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