to show my plans. Perhaps even more effectively, I could use a timeline to show what and when I accomplished things during a set amount of time.
A timeline can also make a great component of a post. If you blog about technology, you could show the progression of televison or MP3 players. By using a timeline in the traditional sense, you give your readers a visual overview of your post. Images are proven to interest readers and timelines are a very effective storytelling device.
It really does not matter what the topic of your blog is, a timeline can be a great complement to many blog posts. Whether you use it to track your own work or the lifetime of wireless technology, your readers will find a timeline engaging and refreshing.
In my next post I will discuss a few different ways to build a timeline to use in a blog post. Make sure you check back in to read it. I found a really cool, free tool that can easily be used to create an interactive timeline.
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