How to Get People to Actually Read Your Content

Content creation takes time. So it’s incredibly frustrating when you spend hours or days working on a piece of content, only to see it fall on deaf ears after publication. If you want to experience success and fulfillment with your content, you need to attract more views. This begins with a plan!

5 Tips for Getting People to Click On and Read Your Content

If you’re going to take the time to write quality content, you might as well go the extra mile to make it magnetic and engaging. Here are several valuable tips that top copywriters and content marketers use to get people clicking and reading:

1. Choose the Right Topics

To start with, you need to select topics that your readers care about. In other words, if your blog’s readers are millennial males between the ages of 28 and 31, you probably don’t want to write about sewing or wedding planning. You’d choose topics that are most likely to invigorate your readership.

Choosing the right topics is as simple as finding out what your audience is already searching for. If you already know who your target demographic is, you can simply plug this information into keyword search tools and see what people are searching for and reading. You can then adapt your own content strategy to mirror these desires.

2. Make it Discoverable

You know the old question that goes, if a tree falls in a forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Well, that same question could be asked of content. If content is published but nobody is around to read it, is it even content?

To generate a positive ROI on your content marketing efforts, you have to make your content searchable. We recommend hiring a local SEO agency. For example, if your business is in Long Island, you’d hire a Long Island SEO professional. This ensures you’re working with people who understand your specific market.

3. Write Better Headlines

Your headline is basically the curb appeal for your content. If it’s boring and dingy, nobody will click. If, on the other hand, it’s exciting and relevant, people will rush to see what it’s all about.

The headline shouldn’t be an afterthought. It should command at least 25 percent of the total time it takes to create the content.

Good headlines are unique, ultra-specific, urgent, and useful. You should use numbers and data points whenever possible. Replace boring adjectives with emotional words and verbs. Play to people’s senses!

4. Keep it Skimmable

Somebody might click on your blog post or article, but they aren’t going to read it if they find it intimidating. Your content needs to be skimmable.

Skimmable content is breathable content. Rather than having large, chunky paragraphs, it features short sentences, bullet points, bolded words, italicized, and numbered lists.

According to a web usability test by Nielsen, 79 percent of internet users skim content instead of reading word-for-word. By organizing your content into a skimmable format, you increase the chances that someone will engage with your content and absorb the most valuable information.

5. Include Visuals

The human brain processes visuals much differently than written text. In fact, it’s common knowledge in the brain science community that as much as 50 percent of the human brain is wired to receive visual input. And it takes just 1/10th of a second for someone to understand a visual scene, as opposed to several seconds to grasp what’s going on in a written description.

With that being said, visuals are a must-have in your content. Whether it’s videos, images, graphs, charts, or infographics, the presence of compelling visuals makes your content more engaging and memorable. Make this a big priority for your content strategy moving forward!

Put Your Content to Good Use

It takes a long time to write good content, whether it gets read or not. So you might as well do what it takes to develop compelling content that satiates your audience’s wants, needs, and desires. Let this article serve as a starting point. Once you find something that works, continue to iterate until you zero in on the best possible “recipe” for your brand and readership.