Reminder: How to Write a Blog / Internet Content

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I just read a blog with terrific content, but it was so hard to read, that I almost skipped the post: 35 lines in one shot! No … , no sub-headings, no bold text, no links, no images… just plain text.  What was the author thinking? Has she never been to other blogs or even read content of websites? Well she is not alone, too many blogs are written like this.
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Writing for the internet is NOT the same as writing a book.  Research studies confirm how user read on the web:  They don’t !!!

People rarely read Web pages word by word; instead, they scan the page, picking out individual words and sentences. In research on how people read websites we found that 79 percent of our test users always scanned any new page they came across; only 16 percent read word-by-word.
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Web pages have to employ scanable text, using

• one idea per paragraph (users will skip over any additional ideas if they are not caught by the first few words in the paragraph)
• the inverted pyramid style, starting with the conclusion
• half the word count (or less) than conventional writing
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What’s more?
Credibility is important for Web users, since it is unclear who is behind information on the Web and whether a page can be trusted.  Credibility can be increased by high-quality graphics, good writing, and use of outbound hypertext links.  Links to other sites show that the authors have done their homework and are not afraid to let readers visit other sites.
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Harald Weinreich, a German researcher compiled a dataset, detailing 59,573 page views. Just three of his many findings:

• 10,163 page views (17%) that lasted less than 4 seconds
• 2,615 page views (4%) that lasted more than 10 minutes
• On an average visit, users read half the information only on those pages with 111 words or less. Users will read about 20% to 28% of the text on the average page.

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So, what can you do to make your blog post / web content easy to read / scan?

• Split it in content chunks / paragraphs
• Write interesting page titles that grab the attention
• Use headings and subheadings to structure the chunk of text
• Write summaries at the end of each page
• Make lists, using bullets and numbers
• Embed links, at least 3 or 4 on each page – good for SEO too!

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Obviously, users tend to spend more time on pages with more information, structured and easy to read content – and lots of links.    Happy blogging!

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Hyper Smash
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