1000 True Fans – Readable Content

Joynell Schultz, ,

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March’s focus in the 1000 “True” Fan blog series is KEEPING FANS.

This Weeks Mission: Creating Readable Content

What started this thought?

My husband says, I checked out your blog post AND IT WAS REALLY LONG! So long, it made me wonder if I need to shorten them up.

THE AVERAGE USER SPENDS LESS THAN A MINUTE ON A WEBSITE. Most spending only 10-20 seconds. Make your important points stand out. What point is there in writing something if nobody actually reads it?

The Key: The content needs to skimable with important points called out for the readers.

Here are some tips on how to make the content readable:

  • Keep things short!
    1. Short sentences
    2. Short paragraphs
    3. Use lists
  • Call out important points (but not too much of this. I know, I over do it.)
    1. Start each sentence with most important point, or bold it if it’s buried in the paragraph.
    2. headers / font size (vary it, and larger is better)
    3. bold / italics
    4. color
  • Keep it visually pretty.
    1. Use white space. Big blocks of text turns people away when reading on a screen.
    2. Add images
    3. Get rid of any clutter (tags, links, etc.)
  • Actual readability
    1. Light background with dark text.
    2. Proofread
    3. 400-600 words

That’s all for this week!

(Did you notice that I rearranged this post from my standard template and put the important content on the top?)

Want to read more about readability?

So…a summary of how last week went, for those of you who are following this journey on a week-to-week basis.

Review of Past Week (Mission 11: Daily Routine): It went great!

I shortened up the list of things I checked on every day to the things that had the most impact or that made me the happiest. It may not have grew my mailing list, but it made my life more manageable. Do you know what? I actually was productive towards writing my current book, The Secret Lives of Superhero Wives. Yay! A big win!

I’m still participating in some newsletter building cross-promos, so how is it going?

Drum Roll…Ready?

Current Mailing List Subscriptions: 1400 fans / 1000 true fans (Up 151 people since last week.)

Again, I’m over my goal of 1000 subscribers, but they’re not all fans. I’m continuing my journey this year, trying to find 1000 readers that truly support me. Here’s the data so far:

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Next Week: Next month, I’m focusing on small changes. The posts will be short and sweet. See you then.

If you want to get caught up on 2017’s journey to find 1000 fans, check out the 1000 “True” Fan Landing Page.

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

9 Comments

  1. Interesting post! I checked out the sources you referred to…this is something that I need to work on for my blog. Although I do think the first website was a little extreme with its sentence length–it seemed a little choppy. I’ll have to see what I can do on my next post…

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    1. I agree that there is a fine line between short sentences and choppy sentences. Also, there’s definitely a difference between what’s readable in print books vs digitally on the computer. It’s something new for me to keep my eyes on as I write my posts. Good luck with yours!

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      1. That’s true! And thank you…I wrote a post today and used some of the readability tips, but I do feel like I lost some of my personal voice and excitement through it. However, I think that I can find a better balance with more practice…

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        1. I can see what you mean about losing your voice. Perhaps keep your voice and focus on shorter paragraphs (break big ones into two, rather than get rid of stuff) and add bullet points and bolding? Personally, I liked your post today. 🙂

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          1. Thanks for the advice! I’ll continue working on organizing my thoughts into more readable ways while still keeping it enjoyable…I think it should work out!

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  2. Wow! So cool to see the number of your fans going up. The only big task is to be able to keep them engaged. I guess that’s always the challenge.

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      1. Yeah. That’s true. I did some free book promotion for my second book, but it did not convert to many reviews. For all I know, the downloads did not convert to actual reads as well. 😦

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