We're about to ruin your day and make you rethink your entire marketing career with just one little observation: People are not reading your content marketing materials.
They're not reading ours, either.
Or anyone else's, for that matter.
About half of those who check out an online article will scroll through the first screen of content, but they won't go any farther. Sadly, most site visitors bounce off the page after seeing just the images or headlines.
That's pretty depressing news if you write anything longer than just a few paragraphs for your company's website or blog.
Why People Don't Read Online Content
One reason people don't read online content is simply because it's hard to do: Reading online is 25% slower than reading from print.
Why?
Blame the screen and its distractions.
On a website, many things competing for the eyes' attention: photos, headlines, colors, hyperlinks, and more. Those things are great for creating interest, but they're horrible for keeping it.
A visitor might come to your site to learn about your products, but her attention is gone if an auto-loading video—or anything else—distracts her.
Pain is another distraction. Looking at online content can cause eye strain because our eyes are jumping all over the screen rather than looking at things from left to right as we do with print. Since we also tend to blink less when looking at a screen, we're also more likely to experience headaches.
Write for Scanners, Not for Readers
The reality is that very few people actually READ online content. Only 16% of your online guests read word-for-word, and the overwhelming majority (79%) SCAN and pick out phrases and a few individual words.
That means you've got to ditch the long sentences and big blocks of text in favor of scannable content.
In other words, it's time to think like a journalist, not an English teacher.
News articles are great at getting to the point. They start out with the conclusion and then follow it with supporting details—in descending order of importance. If a reader has time to read only a few paragraphs, he'll still able to get the meat of the story.
On the other hand, most of us grew up with our English teachers who taught us that good writing requires us to start with a series of details that build to a conclusion. That approach may be great for a class essay, but it's lousy for online writing. If a reader has time to read only a few paragraphs, he'll have little what the text is about.
How to Write Scan-Friendly Content
Some 63% of small businesses invest 6% or less of their revenue on marketing efforts, according to our 2016 State of Small Business Report.
They can't afford to lose potential customers because of bad online content.
What's bad content?
Anything that a reader cannot easily scan and understand.
Here are a seven tips that will help make your online text scannable and easy-to-understand, and boost engagement.
1. Keep your sentences short; aim for roughly 16 words
