Posted on September 17, 2008 - by Jonathan Davies

Five Ways To Make Your Blog Posts More Reader Friendly

Simply due to the higher volume of blogs there is going to be better content out there.

The following are five, sure ways to make your content more interesting to your readers so you can be counted as being one of the few that have readable content:

1. Short and Snappy Phrases

People don’t have time to read an article with thousands of words (unless they’re very good). By getting straight to the point and cutting out all of the waffle you are allowing your reader to consume a lot more information in a lot less time.

And by giving your reader more time they might be more interested in leaving a comment and taking a bigger part in the community aspect of your blog.

2. Create an Introductory Paragraph

By doing this you are telling the reader what he is about to get in a nutshell and if you give them a bit of background information they will be more prepared to read what follows.

For instance, in my Feedburner article, I said who used the service and how it came to be purchased.

Remember though, you don’t want to tell the reader everything he is going to learn in the post, they’ll either be overwhelmed or not feel the need to read on.

3. Create Subheadings

You want to make your content as easily digestible as possible. You are splitting up the article so your reader can jump about or focus on one thing he or she is interested in.

Subheadings can be especially useful to a reader as it shows that (in most cases) you are considering another point and your article won’t be (hopefully) to biased if your comparing things. Just by looking at the subheadings your reader can see the points that you will be discussing.

4. Short Paragraphs

By having short paragraphs you allow your readers to skim content, this is very important as you’ll find your blog is only one of many and people don’t have time to pay the upmost attention to every word.

You can also separate your paragraphs up by using bullet points or numbering to convey key points. I have always found this very useful when reading blogs.

5. Use Pictures!

They not only help separate content but can also be used as a simpler way of displaying information

For instance, Glenn Wolsey documented which of his applications got the most usage, instead of writing it out in a paragraph he created a pie chart that made the information a lot easier to grasp.

If you take time to incorporate these five techniques in some form into your blog posts, I can guarantee that your readers will be thankful for it. Don’t feel the need to use them all at once, try different combinations and see which has a better effect!

Some of these methods might take a while to grasp, YOU have to decide when they are appropriate to use, I have just given a few examples.

The Question For You:

Do you have any to add to the list? How do you make your blog posts for reader friendly?