Posts Tagged ‘reader-friendly blog posts’

Blog content success requires easy reading

Readability plays a major role in the success of your blog content. Your prospects are in a hurry; anything that gets in the way of easy reading slows readers down and sabotages your message.

When visitors to your blog have trouble reading your message, they’re going to ignore it and move elsewhere where the reading is easier.

Here are 4 simple ways to make your blog as easy to read as possible.

Post titles

Your choice of title plays a make-or-break role in the success of your blog post.

Just like the headline of an advertisement, the title of a book, or an e-mail subject line, your title of each blog post must engage the prospect’s attention and promise a benefit for reading. When preparing blog post titles, ask yourself questions like:

• Who do I want to read this post? Build familiarity by identifying the types of readers who will gain the most from the information that follows by stressing the prospect’s you’re writing occupat. Stress the symptoms they’re likely experiencing, or describe the goals they may be striving for. Choose a blog post title that appears written especially for them!
• What do they want to know? Before you write, use personas to identify the characteristics and goals of the readers you’re targeting in the post. What are their problems?, What are their goals?, and What kind of information are they looking for?
  
• How can I arouse their curiosity? Look for ways to attract their attention by making a provocative statement. One of the easiest ways to do this is to incorporate opposites into your blog post title. Titles like The Wealthy Barber contain terms that are seemingly in conflict with each other. How can a barber be wealthy? Your goal is to attract attention and compel readers to ask themselves, How can that be?
• How can I add specificity to my title? You can increase the engagement-factor of ablog post titles by using numbers to add specificity. There more “magnetism” to titles like 7 Ways to Search for a New Job than How to Search for a New Job. Likewise, How to Choose a Computer is not as powerful as 8 Things to Look For When Choosing a Computer.
  

Subheads

Use subheads to chunk, or break-up, your blog posts into into shorter, bite-sized elements.

Subheads can break your message into a series of shorter, bite-sized chunks. It’s easier to read a blog post broken into a couple of 2 or 3-paragraph “mini-articles” than it is to read a blog post with 7 uninterrupted paragraphs. Each subhead provides an additional entry point into your blog post and adveritses the message that follows.

Remember that your blog visitors quickly skim your blog posts, searching for topics of interest to them. Without subheads, there arent any clues to the topics covered.

Formatting

The formatting of your blog plays an important role its readability. Here are some ways that formatting can advance, or interfere with, the readability of your message.

• Avoid setting titles entirely in upper-case type. Blog post titles set entirely in upper-case, i.e., capital characters, are significantly harder to read that blog post titles set in a combination of upper and lower case characters. Reading involves instant recognition of word shapes, and words set entirely in capital letters lack distinct shapes needed for easy reading.
• Avoid reversed text. Never set the body, or paragraphs, of your blog post in white against a black, or darkly-colored, background. Black text against a white background is the easy to read because of the strong foreground/background contrast. White text against a dark background slows word recognition and is especially troublesome at small text sizes.
• Avoid underlining. Use text style variations, like bold or italics, instead of underlining. Underlining makes words harder to recognize because the underscore interferes with the instant recognition of word shapes. In addition, never depend on underlining to make your blog’s subheads stand out; bold-faced text, or a change from a serif to a sans-serif typeface, is the best way to make subheads stand out.
• Use lists to organize information. Whenever possible, take ideas out of sentences and place them in bullet or numbered lists. The bullets or numbers emphasize the key words and surrounds them with white space.

Be brief

Strive for brevity.

1. Choose the shortest words possible that express your message.
2. Make your sentences short and to the point. Avoid sentences containing two, or more, ideas. Replace passive verbs, (The ball was hit by John), with active verbs, (John hit the ball).
3. Keep your paragraphs short. Short paragraphs are easier to read than long paragraphs.  This is especially true for online reading. Vary paragraph length, inserting shorter paragraphs following a couple of longer paragraphs.

Always remember: Your blog will not be graded on the basis of academic rules or  grammatical perfection. Your message will go unread, however, if it looks like it’s going to be hard to read.

Avoid the temptation to tell everything you know in a single blog post. When you find your blog posts becoming more like articles, consider breaking the post into a series or shorter blog posts. A series of short blog posts will attract more search engine visibility, and be easier to read, than a single long post.

Conclusion

The effectiveness of your blog content is not going to be judged by the number of words you write, or by how completely you cover your topic. Instead, the success of your blog content will be determined by how easy it is for visitors to read, understand, and act on your words. It’s no long enough to originate good ideas, you have to “package” them into blog posts that are as easy-to-read as possible.

Roger C. Parker invites you to visit Published & Profitable’s Sample Content Area and his daily writing tips blog to learn more about writing effective blog content and making your blog posts as easy to read as possible.

You can also download a PDF of the mind map I used to plan this series, plus links to additional writing resources, like a free report introducing mind mapping.

Roger, the author of 30 best-selling books and an experienced writing coach, helps clients around the world organize and publish their ideas. Contact him via e-mail with your biggest writing or blog content question.