Upgrade your blog posts (I shoulda done this sooner)

Most of the time, when we write a blog post, we do it right inside the WordPress post editor.

We write text. We make links. We throw some images in there.

But, anything beyond that begins to get more difficult. You end up needing to use weird looking shortcodes… or you have to insert CSS in there and have the proper formatting set up as part of your theme. And, if you don’t even know what I just said, then that’s part of the problem. 😉

Point is… the standard post editor is pretty basic and it is set up for old-school blogging. If you try to do some of the nicer-looking things you see on modern blogs these days, it is tougher and more technical.

There is another way to go, though.

If you’ve been with me awhile, you know that I’m a massive fan of the Thrive Themes suite of tools. But, right now, let me address specifically Thrive Architect.

Thrive Architect is best known as a page builder. So, if you want to build a sales page or other kind of landing page, you bust out Thrive Architect and go to town.

What many people don’t realize is that Thrive Architect works very nicely as a post editor. In fact, you can use it to fully craft and write your blog posts. Everything you create will show up right inside your main theme.

The funny thing is… I knew it could do this. But, I didn’t really take it seriously until just recently. Late last week, I was crafting a new blog post (which will be published soon) where I was comparing two of the major list building options for WordPress. But, for the first time, I decided  to fully write this blog post using Thrive Architect instead of the default editor.

I’m freakin’ hooked! It is SO much better!

Especially with the recent addition of Content Blocks inside Architect, it makes creating beautiful blog posts easy. I built a product comparison table inside the blog post and it was fully “what you see is what you get”. No nasty shortcodes or dedicated plug-ins. Just drag the block in, modify the words, move on.

Rather than me talk it out, you can actually see some of what can be done with it by reading this blog post right on the Thrive Themes blog:
How to Upgrade the Quality of Your Next Blog Post – Content Blocks in Action

Even without the content blocks, though, Architect makes crafting an optimized blog post really easy. You can actually turn each blog post into a landing page, essentially.

Let’s face it….

These days, you really have to up the ante in your blog in order to stand out. And, looks matter. You’ve probably seen on some blogs some of those nice guides where you can tell they’ve put a lot of resources into the look and feel. It goes way beyond the usual “wall of text” typical of blog posts.

If you use Thrive Architect as your actual blog post editor, you can do that, too.

All you do is create the post draft just like you normally would. Except, instead of writing the post in the default editor, you hit the big green button to launch Thrive Architect.

The editor will load up your blank blog post, complete with your theme around it. And then you just start writing your post in there. You’ll see exactly what it will look like to the public right there in the editor.

So, there you have it. A little “just in case you didn’t know it” tip. 🙂

I’ve been using Thrive Architect for a couple years now without using it on blog posts. And I’m sorta knocking myself upside the head for not looking into that sooner. 😉

– David Risley