The competition is fierce when it comes to blogs and articles nowadays, they are all either very similar or too drawn out. You will find 5 tips below that will help you to convert your audience from being occasional scanners to dedicated readers.
White Space
There are many benefits of white space (the unused area) on a blog or article. Firstly, it can accommodate several screen sizes, meaning whether your reader opens your piece on a phone or laptop it will still be pleasing to the eye. It will improve the readability as a lot of people report that writing which spans the whole width of the screen is harder to read. It will drive the attention of the reader to the right elements and it will look cleaner overall. So when writing, remember to leave plenty of blank space!
Bullet Points
There is nothing that will grab readers’ attention more than the bullet points. They stand out visually from the other text on the page and therefore your eye is immediately drawn to them. Bullet points are also easily scannable and a simple way to separate a list of items. There are several ways to add bullet points,
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all will do the same job.
Add Links
This one can go massively right or horribly wrong, so be careful, but adding relevant links to your page can do wonders for your traffic. Internal links will allow people to visit your pages and keep reading your content, external links will show you have done your research and also your healthy relationship with promoting other content. Adding irrelevant links will push your readers away though so always make sure links are up to date, working and most importantly relevant to your content.
Sub Heads
A great headline is the thing that will bring readers to your page in the first place, a sub heading is there to keep your readers engaged and reading the rest of your content. Think of them as mini headlines and make sure each one is as impressive as your main heading. The best sub headings are informative and compelling but be careful not to exaggerate- doing this could lose your credibility and make your audience turn away.
Numbers
Lists have always been proven to make the best and most readable content. Numbers are a great way to keep your readers attention captured and make your post more inviting. Sometimes numbering points is all you need as opposed to writing list sub headings, this keeps your piece compelling and simple. Be sure to keep your list relatively short though, studies have shown that lists of 8 or more makes your brain want to shut down and become overwhelmed, break it into two pieces if your list is especially long.
Scanners never really read all the information properly and therefore don’t take in everything you are putting across. They are the least committed audience. Try to improve your content and get your audiences to actually read your content, this way you can expect to gain much more success.
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