How to Write the Summary of a Blog (5 Best Ways)
Today, content requirements are much more intricate than they were a few years ago. For instance, blogs today need promotion on various platforms to generate organic traffic. Thus, a key aspect of a startup blog content is a good summary.
Today, we’re going to talk about the best ways you can write a summary for your blog. So, let’s dig in deeper.
Why Blog Summary is Important?
A blog summary is a vital aspect of the content. It can accompany your primary text on many platforms online, and it can be an important draw for your target audience. So, if you wish to promote your content on social media, then a summary is the most important glimpse of your main content.
Moreover, suppose you’ll email your target audience about your blog. In that case, a small summary of your blog’s contents should suffice to attract them.
5 Ways to Write a Good Blog Summary
Writing a good summary takes a lot of effort and various aspects into it. Whether you do it manually or you get help from a summarizing tool (like this one), you must understand a few things to write a good summary.
In this section, we’re talking about the five best ways to learn to write a good summary. So, let’s get started.
1. Read Profusely and Take Notes
A good summary isn’t an extension but rather an overview. It’s a plot synopsis of your main story, which allows the reader to understand what the main content entails. It’s not meant to overtake but extend the reach of your primary content.
That’s why it’s important that you read your content, then read it again. This way, you will allow yourself to comprehend the idea. Now, reading should be done with a purpose. Ask yourself a few questions, such as:
- Which sections are more important?
- Which section requires more attention?
- Which section should lead the summary?
- Where is the bulk of your argument?
The focus should be on that particular section. Even though filler content is necessary to avoid, it’s not always the case in blogs. So, avoid using filler content as a part of your summary. And the only way to do that is by reading your content repeatedly.
2. Talk About Research & Importance
Every content piece has a specific method behind it. It could be about technical aspects or general – the importance of research behind it never fades. That’s why your reader must know why the research was important in the first place.
Here’s an example of NASA (image below), one of the biggest organizations in the world, summarizing a blog for social media captions:
In this caption, it mentions something that’s in detail in the main article. However, it gives you a glimpse of how it uses the four images of Europa captured by the Juno Spacecraft. Then, it just gives us surface-level information about the “Valuable views” of this moon.
What it tells us is the research and importance behind it. Your summary needs to feature that. In blogs, it’s not always easy to overlay this information. But, if you link your blog in an email or on social media, you will provide this information.
The only way to do that is by understanding the basic methods in the main content beforehand.
3. Condense Larger Ideas into Surface-Level Sentences
A summary is a brief report of your content. The keyword here is “brief,” but that doesn’t mean it cannot be detailed. Now, it can be difficult to do, as not all summaries are written equally. Some summary requirements are less than a hundred words.
While other summaries are almost equal to the primary content. In blogs, it’s more of the former than the latter. So, to achieve a specific length, you should condense larger ideas into surface-level sentences.
For example, you must summarize the outcry over inflation in 50 states. But, the information cannot be covered in a few words. So, how do you write a sentence-based summary?
Here’s an example:
The underlined idea is the fundamental idea in the blog. Whereas the rest of the sentence is a summary of the larger idea at work. And the author’s name in the bold text tells us that this person wrote it.
So, this kind of summary doesn’t only draw attention; it makes the reader want to read more. Plus, it’s much more suitable for a blog’s homepage, social media, or email.
4. For Each Section, Write a Sentence
Not all summaries are one-sentence glimpses. Instead, some summaries need to be longer to effectively capture an idea. That’s one of the main reasons that each section needs a separate sentence to cover all.
Let’s divide this into a simple equation. So, let’s say your content is around a thousand words. And you’re supposed to write a hundred-word summary.
How do you do it? By summarizing each 100-words within 10-words.
So, you don’t only have the 10% of the original content but also a summary of all the important information within the article. But, it’s important to skip the introduction and conclusion from this equation.
5. Revise or Use a Summarizing Tool to Achieve Specific Length
The final step you’ll take is to revise or summarize the rest of your content using a summarizing tool. But why is using a summarizing tool important? Because it can help you achieve a specific length for your summary with options like these:
As mentioned, some summaries must be longer than usual. Thus, with an option like this, a summarizing tool can make the job easier. Besides, if you write a summary manually and it doesn’t meet the word count, this process can also help you condense it.
Conclusion
These are the five ways to learn to write good blog summaries. Not only do you need manual input, but also the help of viable summarizing tools. So, it’s important that you read your content until you grasp the idea and then write the summary according to your understanding.