I have previously looked at how users surf internet and how they spend time reading blog posts and pages. Now I will look at how this should be presented in your blog writing, to maximize your blog potential, its readership and the blog revenue.
Ways to employ scannable text in your blog posts
The first point is that 79% of Jakob Nielsen test users always scanned any new page they came across and never read word by word. As a result of this, bloggers have to employ scannable text in their blogs and blog posts.
- Low word count (don’t write long blog posts, word count of 300 or so is enough)
- One idea per paragraph (split the blog post into paragraphs and concentrate on one point per paragraph)
- Sub-headings (entitle each paragraph with relevant keywords)
- Highlight keywords and paragraphs (highlight important parts of the blog posts, keywords in bold are also good for SEO)
- Bulleted lists (split your content, include bulleted lists)
- Start with the conclusion (make the reader excited to read the whole post)
Ways to make your blog posts sticky
The second point is that people don’t have time to work too hard for their information. It is very easy to search on Google and it means that users spend less time visiting any individual blogs. To avoid this and improve visiting time, the blog must be made sticky.
- Produce good, useful and original content (this will convince the user that your blog is worthy their attention)
- Make it easy to find even more good stuff (first link to your other blog posts within your new post content, and second link to relevant articles on your blog, link to most recent articles, and to most popular articles from every blog post)
- Encourage users to return (publish regular content and blog posts, provide opportunity to subscribe to RSS news feed and email newsletter)
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
I think it’s important to consider your audience too. There are certainly examples of blogs with loooooong posts that aren’t particularly scannable that do extremely well. (Steve Pavlina comes to mind.)
For my home and garden blog, most of my posts use short paragraphs and are under 200 words total, but for my writing blog (where I’m writing for readers/writers), I’ll often hit 1,000 words (still short by Pavlina standards, heh heh).
@Lindsay, thats a great point, thanks for your comment!
Usability wise and considering a brand new visitor to your blog, posts should be kept in as low word count as possible.
But of course, all depending on the target audience and the article theme, the word count can be much higher than the 300 suggested in my article.
Great blog you run!
Very useful, concisely written post, thank you!
A few more ideas (let me know what you think):
* Spacing: generally, more spacing is more pleasing to the eye. For example, in your post above, I wish your subheadings (“Ways to..”) started their own paragraph. Secondly, having each bullet point on its own paragraph might make it more scannable.
* Graphic: towards the top of the post, put a relevant (ideally beautiful or memorable) graphic to capture more attention. Or if it’s a long article, “pepper” multiple graphics throughout the post to make it more attractive. A post with a graphic makes it more viral when “shared” on Facebook also.
Thanks again,
George Kao
http://georgekao.com
Thanks for the very interesting comment George! I agree with both points. More spacing makes it much easier to scan. I am actually in the process of looking for WP themes to make my blog more usable.
Having graphics is good as well. I have been trying to incorporate more into some of my recent posts, but I find it hard to discover very relevant pictures to the blog topics I write about. I have been looking around Flickr and other sites but generally I have trouble finding relevant graphics.
Any ideas?