I know plenty of phenomenal writers who try to start a new blog and end with a miserable experience with very few readers. Now there are a plethora of ways to get more readers, such as search engine optimization, finding a good niche, marketing through social media, and soliciting back links (guest posts are a great way to this).Beyond these techniques, however, you must make your blog as readable as possible. And a readable blog post is nothing like a readable English paper. This is where I think many of my writer friends tend to fail at blogging. They haven’t adopted internet syntax, so internet readers find their posts too laborious even if they’re extremely well written. Because, let’s face it, people on the internet are too ADD to actually read.
Sub-headers
Many new bloggers only have a heading (in HTML, those h1-h6 tags) at the top of their post. The rest of the post is full of paragraphs. Here’s an average reader’s thought process for posts like these:
· Cool, interesting title; I guess I’ll have a read.
· Nice introduction. Keep reading.
· Okay, I’m getting tired of this topic, when is the post going to move on.
· ***Reader clicks on a shiny link to a shiny new blog with sub-headers***
Sub-headers are great for guiding a reader to parts of your post that the reader actually wants to read or finds useful. Think of it like a newspaper article; no one reads every article front to back. Segmenting an article or post with sub-headers allows readers to access the information they want more quickly. Otherwise they may give up trying to scour through a block of text to find the information they want.
You don’t necessarily need to use a heading tag to delineate a sub-header. You can simply use a stand-alone, bold-faced caption or word between sections.
Bullets
Bullet points help readers for a variety of reasons:
- · They segment information more clearly than paragraphs.
- · They compliment lists well.
- · They keep writing on topic and organized,
And they can even nest,
Allowing you to add more depth to certain list points.
· There are also a good amount of creative uses of bullet points
(only some were used above)
Paragraph Length
You may have already guessed it, but try to keep your paragraph lengths short. This is all part of the effort to keep your writing segmented into short blocks so that readers can skim to the parts they want.
Also, most blog and reader formats are narrower than, say, Microsoft Word or most term paper formats. There’s a reason why newspapers have such short paragraphs: small column width. Many blog readers are heading in this direction.
By-line:
This guest contribution was submitted by Pamelia Brown, who specializes in writing about associates degree. Questions and comments can be sent to: pamelia.brown@gmail.com.
That’s one thing that always got me about newspapers; their paragraphs were only a few sentences, or one particularly long sentence. I’ve even seen a few emails from lists that I’m on, and the paragraphs are so short that reading it is pretty much like just skimming down.
It makes it really easy to read. I think that’s why I can’t read books on my computer and still prefer an actual, physical book: they’re still formatted like books should be, so it makes it really difficult to read on screen.
Delena
You are so right about the columns in the newspaper there are some short paragraphs to entice tou to read i guess it has to do with our attention span making the paragraphs short and useful will encourage longer reading
You have mentioned useful points.Bulleted posts with sub headings looks pretty attractive to readers and obviously reduces bounce rate too.
That is the idea Shabnam to reduce bounce rate and also attracts new readers to our website or blog Glad you found the post helpful. Thanks for your comment.
Nice article. I learned a lot and I will follow all of the above tips as mentioned in the post. Thanks for sharing. Keep it up…!
Thanks Aswani i am happy to know that you found the article interesting and i do hope after impelmenting these strategies you will reap the benefit. Thanks for taking the time to add your voice to the debate.
Excellent points about good blogging style. I especially like your suggestion to use sub-headers. I’ve never used them in my blog posts, but it might be something cool to try out. All of the points you make, though, make sense to me on a personal level. I find myself more interested in reading posts in the style you outline.
Sub headers are great when you are trying to make a point and it also helps to break down your blog posts into paragraph does making your blog more readable and keeps the readers more motivated.
Great tips for easy reading. And we want to make it as easy as possible for our readers so they stay as long as possible.
I have been very blessed by the readers I get to my site. They not only comment on the post but often interact with each other while I am sleeping. To me that’s community 🙂
Patricia Perth Australia
That is true patricia the goal should be to keep our readers very much interested and reduce the bounce rate as for your site i really do see the interaction the community spirit is there keep it up Thanks for your input.
Shared valid points which will be very helpful for bloggers to impress their visitors. Thanks for your contribution Pamelia.
Hi Tessa Glad you enjoy the read pamelia has written a great post simple and straight to the point but very valuable. These are the little aspect that we sometimes pay less attention to.
I agree with you, I have changed my typography too and still don’t think it’s easy to read for people. There is so much I could improve. Thanks for sharing clues…
These the little things that we often sometimes forget i am never satisfied with my design and always changing it. Thanks for your input web designer
Fully agree with you that the main things are the cool and attractive title than gives some interest at the beginning of the post so that readers will enjoy your post till the end
I see where you’re going with this, keeping it semantic. I’ve seen plenty of god awful blogs out there, with zero whitespace and text as long as a toilet roll, with no breaks.
I’ve given up explaining good layout to clients -they’re more interested in Comic Sans….
Pamelia Brown articles is good, i use Microsoft Word to write my articles and i give a special atention to the font style
This is a great tip in writing a blog to make it more readable in the eyes of readers. Not using bullets and sub headings makes article look dull and uninteresting.
Bullets really help in making any writing readable. They also make it more easy to understand because each bullet shows something different. Short paragraphs are good as they make reading easier