How to Read a Blog Post Effectively

We all sub­scribe to other blogs. We do this because we don’t know it all, and read­ing other blogs will enable us to learn a lot more about the cer­tain topic. But some­times, we just read for the sake of read­ing and often we will com­pletely miss the point of the article.

So as weird as it sounds, I am going to cover some ideas I have when you go to read an arti­cle at a blog. Yes, it seems silly to be going over how to read some­thing and take knowl­edge out of it, but it is some­thing that some peo­ple may not be good at. I know I occa­sion­ally slip up when I read arti­cles and just skim through them and miss out on some impor­tant information.

You need to really ana­lyze in full detail what you read. Don’t read for the sake of read­ing, expect to walk away with some new knowl­edge in hand.

A lit­tle quote I made from the open­ing paragraphs ↑

Inter­pret­ing the Infor­ma­tion in Your Own Way

The thing I can’t stress enough in this post is that you need to take any infor­ma­tion you read and build off of the infor­ma­tion given to you with­out tak­ing the advice exactly as it appears.

In some cases like graphic tuto­ri­als you will need to take the steps exactly as they appear. But even then, you will even­tu­ally be using that infor­ma­tion to make your own creation.

Take for exam­ple I am read­ing a guide to make money from my blog. The author goes over mon­e­ti­za­tion meth­ods that worked for him.

He went over the steps he took to make money, and also what prod­ucts he used to gen­er­ate his income. He men­tioned other details like the per­son­al­ity needed to get a prod­uct you are sell­ing “out there”, how long it took him to make the money, and his tar­get market.

So from that infor­ma­tion given, I can gather:

• What prod­ucts he used to make his money
• The steps he took to use those prod­ucts to gen­er­ate income
• You need to have a cer­tain per­son­al­ity to sell profitably
• There is a lot of research to be done, and also a lot of test tri­als. Basi­cally, there is a pos­si­bil­ity you will be doing a lot of test­ing before you make real money

So with me know­ing that infor­ma­tion, I can use it to go in my own direc­tion and make money off of my blog keep­ing his advice and tips in mind light­heart­edly. Not every­thing he says I will be able to relate to, mainly the per­son­al­ity part since we are bound to have dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ties. I may choose to change a few things in my money mak­ing attempts because I am dif­fer­ent, and some things may seem more log­i­cal to me than what he suggested.

If you under­stood noth­ing I just said, try this: Build your own rou­tine, don’t always do every­thing by the books!

More Advanced (And Maybe Tedious) Tricks

The pur­pose of read­ing some­thing it to ana­lyze it, and by doing that you will have learned some­thing. I guar­an­tee that. There are far bet­ter ways to ana­lyze some­thing than just read­ing it and never look­ing back.

1. Read­ing it Twice

This is some­thing I can also guar­an­tee that most of you will not do. Some­times I don’t even do this, but I know that if I really did not learn any­thing from what I just read (espe­cially if it’s very impor­tant), I will go back and read it again. You’d be sur­prised at the ben­e­fits of doing this are:

• Since you may have a gen­eral idea of the topic already after read­ing it once, you will be able to fol­low along way better
• You can con­firm any doubts/unclear areas of the arti­cle you went over before. It is com­mon that when we read and some­thing is unclear, we don’t want to go back and look at it again. That may be how some of you feel about my posts, but it can pay to really go back and try to deci­pher what it is try­ing to be said.
• It is pos­si­ble that you may have missed some pieces of infor­ma­tion the first time around, so by read­ing it again you have a bet­ter chance of pick­ing it up. It can also clear up some of those doubts or unclear thoughts you had before.

2. Relate the Cur­rent Para­graph to the Next, or Pre­vi­ous one

See if you can tie together the sub­ject change from para­graph to para­graph in the arti­cle. I think this could be some­thing cool to try out, and maybe a lit­tle chal­leng­ing since para­graphs are meant to divide dif­fer­ent points about the topic that’s being writ­ten about.

I think if you can do this, you can fig­ure out the big­ger idea behind the whole arti­cle, and also learn how dif­fer­ent things about the same sub­ject tie into each other. It’s pretty cool, espe­cially if you can do it. Just give it a try sometime.

3. Read the title before you read ANY con­tent think about every­thing you know about it

I believe this to be a good brain exer­cise to get your brain at a good think­ing level. Work­ing your brain a lit­tle is not only great for pro­duc­tiv­ity, but also for when it comes to read­ing some­thing like a blog article.

See the “Plan­ning & Brain­storm­ing Ideas” of this arti­cle for more tips on warm­ing your brain up.

So by look­ing at the post head­line, I rec­om­mend that you just spend maybe 2 – 5 min­utes think­ing about what you know about the topic already. It can pre­pare your mind more for the arti­cle, and you can go into the post feel­ing like you already know some of it.

Tak­ing it Further

Want to really get advanced? Try these meth­ods out:

• Grab a Pen & Paper and get to note taking!

Noth­ing is bet­ter for learn­ing new infor­ma­tion than tak­ing notes. By tak­ing notes, you are set­ting up a ref­er­ence for the future. Now you will never for­get about what you read.

• Record Notes

Record­ing some­thing is the ulti­mate note tak­ing tip you will ever hear. By record­ing some­thing — whether it be pure audio or video will make it such a bet­ter ref­er­ence for later use. It is much bet­ter to hear a voice rather than read­ing a lot of text, wouldn’t you agree?

• Quizzing Your­self Afterwords

Maybe think about cre­at­ing a lit­tle quiz for your­self right after you read the arti­cle when it is still fresh in your mind. After you make the quiz, store it some­where and leave it along for a few days. Go back to it later and see if you can still answer the quiz. Make it as com­pre­hen­sive as you want, it’s your quiz.

• Cre­ate a check­list of things you want to learn before you read the article

If you took tip #3 seri­ously and thought of every­thing you know about the topic by just read­ing the head­line, take it a step fur­ther and try to fill in the blanks. Make a list of things you don’t know about the topic, or things you are unsure of and see if the arti­cle answers them. If not, I’m sure the author of the arti­cle wouldn’t mind answer­ing a few ques­tions.

Bonus

A Great Note Tak­ing Tool: Shove­Box for Mac OSX


Shove­Box is a great on the spot note tak­ing tool that allows you to write text notes and record notes using your built in iSight cam­era on any Mac. It’s sim­ple to use, and invalu­able for tak­ing quick notes on any arti­cle. It does cost money (don’t all great Mac Apps?), but a 30 day free trial does exist.

Check Out Shove­Box →

Photo by Daniel Hora­cio Agostini

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