Photo by Claudia1967
We live in busy times, with people having less and less time on their hands. This is partly due to the excess of information we’ll subjected to, as a result of media development and the now seemingly infinite internet. It’s a bit of a paradox that we’re more and more pressed by time, because of information, but it’s true; we’re all media slaves and information junkies, one way or the other, that demand quality information. This leads me to my main point, that I’d like to expand into a blog post: the issue of scannable content.

People digest a lot of information every day, thanks to the inexhaustible resources of the internet, so in term they have less time to spend on each and every website, resulting in what is commonly referred as the channeling effect. People will toggle through websites, just like they would with their TV remote control, so to actually make your visitors transform into readers , you have to catch their attention and maintain it. In this sense you should look to make you blog more stiky, but you have to make your content easy to read as well. Here are just a few ways to achieve this:

1. Formating. I consider this to be the most important aspect in building scanable, easy to read content. Make it easier for your readers to digest your content by using when necessary bold, italics, CAPITAL LETTERS, crossed text etc., but don’t exaggerate with it. It’s important to know when to use formating, or else you’ll risk annoying your visitors. A quick tip would be to bold your keywords, use italics when writing about book, movie, essays etc names(this will make your text look more clean and sleek), use capitals when you’re trying to get the readers attention etc.
2. Short Sentences. Long phrases tend to bore the reader and make him loose focus, by reading shorter sentences the brain has more time to relax and process the information. Humans read words as a whole, and they just decipher shorter sentences as a whole, too.
3. Headings. This is similar to the point above, but instead of cutting phrases into sentences, we can use heading and subheadings to cut down the whole content into more digestible pieces. Did you happen to come across really long 3-4k word articles, that seem to never end ? Well I have and most of the time I leave, because it isn’t structured and doesn’t catches my attention. Worth mentioning is that it offers a seo values as well, if you use the <h> tags. Here’s a example of a decently structured content in a previous post of mine.
4. Links. Are a good tool to use, when building scannable content, catching the reader’s attention, as they are highlighted and ensure a better understanding of the content by connecting the dots.
5. Lists. People just love lists, because their fun and easy to read. Actually this post is a list too, because it’s easier for both me and you, if I write my points into a list, as opposed to let’s say laying it out as whole, with no delimitations for each point.
6. Images. Using photos in your blog posts is a important technique to gain you’re readers attention, while content assures you keep it. Be sure to put matching photos, that both catches the attention of the reader and makes him curios, which in term will make him read the whole post. It’s a good idea to use multiple photos in a post, if it’s too long (2-3k words) so that you don’t bore the reader and keep their attention.
7. Clear Points. It’s very important to present your main post ideas in a very clean and clear way. Don’t bury your post’s conclusion in long discussion and phrases. In example look at the way I’ve structured this list, with the main point up front and with the explicitation right after.

People tend to scan pages, not read them or study them diligently. That’s why your content should be very well formated and structured, so that your readers can easily read and most importantly understand your articles.

The Writing Scannable Content by Tibi Puiu, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.