Red Sweater Software has just released MarsEdit 4, the ultimate blogging tool. I’ve been using MarsEdit since the previous version was released, back in 2010. (Yes, it’s been seven years since there was a major update…) Just about everything I write for this site – and other blogs I manage – is written in MarsEdit.
It’s got great features for blogging. You can set any font you want in the editor, and use your own blog’s theme for previews. You can write with your HTML code visible, or you can use a rich text editor. It works great with WordPress – which is what I use for blogs – handling some of the unique features, such as post formats, featured images, and more. It can download and store a full archive of your blogs, so you always have the text of your articles handy. And it makes adding images to your articles easy, letting you choose the alignment, size, and even handling retina images correctly.
In addition, the great Safari extension lets you select text from an article on a website and open a new post in MarsEdit; that’s how I create posts here where I quote an article.
I’ve been using MarsEdit 4 for nearly a year, in alpha and beta versions, and it’s the best tool available for blogging on the Mac.
But why write blog posts in the first place? Long ago, I thought that an active blog would bring people to Illuminations and that they would then buy our excellent DVDs and perhaps even commission us to make ground-breaking television and other media marvels. I don’t think it has ever worked like that, although I have met a heartening number of people who have read a post or two, and for whom that might have made them think a touch more positively towards us. There is a utility also in simply being a contributor to debate and helping to raise awareness of interesting things, whether this is a season of obscure archive television, a DVD release of an arthouse classic, or an unjustly overlooked book. Mostly, though, I have long thought that maintaining a blog is above all about personal satisfaction, about affirming things for myself that seem intriguing, about trying out notions, and sometimes about having a semi-public space to work things through. So if nothing more it needs to make sense to me, myself and I to find the time and the focus to post.
John Wyver of Illuminations, a video production company specialize in filming documentaries and theater in the UK, shares some thoughts about blogging. His blog is just a small part of his company’s website; the rest is about his productions, and includes a store where you can buy DVDs.
Why do we blog? For me, part of the reason is to promote my brand; I link to articles I’ve written on various websites, and this helps inform a band of faithful readers who enjoy my writings. But some of my articles here exist just because I have things to say, and this is a place to say them. Writing is my full-time job, so writing a couple of articles on my blog doesn’t get in the way of my work; it’s actually part of it. And some of the articles I write are seeds for paid articles I later contribute to various publications.
Everyone has different reasons for blogging; that’s what makes it interesting.
By the way, you can read my interview with John Wyver where he discusses how he produces the films of productions at the Royal Shakespeare Company. And you can see his next production in cinemas in the UK and around the world, from June 8: a striking new production of Hamlet, with an astounding young actor.
Depending on how you got to this article, you may have seen one of a number of texts that attracted your attention. You might have come here through a Google search, in which case you saw a title and the beginning of an article. If you clicked a link in your Twitter timeline, you just saw the title of this article. And if you came through my RSS feed, or my weekly newsletter, you’ll have seen an excerpt.
I used to let WordPress create its own excerpts; they take the first 55 words of each post. But I recently changed to writing custom excerpts, because I realized that they are much more useful to readers.
When you write a custom except for a post or article, WordPress uses that instead of the default 55-word excerpt. To do this, just write one in the Excerpt field that displays in the WordPress admin interface. (If you don’t see this, click Screen Options at the top of the window, and check Excerpt.) You can also do this in some third-party tools. I use MarsEdit to write my articles, and post to my blog. In MarsEdit, choose View > Excerpt Field to have this display at the top of the window.
A custom excerpt is what we call a “dek” in the trade. It’s a summary of an article, which appears below the headline, but above the story. In print, and on some websites, you may see this dek; on most blogs, you don’t. There are several advantages to using custom excerpts.
Your RSS feed will be much easier to read, and each article will have a custom summary instead of just picking the first words of your article. Since you can craft this summary, you can choose how you want to present an article to get more readers to click through. To make sure your RSS feed uses excerpts, go to Settings > Reading in the WordPress dashboard. Next to For each article in a feed, show, check Summary.
I send out a weekly newsletter, which essentially reproduces my RSS feed. Since I use custom excerpts, the newsletter is more concise, gives more information, and looks a lot better.
When someone searches your blog, or when they click on a category link (such as this one, for the Tech category) or a tag (such as this one, for articles tagged iTunes), they’ll see titles and custom excerpts, making it much more likely for people to read more articles on your blog.
I post all my articles to Twitter and Facebook. While Twitter is limited to only displaying article titles, Facebook also displays the custom excerpt. Again, readers are more likely to click through to an article if there is a clear, concise summary.
I’ve seen some articles that say that Google uses custom excerpts, if a site uses them. This isn’t the case for my site in Google’s each results, and this may be because I’ve only recently started using them. I don’t have time to go back and write 2,000 custom excerpts, so I may miss out on having Google pick mine up for a while.
No matter what, custom excerpts are a good thing to add to your articles. They don’t take long, and they can actually help you by making you summarize what you’re trying to say in just a few words. They can help you ensure the focus of your articles, and help your readers choose what they want to read more easily. It only takes a minute to write one, either before or after you’ve written an article, so why not do so?
