We all know that attention spans are shorter than ever (about 7-8 seconds on average, in fact.)
Compound this with the distractions that crop up every minute of the day in the modern world, and you’ve got a major challenge on your hands when it comes to getting someone to sit still and actually read something you’ve written.
Here’s what usually happens for the average writer:
We write something up (a blog post, news article, announcement, whatever) and hit publish.
We send out a teaser about the new post through our owned channels (like email newsletters), post about it across social media, and maybe notify the people quoted/referenced in the post (if relevant) hoping they too will help spread the word.
A few people click the link and scan through the piece, and then bounce from the site and move on with their day.
A few days post-publish, the article is dead in the water and traffic completely drops off.
Most writers can tell you that very few people actually take the time to read a full post (let alone share it with their own audiences because they think it’s great and want others to read it, too.)
I can tell you for a fact that this isn’t unique to any industry or publication.
The average blog post here on my website has ~600 views.
The average views on my articles for Forbes are < 2,000 each.
The truth is: Few posts take off organically like this one on pizza arbitrage did. It’s an outlier; an exception to the rule.
So why don’t more people read the stuff we write?
There’s so much content out there. No one has time to read it all...nor do they want to.
Articles and blog posts are often a form of marketing. If you’re writing something and sharing it, you’ve got an end objective in mind. You want people to give you something: Their attention, their money, their time. People are very protective of all of those things.
The ‘what’s in it for me?’ mentality. Humans are wired to evaluate all things through the lens of ‘what’s in it for me?’. For good reason: Time and energy are limited quantities, so they need to be invested in things with a beneficial outcome. This applies to time spent reading. If you don’t give people a reason to read what you’ve written (and show them how it’ll help them), well...they won’t do it.
Even as I sit here writing this newsletter, I know that only a small group of people will actually take the time to read it all the way through.
So what can we do to get more readers?
1. Make your piece more digestible, bite-sized and reader-friendly
"Jump to" sections: For long articles, not only does this act as a table of contents, but it allows readers to navigate straight to the section they most want to read (rather than scrolling through and hunting it down on their own.)
“What you’ll learn” summary: People want to know what they’ll get out of the time investment required to read your post--so tell them up front. Provide a few bullet points at the top of your article that sum up the most important takeaways/data points. (News sites do this all the time.)
2. Repackage it into different, more consumable formats
Note: These are also great ways to update/expand your top-performing pieces of content, which is good for SEO.
Audio summaries: Turn your article into a short podcast episode for people who don’t have time to sit and read, but that would download and listen to it on the go later while multitasking. This works best when it’s the writer narrating, as the listener gets to hear the voice and inflection as it was intended.
Video summaries/Instagram stories: For people who want the key points delivered via visuals and audio rather than mere text on a screen, a short video summary is a major value-add. Hit on the key points in 60 seconds. It’s the TL;DR of your article delivered in a different format, and if done well, is often quite shareable. Biteable has plans that start at $15/mo and allow you to create short videos without their watermark. If you want a more DIY route, create simple Instagram stories that do the same thing (albeit with lower production value.)
Twitter thread: Yes, you’re limited to a specific amount of characters on Twitter. But that’s where threads come in handy. Create a Twitter thread that highlights the key sections in your article (or the most interesting graphs, data, charts, screenshots, etc.) and puts what you’ve written right in front of a reader. Include a link to read the full post at the end. Again: Much more shareable.
Gifs/animations: Explaining a process can get WORDY. Make it more visual and show what it looks like in action by including a gif or animation of all the steps in a row so the reader can see what the process looks like when completed in sequence.
Make Your Writing More Reader-Friendly
Getting people to read things is HARD. You have to make it easier for them to get the gist of what it is you have to say.
This article originally appeared in my newsletter, A Cup of Copy. Sign up and get these free tips sent right to your inbox every other Wednesday.