Blogs are a fantastic tool for digital marketers and brands in general. They not only give you the chance to add value to your services and show off your brand personality, but they also present an amazing SEO opportunity that can drive real traffic to your site.
A blog post can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days to write, but no matter how long you spend on one, there’s always a lot of effort involved. But it’s tough getting your users to read your whole blog nowadays. In fact, according to research, the average reader spends 96 seconds reading a blog, which often isn’t enough time to get to the end where your calls to action are – and where you score that all-important click.
Keep Their Attention by Keeping Things Interesting
The key to holding your readers’ attention is by using content and formatting tools smartly to keep things interesting. Giving your readers huge walls of text to read is never going to end well. But by breaking up large sections of text, you won’t bore your users or put them off reading.
What you want to do is at each stage of the reader’s journey, give them more reason to keep scrolling. These 3 hacks will make your blog easy and enjoyable to read and look at, and keep your readers hooked until the end. And that is, after all, what will keep your readers not just present on your site, but engaged with your content. Let’s look at them in a little more detail.
1. Subheadings
H1’s, H2’s, H3’s… these are the perfect opportunities to target those all-important keywords to get your content in front of the right audience. Plus, they break up your text effortlessly and provide structure for your blog. This is great from a UX perspective, as a reader looking for a specific piece of information can easily find it by scrolling through your subheadings, and you can give your readers your content in bite-size pieces, which is the key to not overwhelming them with information.
Remember to make your headings snappy and engaging so that they can have the maximum impact. Each one should offer a concise summary of the following section so your reader knows what to expect and is intrigued to learn more.
2. Images
Images are crucial to keeping your readers hooked on your blog. They don’t just create a visual aid for your written content, but they help your readers really understand what you’re saying and break up your copy.
Plus they’re fantastic for SEO too. Remember to fill out your alt tags with keywords and a description of the image, as they’re a search factor on Google now.
3. Formatting
No one wants to read a never-ending paragraph, so be mindful of paragraph length. Keep each section in your blog to around 3-4 lines, so you don’t overwhelm your reader. If they have a block of text to contend with, the chances are that they’ll skip over it, or even worse, bounce off your page.
You can also use formatting for lists. Rather than a string of commas in a sentence, break up your lists with bullet points or numbers. Plus, you could even nab a featured snippet on Google if your list is answering a frequently searched query!
Engaged Readers are the Ones that Convert
Using these tricks will help you help your readers get to the end of your blog, and have a good time doing it. And of course, that hugely increases your chances of your reader clicking on that product link or signing up for that newsletter or masterclass.
For more content marketing tips, head over to the Writefully Knowledge Hub for more.
