Last night at the SXSW festivities in Austin, there were so many musical selections to choose from, I didn’t know where to start. I popped into venue after venue until I found a band could end up plopping down and listening to.
What was it about all those others that made me leave? Bad lighting, smoke, wrong genre for me, too many people, not enough people – you name it. Mostly, I just popped in, took a few steps towards the stage and then retreated.
Your content is like the band playing at The Chuggin’ Monkey on 6th Street during SXSW – a dime a dozen. And readers are looking for a reason to find something better. Here are the top 5 things that will send them backpedaling fast:
1. Bad headline
People skim, plain and simple. But getting them to at least skim your content means they have to be interested in your headline. It’s like a portal to your content. Readers like headlines with numbers (like this one!) because they know what they’re getting. The same goes for “How to” titles. Remember to put your SEO keywords in the title, so that readers will know you’re giving them exactly what they’re looking for.
2. An intimidating amount of words
So, you’ve got exactly what people are looking for right there on your blog or site. The problem is that you expanded – I mean, really expanded – on the topic a little too much. So much, in fact, that the reader now can’t find the answer to his question. In short, keep it short.
3. Poor layout
Say you’ve got between 300 to 600 words in your article. Remembering that people skim, make sure that your content is displayed in a format where people can see right away what it is all about. This requires spaces, bullets and subheads. They say that people read websites in an F-shaped pattern. That means they read a headline and a subhead and then they skim the left side of the page. With a big glob of text, you, and your reader, are getting nowhere.
4. Hard-to-read font
Purple script might’ve been the perfect look for your tattoo, but with info-packed content, stick with black. Arial and Times fonts are easy on the eyes. Comic Sans is easy to read, but there’s just something about fancy lettering that people don’t want to deal with. Your content isn’t a billboard. Impress your reader with what you have to say, not your design skills.
5. Too many graphics
Graphics don’t hold answers to questions. Plus, too much visual is confusing and the a major contributor to people pushing the back button. Ever wonder how Facebook took Myspace’s crown? Click on your friend’s Myspace page to find out what they did last night and deal with a brightly colored island wallpaper. Also, his favorite song is blaring at you, and ads are everywhere. It’s only after everything has actually finally loaded that you see that his status is… in blue font no less.
The rules of content are important to get readers to not only read your message but come back for more.
