According to PR week “Though we often accuse the young of having a short attention span, it turns out this is not confined to that generation. Only a couple of us get past the headline to the main story. That main article, so tricky to access on some phones, might either give real depth to the “shouty” headline or, in fact, undermine it.” The key reason? Who has time to read all the content out there?
A research report found that people don’t read a lot of content:
- 10,163 page views (17%) that lasted less than 4 seconds. In such brief “visits,” users clearly bounced right out without truly “using” the page.
- 2,615 page views (4%) that lasted more than 10 minutes. In these cases, users almost certainly left the browser open while doing something else.
- 1,558 page views (3%) with fewer than 20 words on them. Such pages are probably server errors or disrupted downloads.
The truth is, people are going to skim and scan all the lovely content you’ve written, looking for something that catches their attention or matches the reason they’re visiting your website in the first place. When you consider that more people are using smartphones and that reading content on these devices can be a challenge and that they are likely to be interrupted with notifications you have a perfect storm of your content going to waste.
There are some things you can do to ensure your content gets read.
1ne: Make your content really relevant to one segment of your audience rather than to everyone who visits.
2wo: Use callouts to communicate key points.
3hree: Use real-life images throughout your content.
4our: Keep it short. Three clicks is too long to read any content. If users have to scroll down more than two clicks, you content, readership is going to fall off dramatically.
5ive: Add a summary box. CNN.com does a great job with their stories via story summary boxes on each page.
6ix: Write like you are talking to your audience and explain complicated topics like you are explaining them to a 6th grader.
7even: Delete content that doesn’t perform well and analyze content that did perform well to continually optimize your content strategy.
8ight: Make sure your content is aligned with your brand strategy. It seems a pretty straight forward recommendation, but you would be surprised how many brands add content for the sake of adding content.
9ine: Content should be magnetic and draw your audience into your brand, but be careful not to sell and be aware that you are going to be fact checked.
10en: Content from other consumers is more useful and read then content from celebrities.
