How to Get People to Read!(At Least a Little)

GuerillaRoberto — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 05:02:25 +0000

Hello Guerilleros! Today I want to share a variety of content tips. These may be basic to some of you, but hey, we get new people coming to the site everyday, and they might not know this. I had to learn it, and so did you.

Apparently no one actually READS anything online, they scan it for content, and just read things that catch their eye. Except for my faithful Guerilleros, you guys read every word of these posts, right? Right?!

Since people are only reading what catches their eye, you need to make sure you draw attention to what you want people to be sure to read. How?

Write it in big letters!

You probably saw that before you even actually read that far. Now there are two ways to look at this. Either put what you want to make sure people read in the big letters, or, and this is a trick I use sparingly, make it kind of obscure.

What? Don’t make it clear? Well, here’s where a little knowledge of psychology is useful. People are curious. If they see big words, telling them something that seems a little random, they are more likely to read the surrounding info to see why you capitalized it. This gets them to read even more than just the words in big letters. But if you over do it, they will get frustrated, and not read any of what you wrote.

Another trick is to use bold letters. Again, the eye is naturally drawn to things that stick out. Bold letters certainly do. They also add emphasis to your writing, such as what I did in my last paragraph with the word “why”. And again, the obscure trick works here too. People read more of the surrounding content to see why that one particular word or phrase is bold.

One more trick I’ll share is using bullets. Bullets have several uses.

They also draw attention
They present your info in a clear manner
They allow you to make several points with out all the damn commas
They make people think your presenting a lot of info
They allow you to summarize all your important info so hopefully they’ll read it in the bulleted list

Again though, don’t over do it. Maybe one bulleted list for every 250 words or so.Also, don’t get crazy on the length of the list. Five bullets, maybe six. Otherwise people just start scanning the list.

Your bestbet is to combine all three, like I did in this post. You can even combine all three together for maximum eye draw. Here is an example”

Tips to get people to actually read what you wrote!

Write in big letters!- People are drawn to them.
Use the bold key!- Use it to draw the eye, or for emphasis.
Bullets, bullets, bullets!- Present your info in a neat and orderly manner.
I didn’t give a fourth tip!- Bulleted lists are kind of pointless if you only put three things on it.

See? Did you read this whole article or just the things I drew attention to?Here Are Some Similar Posts:

What Is Content Syndication & Why Should You Care?

guerilla — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:09:18 +0000

Content Syndication = Your Own NON-PAID Army of Marketers

You write a blog post.

You tell somebody on twitter about it.

That person comes in, likes what you wrote, and click on the “add to digg” button.

When that person posts your article on Digg, their app automatically updates that person’s twitter saying that she’d just digged your blog.

That person’s twitter followers come to Digg and see your post. They read it through the Digg toolbar, and automatically “digg it”.

Now that more people have “Digged it”, your post is up on the Popular section of Digg – and you reach tons of other Digg users, who repeat the process.

This is called Content Syndication and it basically means Viral Marketing through Social Media.

Expanding The Syndication Of Your Content

In the example above, all you’ve done was update your twitter about the new post. Let’s say that brought 10 visitors to your blog.

What if you had updated Digg, Reddit, Jumptags, Social Median, Simply, Delicious, Folkd, Facebook, and Twitter?

Now, you may argue that you might not have as many friends on Delicious as you have on Twitter. That’s a good argument, one that leads to the understanding of what Content Syndication really is based upon: SOCIAL CONNECTIONS.

Here are tools that will help boosting your Content Syndication:

The Add To Any WordPress Plugin

You can see it at the bottom of this post – it even goes along the RSS feed. When you click on any option, the Permalink, Title, Description, and upper image are automatically inserted to the submit form of the service, reducing your time considerably.

You can get your add to any here

Ping.Fm

An impressive application that updates nearly ALL social services with the touch of a button – Ping.fm requires that you initially add each of your social networks to their list. They will then store your info and everytime you send a new update, it will refresh your status throughout as many social networks as you’d like.

But You’re Still Alone…

Even with these great services, your submissions may very well never be clicked by anybody if you dont have an active social community of your own.

Luckily, there is a way to fix that: The Synnd Software

Synnd is a private community that exists solely to vote/bookmark/spread other users’ content, therefore guaranteeing a successful syndication (one that creates a viral marketing effect).

See the Synnd software in action here.

Exploring the benefits of social media and content syndication is a way to work around getting free traffic without having to know SEO and definitely not spending money with PPC.

If you’d like to know more about Synnd, leave your questions below.

If you dont want to know anything about it, leave your comments below.

If you hated my disorganized writing, leave your comments below.

See you soon.Here Are Some Similar Posts:

Social Media Guerilla » content syndication