You have an important message you need to get out there. You know exactly what to say to turn potential interest into a conversion, but you just can’t say it quickly enough. If people aren’t reading your whole blog post, they’re missing all of those wonderful points you’re trying to make.
When your readers aren’t sticking around as long as you’d like them to, you might need to make some changes to give them a reason to do so.
Here are five ways to keep your readers engaged throughout your entire blog post.
1. Keep Things Lively
Nothing really seems exciting about long blocks of text. If it did, then college work would have been a blast.
Using things like images or videos to support your point will add areas of interest that compel readers to stick with your post.
A picture can tell a thousand words – and in the case of blogging, it can instantly show visitors why it’s worth dedicating the next 5-10 minutes to read your post.
Colors and shapes that aren’t plain black letters on a white background provide visual appeal – you’ll be engaging your readers from multiple angles.
2. Soft and Subtle Does The Trick
You probably have a marketing message you want to convey, but the average person’s interest in watching a commercial or listening to a sales pitch is limited.
The only people willing to devote themselves to those things for the duration are people who were already aware that they had a need for what was being advertised.
Instead of being pushy, subtly incorporating your marketing message with a gentler hand will allow you to reach more than just the people who came specifically to learn about a product or service.
They’ll be gaining other valuable knowledge as they read and, how knows – they might even become regular readers.
3. Write for Short Attention Spans
Writing for short attention spans doesn’t mean that articles should be kept limited to as much information that can be conveyed in a Sunday morning newspaper comic strip.
In fact, you can easily write a long article for a short attention span, as long as you’ve pieced it together correctly. Don’t make people wait to get to the point.
If you have more things you’d like to explain or supplementary information to add, you can always link to it for the people who’d like to dive deeper.
4. Organize Your Thoughts
There are many advantages to breaking down a blog post into smaller blocks.
One is that it makes it easy to create tweetable quotes or shareable excerpts that your readers can use to promote your post on social media, and the other is that it allows people to understand where they’re going as they read. Layer information from most to least important when possible.
If you make a great first impression on your readers, they’ll be more inclined to hear you out on everything.
5. Focus On Readability
Just because you’ve got something interesting to say, it doesn’t mean that your post will automatically become readable.
In fact, readability has less to do with your content or angle – rather, it’s about the structure of your blog post and the ways in which it helps readers understand your point.
Remember to keep your paragraphs short – few readers are willing to go through a chunk of text. Three to four lines should do the trick.
Include bullet point lists and strategic formatting – for example, use bold for extra visual emphasis. If you’re ever unsure, have someone uninvolved read your blog post before you publish it. Make sure it’s someone you trust to tell you when you’re being boring or wordy. Even messy ideas can be edited into perfectly readable posts with a few small adjustments.
