Unlike visual content, making people read your written content till the end is a little trickier. In most cases, they notice and they ignore. Or worse, they came, they read your stuff for a few seconds and then they leave. Well, for your information there are many reasons why people decided to walk away from it. To best answer it, let us understand the psychological part first why they stay and read an article till the end.
Beautiful user interface. This is where it starts, the visual. First impression count, and the user interface or the design of the website where your content is housed, play a key role in enticing people to come and stay longer. If the reader sees the website is ugly, they won’t stay long even though your content is great.
Featured image. Any content will be accompanied by an image. It’s not just an image, but a relevant image that will help to amplify the content’s message clearly through the power of visuals. This is called a featured image. A great featured image will make the reader go to the title and read it. Usually having your own authentic images is better and more impactful than the free stock photo ones.
Catchy title. Once you’ve done making the website’s user interface better, cleaner and easy to navigate, and insert a great featured image for the content, next, you need to have a great title for your content. Be careful when writing the title. Do not simply use the title. Instead, write that title of yours on Google first. Then pick any of Google’s suggested titles as your topic. Sure, you may tweak it a little to match the context of your content. A great title will make the reader read its description.
Description of the title. Some people call it excerpt or meta tag. People usually go to the title’s description right after they like your title. This is also probably the next most important element you need to be careful of when writing. It has to be interesting enough to make them go to the first paragraph. Many forget that title’s description is the real introduction to the content—the short version.
First paragraph. This is the longer version of the introduction. If the description is powerful enough, the reader will come to the first paragraph to read more. This is where the story starts and the best way to start it is by not making it boring and dull. A cool introduction will make the reader go to the second paragraph.
The second and the rest of the paragraphs. The strategy here is to ensure the readers are still awake and being hand-hold from one paragraph to another, till the end. This is where the writer’s creativity will come into play.
The in-between visuals. People love to see there are visuals in-between paragraphs. If you can have visual content such as infographics, videos, podcasts or even images, it will definitely help to make the readers stay longer.
Try these. They might stay longer than before.
