Ryan Biddulph
Scanners rule.
Seriously; even though loyal readers devour every word of your posts many folks scan from paragraph to paragraph. Busy bees.
Of course these people read a fair chunk of your blog posts but creating scannable, easily digestible posts is critical for your blogging success.
If readers scan, digest and share content quickly your blogging presence expands just as quickly.
On the flip side, folks head for the hills if your blog appears to be blocky, awkward, difficult to scan content.
Like it or not, readers judge a blog by its cover, or, by its ease of reading.
Easy scannable posts:
- goad readers to share posts
- lower your bounce rate
- improve conversions
- inspire readers to comment on your blog
Presentation counts.
I learned this lesson. The hard way.
For a minute – aka long time – I paid little attention to formatting some 7 to 10 years ago.
My blog appeared to be a collection of run on, terribly formatted, visually vile posts tough on the eyes, like looking into the sun with a magnifying glass.
But I turned tail, gussy-ed up my blog and accelerated my success by learning how to properly format my blog posts.
Follow these tips to create easy to read blog posts.
1: Paragraphs Please
Create frequent paragraphs to break up work.
Craft scannable, simple to read blog posts.
Nothing mucks up blog posts like block-style, run on paragraphs, which are basically the blog formatting version of vomit.
Hit the “enter” button.
Use paragraphs liberally. If you overdo it in one direction, use too many paragraphs versus not enough.
I spied a cell phone blogger recently who treated formatting and paragraph usage as a vampire treats garlic and wooden stakes. After 3.5 seconds I wanted to throw my Chromebook out of the window, losing all semblance of humanity at the non-scannable, block style, hideous posts.
Paragraphs.
Use ‘em.
2: Shoot Some Bullet….Points
Pop in a few bullets.
I mean use bullet point lists. Liberally.
Add one to most if not all blog posts.
Bullet point lists add order to blog posts. Readers let their peepers effortlessly scan north to south, feasting on each point made….in the bullet point list.
Bullet point lists also drill home points of emphasis. Consider using to stress practical tips or important steps.
3: Font Frenzy
Italics.
Bold.
*Astericks.*
Even the dreaded and oft-maligned underline tickles the formatting pickle, if used properly.
Change fonts to keep your readers slightly off balance. Good deal because bloggers tend to lull readers to sleep, doing a baby beddy-bye with bland, uniform, never-changing fonts.
I change fonts up to keep readers on their tippy toes. Good for scanning, good for reading and it keeps reader’s eyes open better than tooth picks.
4: Short and Sweet Sentences
Minus the run on outlier here and there I keep things short and sweet.
Readers love scanning, digesting and using short, curt, to the point sentences. Make your point. Exit stage left.
Spare folks the newbie blogger run on sentence, that seems to make a point, but back tracks, and maybe was on point 10 minutes ago but now that you think about it, the sentence did not make much of a point anyway, because the direction changed so many times you’d have thought a rudderless boat was being driven by a toddler after 455 espressos while watching Sesame Street.
Yeah; don’t do that.
Short and sweet makes the point effectively and gives readers something to scan quickly and easily.
Blogging eBook
Hmmmm…what ebook helps you create scannable, easy to read blog posts?
Aha!
I have a good one.
If you want to make sure you have all based covered with your blog buy:
6 Things Your Blog Needs Today
