This world has become a busy place. Numerous times we have heard that today, time has more value than money or rather, time is money. People have stopped taking breaks for their family and themselves to get some more time to earn that extra money. Bad thing, I guess!! In the same vein, as a blogger; we are also are a part of this trend.
So, when you write a 600 word post on your blog, why do you expect the others readers/ bloggers to read it in full? Surely, your readers are also part of that fast running world which has no time for anybody. This mean when somebody lands on your blog post; chances are that he will just give it a casual reading and move on. And in that short duration, you have to convince him that your blog is wonderful and he should come back again. For that, you need to work on your content and design and today we will talk about the content part.
WHAT IS THE REMEDY?
So now, that you know that people are not stopping on your blog for long time; how will you show them your ideas? Certainly, just writing 1000 words in 6 paragraphs won’t help your cause. Chances are that they will not find the important keywords in between the huge sea of words and your thoughts will not reach them.
Also, if I am reader, it may happen that half the things written there I already know. So why should I waste my time reading whole article? I will like to straight away move on to the parts that are more relevant and helpful to me.
So, you have to attract their attention towards what you want them to read. How? There are few easy solutions for this which will certainly help.
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Divide the content in bullets or numbers- This is perhaps the best way and my favourite. I like to use number system or bullets to segregate my content. This way, it becomes more readable and users can easily navigate to the part they want to read.
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Use Titles to define paragraphs- It is not always possible to use numbers in the blog. In that case, an easy option is to give headings to each paragraph which summarizes their content. It is as effective as #1.
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Highlight the keywords- In those scenarios where using the both above mentioned steps is tricky or time consuming, there is an easy way out. After you have finished your article and edited it to the final version, just highlight the important words or phrases. You can BOLD them or UNDERLINE whatever you feel like but do not overdo it. Try to keep it to 2 per paragraphs. The beauty of the blog should not be compromised with.
So, before you sit down to write your next article; have a rough guideline regarding how will you proceed with the above 3 cases. And yes as always, do not forget to share all your experiences and stories with us.
About Lee Ka Hoong
thanks for sharing this great info.
My pleasure
I completely agree with your views. Unless our content has good readability and lucidity, who the heck will spend his useful time to scan through the content. Value plus presentation make the content remarkable.
Yes presentation has become as important as anything in today’s full of competition world
Most newspapers write for the attention span and reading ability of a 12 year old. It’s sort of sad really, but most people today have a really short attention span with these sorts of things. I guess things like Twitter don’t really help much (in terms of user attention span) seeing as though it’s used by millions and focused on short, sharp messages, people become pretty used to that sort of thing.
Also another thing that I’ve noticed is that a lot of peoples blogs are just plain boring to read. People need to give their blogs character, some charisma!
Welcome michael. Thanks for taking out time to comment here.
Plain blogs are really boring to read. You need to brand and beautify things to succeed and get noticed
Great post and good tips!
… ok I didn’t actually read the whole thing but from the title and bullets it looks good!
-josh
Welcome Josh..
I think I got what you mean exactly.
Hi Tushar,
I totally agree with your post. People are either just too busy or lazy to read your full post.
I find breaking the content into smaller chunks and highlighting important messages normally helps. I always try to sum up using bullets.
Thanks for dropping by.
Breaking content will always help in coming future
It is useful help readers to read your posts but the ugly truth is that unless the reader is very interesting on the issues you write about, he will read just a few sentences
That is obvious. Everybody is busy and they just want to read the relevant content.
Thanks for the comment
Breaking up blog posts into bite sized chunks is a good technique. Bullet points are good and so are images scattered throughout your posts.
Personally, I hate “cluttered” looking blogs – you know the ones, flashing ads, popups and banners all over the place. You certainly have a nice clean looking theme here. Fewer distractions allow the readers to focus on your post (or at least the parts of it that they do read).
Thanks for the appreciation. Yes the main emphasis should always be on the content
True, in a world where everyone is so busy and the RSS reader is piled up with many unread posts.. most people don’t really read word by word..
I think adding images also help get the reader eyes on the surrounding text
Images always help. They make the content easier to understand.
Nice to see you here Shamelle
Hi Tushar,
You spotlighted on a very good point my friend. We are always going for long articles as a site owner for SEO. But at the same time it can kill the interest of my readers. Oops!
Okay I will follow your 3 steps for my next article.
Thanks Tushar for great posting like this, Carry on.
Abhijit…
Welcome to BloggersEthics Abhijit.
I am glad that you liked my article and it was able to help you.
I will try my best to keep on carrying in this fashion which help my readers
Read the title and nothing else. Obviously your advice didn’t work.
Highlight the keywords will be attracting the readers -its my point of view. thanks a lot for given up here.
The strategy of making the audience read by content channelisation is certainly intimidating. However, the crisp and spicy titles hold the key.
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Title is the most important thing but you have to make sure they feel they are worth coming to your blog by making good content
Very well said Tushar….
Apart from the point you mentioned above, we should keep our blog post in a way that it force to reader to read next line.
Your blog post must like a story of thriller suspense movie/novel.
Every line should give a new thought to reader.
It is possible if your right innovative, Original content and your content should resolve your reader’s problem/issue.
Well, if I am able to do even half the things you have mentioned here, I will surely become an awesome content writer.
Thanks for dropping by
I agree breaking the article content down is what helps the most . I find I really like using the tips and tricks attraction and set it up with a number list or bullet points. most readers will know if they want to read it all or not in the first few sentences anyway I think there is no way to keep them except with a few photos in the text .