Most blog readers are busy people, probably not willing to spend hours reading your long blog post word by word. An astonishing statistic shows that on the average web page, users take time to read at most 28% of the total words in a single visit to the web page. Seems like bloggers stand no chance here, right? This is most likely due to the fact that most blog readers will not read blog posts like a book.
Busy online readers prefer an article through which they can skim, scroll, and scan in the shortest time to get the information they need. While most bloggers spend more time and effort to come up with interesting topics, they barely do enough to keep the busy online readers in their circle. This way, their content repels the busy readers, and they end up losing a large audience.
Creating content that can be read by busy readers may seem like a complicated and impossible task. The good news is that it really isn’t. Bloggers can apply the following 7 simple tips to turn hassled skimmers into attentive readers.
Stick to Concise Sentences and Avoid Rambling
Most writers, especially those new to blogging, often make this common mistake: writing long and meaningless sentences. They see this as a way of including all the details they want to highlight in one sentence or paragraph. Alternatively, they are trying to sound knowledgeable. This does not end up as intended in most circumstances.
Many writers end up rambling, thereby losing the plot. At this point, most readers are already tired and have lost interest in reading the rest of the post. Avoid this. Ensure that you understand the essentials of creating vivid content that is descriptive and of good quality.
Write Creative and Compelling Content to Match Competition
You are trying to get online readers to go through your content in the shortest time, remember? They will probably come across other blog posts in their search. It’s a competition, and you have to keep up!
What’s more, your blog is competing against so many other things on the reader’s schedule, such as phone calls, laundry, events, the latest news, or even shopping. Your blog is basically competing with life.
In capturing the attention of readers who are always occupied with something, it takes more than just quality content. Get to know how you can create compelling headlines. Is your headline so captivating that people will pause and read? Is the content below it exciting enough that they will not mind missing the train?
Captivating headlines tell the readers what to expect in the post. Trust me; these readers will not spend their time reading a line of the blah-blah posts.
By understanding what the readers want to learn, you can craft your headline to meet their expectations. Write a headline that promises to deliver a lesson in the blog and do exactly that. Deliver it in your content. This is the first step in keeping hurried readers glued to each of your words.
Do Away With Paragraphs
Long paragraphs are the killers of online reading. Those five to eight sentence long paragraphs might have been perfect for your essay classes, but forget them now. Overly long pieces with no space demand extra concentration from online readers, who have little patience, as you now know. The best blogs for attracting busy readers are built of one medium length sentence, or at most, two short sentences.
By adopting such a structure for sentence construction, you will definitely capture the attention of hasty online readers.
Try the Power of White Space
White space is the secret tool in blogging.
With white spaces, readers can glide through your post effortlessly. In addition, it makes reading easy and enjoyable. Reading text with no white space can be very difficult. Have you ever had that feeling of wading through the thick mud? Exactly! Reading gets intense, and if there isn’t adequate white space, your eyes have no time to take a break from the cluttered text.
But how exactly do you use white space to keep your online readers scrolling through?
- Compose short paragraphs at the beginning of the post, preferably with one sentence.
- Adopt bullets to highlight your main points.
- Limit each paragraph to six lines. For the stand-out statements, use one-sentence paragraphs.
Short paragraphs at the beginning of the post make readers feel that your post will be precise and easy to read. For the bullets, you may consider adding spaces between bullet points to increase the white space.
Before you can publish your blog post, go through it to ensure that the amount of white space is sufficient. A considerable amount of white space actually makes reading more pleasurable.
Add Visual Guides to Your Blog Post
Visual guides generally sound like pictures or images, right? That’s not the case here. The best ways of visually guiding your readers are also the easiest. Use bold text for headings in your blog post to give a clear outline of the text that follows.
Use italics or larger text such that the headings stand out. This way, they even get to mark the paragraphs; where one begins and where it ends.
These headings are often the search blog topics that readers use to land your post. Highlighting the headings, therefore, helps them in getting the information they need in the shortest amount of time. Giving readers leads to whatever they are looking for means a higher chance of the readers staying on your post.
Avoid Typos by All Means
One thing that can really aggravate blog readers is a typo. Readers want to feel the writer’s command in his or her grammar and accuracy. Clumsy errors and spelling mistakes will definitely be visible to readers due to the white space given to the text. The short and sentences and few-sentence paragraphs in your blog will also expose the errors in the post.
Before posting any blog post, be sure to proofread the content to eliminate the “obvious” grammatical errors, which put off readers at first sight.
Include Relevant Pictures
Images form a vital part of blogging. The inclusion of images in your post gives the readers a clue of what they can expect to read.
Images also come in handy when used to break the long text of the post. This gives them a breathing moment before they can embark on their reading.
Blog readers are busy people, who need the information that they are looking for within the shortest amount of time. Therefore, creating a captivating blog post or article is crucial in gaining the audience of online readers. In doing this, blog writers need to select their topics carefully. Further, writers need to design their blogs in such a way that navigation through the content is easy. Avoid unnecessary spelling errors and often include pictures in your post. Most importantly, the white space on your blog post should be enough for your readers.
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