You probably have a ton of important points you want to make. How do you make sure you don’t lose your readers before you’ve finished saying all of the things you need to say? The average internet user has a surprisingly short attention span – they’ll often come to find exactly what they’re looking for a breeze past the context in the blink of an eye. If you want your readers to enjoy your posts from beginning to end, you may need to change the way you approach the creation of your content.
Incorporate Visually Appealing Elements
Starting off your post with a relevant image, video, or infographic is an excellent way to draw your readers in. Keeping those elements coming is a great way to encourage them to follow your ideas all the way down the rabbit hole. If you have supplementary infographics or visual demonstrations of the concepts you’re discussing, pepper your posts with as many as you need. As long as you don’t have a disproportionate amount of images to text, you’re creating enriched and informative content that will keep your readers engaged throughout the post.
Use Accessible Language
The quality of your writing has a huge impact on how much your readers will be willing to read. You might need to improve your writing a little to keep people invested. Most people prefer plain and conversational language. It’s easy to read, and feels friendly. It might be hard to incorporate this kind of language into an article that is scientific or mathematical in nature, but if you can manage to do so, you’re more likely to hold onto readers who may not already possess a deep understanding on the subject.
Keep Things Organized
Headings, subheadings, sub-subheadings, bulleted and numbered lists, as well as standout quotes will help organize the concepts of your blog post. If everything appears to be one long stretch of text, people may feel inclined to skip past it by prejudging it as daunting or complicated to navigate. Using these organizational elements will make it easier for your readers to skim the article, but they’ll also make it easier for readers to understand how your concepts and hierarchy of ideas comes together.
By incorporating links to your other articles that expand on relevant ideas, you might actually inspire your readers to read multiple posts in their entirety. Have you never aimed to read a single article and found yourself doing a deep dig on a blog you love? It was probably because of the way concepts were organized and connected. Provide the same experience for your readers.
Omit Any Fluff
Contrary to what many bloggers believe, people are actually willing to read lengthy posts. You don’t need to try to express a heavy concept in a miniscule amount of words if doing so will damage the integrity of your content. On the other side of the same coin, you don’t need to stretch out something small to be a 1,000 word think piece. As long as there is no fluff in the content, you’re going to be able to maintain interest. If every sentence has a purpose, even if the sole purpose is to make the reader laugh, you’re more likely to keep people interested.
As always, you should consider the feedback your readers leave you in the comments when shaping future content. If you’re doing something they don’t like, it always helps to consider changing up your methods a little bit. Take positive criticisms and use them to direct the focus and style of your future pieces. People know what they like, and they’ll always come back for more.