So, you started a business, and, what’s more, you’ve kept that business running.
It’s all great. You’re working on your own terms. You have customers, and more keep trickling in…
But could you do more? Could you increase your lead generation so you don’t have to keep greasing that squeaky wheel?
Yes, you could. You CAN.
How do you start bringing in more leads in the background so you don’t have to market so hard?
Easy.
You need content baked into your marketing. ?
Content does it all:
Builds trust with customers
Solidifies your authority in your niche
Gets you found via Google Search
Nurtures your audience
And, once you know how to write great web content, you can rinse and repeat so your business website will be full to the brim with helpful, useful, targeted content that nurtures prospects and converts them to loyal readers, subscribers, and even buyers.
Sound good?
In this guide, we’ll get into the “how” of writing web content, including 4 simple steps.
But first, let’s touch on the “why” – why does content marketing work now more than ever? ?
Why Web Content Works Now More Than Ever
Getting content on your business website is more important than ever before.
Why?
Because publishing content helps your business marketing align with the way consumers shop.
Consumers these days are savvy:
They research their purchases because they want to know if their choices are “worth it.”
They buy from brands they trust. (According to a Raydiant survey on consumer shopping habits, customers are more likely to leave behind physical businesses with no online presence in favor of an online substitute IF they feel no loyalty to the physical business. 48.7% said they replaced products they previously purchased at physical stores with online alternatives.)
They go looking for information on just about anything that pops up during their day. (Do you have a Google trigger finger? Do you look up questions online on just about any topic? So do your customers. Since the onset of the pandemic in 2020, Google searches have topped 6 billion/day.)
Content works because it builds your online presence, positions you in Google search, and draws in today’s conscious, research-geared consumers.
[bctt tweet=”How do you start bringing in more leads in the background so you don’t have to market so hard? Easy. You need content baked into your marketing. ? More on content’s power + 4 steps to writing web content:” username=”ExpWriters”]
4 Key Steps to Writing Great Web Content for Your Business
Now that you know why you should create web content, it’s time to think about how.
How do you write web content that accomplishes the goals we mentioned earlier (lead generating, audience nurturing, authority building, Google ranking)?
Start with these 4 key steps. Think of them as the necessary prep work you need to do before you start putting down sentences and paragraphs. Rinse and repeat for every piece of content you write.
(And here’s the great part about doing the prep: the actual writing part will come much, much easier. ✨)
Step 1: Establish Goals for Writing Your Web Content
First up: What do you hope to get out of writing and publishing web content?
What do you hope to gain? Do you want…
More web traffic?
Greater brand awareness?
More leads?
More customer engagement?
Higher loyalty to your brand?
You can achieve any or all of these goals with your content. Choose the ones most important to you, and focus on them. They’ll guide you forward, especially when you start planning content topics to write about.
Step 2: Consider Your Audience
Over and over and over again, a question you should be asking yourself before writing web content is who are you writing for?
You’re NOT writing content for yourself. You’re not writing for your brand or clients.
You’re writing for the people who need the solutions your brand or clients offer.
“Who are you writing for?” is vital to know, but once you figure it out, don’t get too comfortable. Your audience isn’t a static entity, but rather a living, breathing, ever-changing organism.
They’re people, and people’s needs and desires grow and change right along with them.
If you keep asking “Who am I writing for?” regularly, and research to get the answer, you’ll have a good grasp on what they need from your content:
What questions do they have about your subject/topics?
What are their unique problems?
What solutions can you provide?
This laser focus on your audience is essential. It’s what differentiates successful content that gets read from the stuff that gets lost in the online content trash heap.
No time to research or write your web content? We can do every step for you. Hire our team today.
Step 3: Search Engine Optimize (for Readers, Then Google)
So, you know your audience. (If you don’t, go back to step #2 and get clear on this. You can’t move forward without that knowledge.)
Now it’s time to leverage your audience insight and use it to pinpoint your content topics and keywords.
Why? When we talk about digital content, SEO is major.
Do competitor research to see what’s resonating with their audiences. Find content you could improve on, and write your own, better versions.
Step 4: Structure & Format Your Content for the Web
The final piece to writing web content is all about how you structure and format it.
This is all about optimizing for usability – for your audience and search engines.
Web content must look different from say, physical content like books, essays, and academic writing.
You have to structure your content for screens and the low attention spans of the people behind them.
Structure your content with headers and subheaders. Split up each content piece into manageable chunks of information, so a scanning reader can find what they’re looking for on the page.
Use bulleted and numbered lists, bold text, and other types of formatting to call out important information and break up walls of text.
You create a headline that’s unique, urgent, and ultra-specific.
Like Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel, you carefully craft your content with gentle but passionate effort.
When you’re done, your blog is flawless.
In fact, it’s beautiful.
It answers your audience’s needs, questions, and problems. It’s entertaining. There’s nothing like it online.
So why are people still clicking the back button like it’ll save their lives?
The answer is you may be doing something wrong that hugely affects your blog’s readability – and that is writing dull subheaders.
Your Essential Guide to Creating Killer Subheaders for Web Content – Table of Contents
Why Amazing Content Isn’t Enough to Prevent Your Readers from Running
How Subheaders Can Attract More Readers to Your Blog
10 Mistakes That Weaken Subheaders for Web Content
Five Easy Steps to Compelling Subheaders for Web Content
Are Your Subheaders Good Enough to Reduce Your Bounce Rate?
[bctt tweet=”You can call your web content the best one you’ve made so far. But why is your bounce rate still high? You might have missed polishing your subheaders! Read this essential guide to creating killer subheaders by @JuliaEMcCoy” username=”ExpWriters”]
Why Amazing Content Isn’t Enough to Prevent your Readers from Running
The web isn’t your local library.
And people don’t go online to ponder upon beautifully written sentences.
For instance, imagine yourself clicking a website and seeing a huge block of text like this.
Source: Amazon
Jeet Thayil’s novel is a deep, thought-provoking work. However, it requires a quiet corner and hours of time to read and ponder on.
Online, it’s not about reading for pleasure. It’s about finding a solution to a problem in the shortest time possible. So no matter how helpful your content is, people won’t read it if you present it in a long block of text.
This is why amazing content isn’t enough to keep readers from bouncing. You need amazing content and an amazing way to present it.
The solution? Divide your text into sections with attention-grabbing subheaders.
[bctt tweet=”An amazing web content allows people to find the solution to a problem in the shortest time possible. They don’t have the time to scan through a huge wall of text! So it’s important to use subheaders. ” username=”ExpWriters”]
How Subheaders Can Attract More Readers to Your Blog
Here’s the cool part.
Subheaders can do more for you than just prevent your readers from running when they see long blocks of text on your page.
Users search for information, products, and help on Google using chosen keywords. What crawlers do is come up with relevant sites that have the content these users are looking for.
On your part, it’ll help when you add relevant keywords to your content. But did you know that where you put these keywords is as important as which keywords you use?
That’s right. Google crawlers pay extra attention to website headings and subheadings. When you plant your keywords in them, you improve your SEO ranking considerably.
The result? More people finding your blog and reading it!
[bctt tweet=”Besides making your content more readable, subheaders can bring more readers to your site – especially if you’ve added the right, relevant keywords.” username=”ExpWriters”]
10 Mistakes That Weaken Subheaders for Web Content
While your first instinct might be to cut up your content and slap on any keyword-rich subheader you can think of above each section, don’t do that.
Why?
Your subheaders are the glue that will compel people to read your whole post.
Think of them as your mini headlines. While your curiosity-piquing headline sucked people into your blog, it’s the job of your subheadings to suck people into every section of your blog.
Subheadings have the power to compel your readers to keep reading until the end of your post.
That is if they’re done right.
But a ton of things could go wrong with your subheadings. Here are 10 of them.
1. Forgetting Your Blog’s Promise
Readers come to your blog because your headline promised them something.
For instance, take a look at this headline from Healthline.
Readers click on this headline because it promises them something specific: They’ll get relief from a toothache without visiting a dentist.
Now, see the subheadings listed below? Each one of them is in line with the blog’s promise.
Imagine what would happen if you wrote a subheading like The History of Toothaches. You got it. Readers won’t go that far on your blog.
2. Turning Subheadings into Content Spoilers
Subheadings can be tricky.
You want to keep them in line with your blog’s main promise.
BUT you don’t want them to give too much away.
Look at this example:
When readers see this subheading, they won’t need to read the content you write under it. They already know everything it’ll say.
Now, what about this subheading?
This subheading still delivers on the promise of your blog. However, it’s just a sneak peek that encourages readers to get into your content. When they continue reading, they learn that the secret ingredient for outstanding subheadings is uniqueness.
3. Being Too Dry
Putting emotion into your writing always works. Why? Because readers come to your blog with their own complex feelings.
For instance, think of a small business owner who’s going bankrupt. What emotion is he feeling? Maybe it’s fear, hopelessness, or desperation. When he goes online and finds your blog, he takes these emotions with him.
What you need to do with your subheadings is to offer alternative emotions. For instance, “The Unexpected Lifeline That Saved My Doomed Business” is full of hope, courage, and optimism. These emotions will keep your businessman reading until the end of your post.
This line is taken from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. What does the chapter title say about the chapter itself? To answer that, it’ll take hours of pondering and even debate.
Now, if your goal is to win an award for literary fiction, you should go ahead and be as deeply creative as you can. But for your blog? An overly creative and confusing subheading will have readers running.
5. Confusing Subheaders with Labels
When you think of subheadings as mere “labels” for new sections of content, you turn them dry and yawn-inducing.
For instance, let’s say you’re writing a section on your blog about how to craft amazing content. You can craft the subheading into a boring label such as “How to Craft Amazing Content.”
Or you can inject a drop of life and intrigue into it. For example, you can make it “10 Hacks for Amazing Content Most Writers Don’t Know.”
6. Missing Out on the Guidance Your Subheaders Can Give
Your subheadings are powerful guides that will help you create better content.
Imagine you’re writing a blog dealing with how to write online content. You prepare your outline, including a number of subheadings.
Now, let’s reuse the two examples of subheadings for web content in the previous point. If your subheader reads “How to Craft Amazing Content,” you’ll do some research and come up with a few tips. The result? A generic piece that only scratches the surface of your topic.
But what if you choose “10 Hacks for Amazing Content Most Writers Don’t Know”? You can’t settle for generic. You need to dive deeper and find unique, uncommon writing secrets most people don’t know.
See where subheaders can lead you? Great subheaders will always result in great content.
7. Not Being Relatable
When you write subheadings for web content, make sure they resonate with relevant questions in your readers’ minds.
For instance, take a look at this subheading.
This subheading works because almost all human beings ask this question at some point. It’s relatable and what’s more, it’s interesting. You want to know why the question is really three questions.
8. Creating a Weak Subheading for Conclusion
After you’ve come up with powerful subheadings for your piece, you might be tempted to slack off with your subheading for the conclusion. Don’t do this.
Your concluding subheading precedes the summary of your blog. Get it right, and readers will leave your site feeling satisfied.
The subheading for the conclusion shouldn’t be a last-minute label for the final part of your blog. It’s a title for one of the most important parts of your blog: your conclusion.
9. Leaving Out SEO
As mentioned earlier, planting killer keywords into your subheadings will help you rank better on Google.
Here’s how to do it for more success:
Use your focus keyword in your first subheading.
Use synonymous keywords in the following subheadings.
Use variations of your keywords if your grammar sounds awkward.
Here’s an example of subheaders that optimize the keyword “tone of voice.”
Source: The Write Blog
10. Limiting Yourself
So, how many subheaders should you use within your content?
[bctt tweet=”Are your subheaders too dry? confusing? or missing a keyword? Know the rest of the common subheader mistakes and how to avoid them in this guide by @JuliaEMcCoy ️” username=”ExpWriters”]
Five Easy Steps to Compelling Subheaders for Web Content
Here’s a simple exercise you can do every time you need to write subheaders for web content.
Step one: Open the blog you wrote. Go through it casually and take note of the subheaders you used.
Step two: Go over the blog again. This time, separate each subheader and the following text from the rest of the blog.
Step three: Study the text under the subheader carefully. What’s its big idea? What’s the main purpose of the section?
Step four: Imagine that section of text was a stand-alone article. If so, what would you title it?
Step five: Craft your subheading as carefully as if it were a headline. Study it to make sure you haven’t made any of the 10 mistakes mentioned above. Are you merely using it as a label? Giving away too much information? Confusing readers? If your answer is no to all 10, you’ve come up with a killer subheader.
Are Your Subheaders Good Enough to Reduce Your Bounce Rate?
When readers land on your blog, you have around eight seconds to capture their attention. In such a short span of time, how do you convince them to read everything you’ve written?
You got it. The magic starts with subheaders that work like headlines to pull readers into every single section of your blog.
And when you have subheaders for web content that are unique, targeted to solve problems, curiosity-piquing, and promising? Your bounce rate will decrease.
Are you speaking to your readers on their level, or are you going over (or under) their heads?
Without understanding what grade level to write online content in for different target audiences, your words will not have the hoped-for impact.
Instead, your readers will get bored, confused, annoyed, or all three – exactly what you don’t want to happen.
What’s the Most Common Reading Level for Adults?
Before we dive into what reading levels to write your online content in, we need to establish a base of knowledge.
First off, what is the reading level of an average adult?
While adult reading levels vary, it’s helpful to know the average – especially if you don’t know your own audience’s level yet.
According to a rigorous literacy study, the National Assessment of Adult Literacy (NAAL) published by the National Center for Education Statistics, the average prose adult literacy level is basic to intermediate.
In 2003, 29% of American adults tested at a basic level.
Another 44% of adults tested at an intermediate level.
When you have “prose literacy,” you have the skills and knowledge you need to comprehend, use, and search information from continuous texts (e.g. novels, textbooks, papers, essays, and other long works).
Having basic prose literacy means a person has the skills to perform simple literary activities. For example, they can read and understand short texts and simple documents and locate easy-to-find information to solve simple problems.
Having intermediate prose literacy means a person can perform literary activities that are moderately challenging. They have higher-level reading and analysis skills and can sift through denser texts to find meaning and solve problems.
So, what are the equivalent reading grade levels?
Let’s begin with one startling fact: 50% of American adults are unable to read a book written at an 8th-grade level. (That’s not to say they can’t read it, period. They can probably read some words and some sentences, but the larger ideas and themes won’t connect. That’s because the continuum of reading comprehension will be interrupted and fragmented.)
When we compare prose literacy levels with a system like the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Levels, they match up how you’d expect:
Most adults fall in the “average” range, which spans from 6th to 12th-grade reading levels. In other words, most adults can read books like Harry Potter or Jurassic Park and understand them without any problems.
So, if you haven’t figured out your audience’s average reading level, a good base to start from with your content is indeed on the lower end of average – about an 8th-grade reading level.
[bctt tweet=”Improving your content’s readability is beyond writing what works for the majority. Here’s @JuliaEMcCoy’s guide on how you can find the right grade level to write your online content in. ✍” username=”ExpWriters”]
How to Know What Grade Level to Write Online Content in for Maximum Readability
So, now you know the average reading grade level for most adults. But, what about YOUR audience?
Your brand audience may have a reading level on par with most adults, or it could differ a lot. Here’s how to know what grade level to write online content in for YOUR specific set of readers.
1. Match Your Content to Your Audience
Before you do anything else, get to know your audience. You have to findout who these people are to know the best reading level to write in FOR them. Find out details like:
Their level of education
Their profession and job description
Their interests and hobbies
Matching your content to your audience is essential for your words to make an impact.
Dumb it down too much, and you risk insulting their intelligence or boring them.
Make it too high-brow or intellectual/formal, and you risk losing them from confusion or incomprehension.
No matter the audience you’re writing for, hitting the right balance is tricky. However, the better you know them, the better off you’ll be.
2. Use Your Audience’s Vocabulary
Vocabulary and word choice are two big factors that determine reading grade level.
For example, does your audience prefer well-worded content? Or do they need it simple and clear?
It’s the difference between using words like “elementary” vs. “basic,” or “intellectual” vs. “smart” in your content.
Another thing: Will your audience understand your use of technical industry terms, or do you need to simplify those words for general understanding?
E.g., if you run a marketing agency for small businesses, you wouldn’t want to use marketing jargon in your content – that’s your expertise, not your clients’. If you DO need to use specialized terms like “brand awareness” or “marketing segments,” for example, you’d need to define or explain them.
The best way forward here is to always use your audience’s vocabulary:
Research what they say and how they say it – this is easily done by analyzing at their social media profiles, posts, and comments.
You can also check Quora and Answer the Public for how they word questions about your topic area.
3. Remember You’re Writing for the Web
No matter who makes up your target audience, you must always remember you’re writing content for the web.
People read and interact with electronic text differently than they do with printed text. This table from Writing Cooperative shows what I mean:
With printed text, the average reader will read from top to bottom. There’s no skipping around.
With online text, the average reader will read it piece-meal or skip around. They’ll scroll until something catches their eye or skim the headings of a content piece rather than read it through 100%.
A study from Sumo backs this up. They discovered the average online reader will only read about 20% of your blog or article.
This is a frustrating reality of online writing, but not all hope is lost. There are actions you can take to encourage your readers to read ALL of your words on a page.
[bctt tweet=”How do you know the right reading grade level for your audience? First of all, get to know your audience and speak like them, but make sure your content is well formatted to be easy to read on the web. Read more tips on this post.” username=”ExpWriters”]
How to Improve the Readability of Your Content
These tips are especially helpful if you are unintentionally writing at a level way too high (read: too academic or too formal) for your audience. They’re also good if you need to improve your online writing skills and learn tactics to engage internet readers better.
1. Write Shorter Sentences
Contrary to what you might think, using shorter sentences will not dumb down your content. Instead, it will make it more readable.
Sentences that drag on… and on… and on… are harder to read on a screen. They tend to make your mind wander and your eyes hurt because there aren’t any pauses. Hence, your eyes play hopscotch on the page rather than continuing in a linear fashion.
An easy way to do it: Look for the coordinating conjunctions in your sentences – and, but, for, nor, and so – because these tend to join two independent thoughts together. Delete them and add a period.
E.g., “She knew it was going to be a rainy day, but she didn’t want to bring an umbrella.”
Remove the conjunction, add a period. The sentence becomes “She knew it was going to be a rainy day. She didn’t want to bring an umbrella.”
No meaning is lost, and the sentence isn’t dumbed down. It’s just shorter!
2. Use Less-Complex Versions of Common Words
If you’re writing for an average reader, skip the words that over-complicate your ideas.
One major example: “Utilize” vs. “use.”
They mean the EXACT same thing, but one is simpler and clearer.
Look at the difference:
“She wanted to utilize her knowledge.”
“She wanted to use her knowledge.”
See what I mean?
3. Make Paragraphs Shorter
Another great way to increase the readability of your online content is to shorten your paragraphs.
Shorter paragraphs naturally keep your eyes moving down, line by line. Whether it’s due to our natural curiosity or some other factor, it works.
For example, use one-line paragraphs to pull your readers’ eyes down the page. These are called “bucket brigades” (Brian Dean explains them really well in his SEO copywriting article).
Use one-line paragraphs and bucket brigades in your intro to grab attention.
Use them to emphasize important points, facts, or ideas in the body of your piece, too.
For example, after some longer paragraphs that are explain-y, use some bucket brigades to break up the rhythm of the piece and keep your reader interested.
4. Include Lots of Headings
Headings are a godsend for online writing.
They break up the text into orderly, logical chunks.
They make the text easy to scan and find the information you want.
They help readers make sense of the text.
As a general rule, add a heading whenever you introduce a new facet or branch of your topic. Use them liberally versus sparingly, especially if your piece is long.
Don’t forget to tag your headings appropriately and make them stand out from the body text. In WordPress, there’s a dropdown menu that lets you apply headings to text, including formatting:
Some other heading tips:
H1 should only be used once – for your headline/title.
H2s are for major subtopics within your content piece.
H3s break down facets of your subtopic(s).
H4s further help break down points inside your H3s.
Tons of tools exist on the web that can help refine the readability of your online text. My favorites:
Hemingway Editor has a built-in readability score. It also shows where you’re being unnecessarily wordy – a giant help for cutting down sentences and improving clarity.
Readable works similarly but scores your text against several readability algorithms so you get a bunch of different scores, plus a grade from Readable’s proprietary scoring system. It also points out the hard-to-read text so you can refine it.
Microsoft Word has a reading score tool built in. To use it, just go to Review >> Spelling & Grammar. Go through the spell-check. When it’s finished, the final screen will display lots of extra information about your text, including the various readability scores.
6. Get Feedback
Nothing beats the human eye when you’re trying to assess the readability of a text.
To that end, enlist an editor, proofreader, or a trusted friend to read your content for clarity and readability. Ask them to specifically judge the clarity of your content and how easy it is to read.
Use this as your last check before hitting “publish.” Keep your editor’s comments in mind for the future and use them to further hone your writing.
[bctt tweet=”How do you improve the readability of your content? Write shorter sentences, use simpler, commonly used words, write shorter paragraphs, add lots of headings, use readability tools, and get feedback. – @JuliaEMcCoy.” username=”ExpWriters”]
For What Grade Level Should You Write Online Content? It Depends
The average adult reads at an 8th-grade level, but that doesn’t mean you should write to that level.
Your audience will be the last word on the reading level you aim to hit.
Do thorough research to get to know them, then write accordingly. Don’t forget to infuse your content with best practices for online writing and reading on screens.
Once you write to your audience in a way that’s totally tailored to them, your content will start making the impact you’ve been hoping for. Here’s to better content that moves people in ways you never imagined!
While it might be tempting to answer, “nothing,” I’d encourage you to look a little deeper.
Sure, Tolkien invented magical lands and languages and creatures few of us could concoct in our wildest dreams, but there’s still a similarity. That similarity links you and me, and all of us who work in the written word, to Tolkien, Rowling, Nabokov, and Chekov. What is it?
The similarity is a love of stories and a fondness for telling them.
Today, too many people sell “marketing” or “commercial” writing off as a pursuit devoid of creativity. They see it as nothing more than some empty pitches and a hard-sell. Lucky for them, and for us, those people are wrong.
As someone who has spent all my life creating and consuming stories, I can tell you that storytelling is central to great brand writing and that only companies who nail it right off the bat succeed with their customers down the road.
Today, we’re going to talk about storytelling: what it is, why it matters, and how you can blend it into your web content. Read on.
What is Storytelling?
No matter who you are, where you came from, or what you studied in school, you’ve probably had the experience of hearing a story that knocked your socks off.
Think about that story for a moment.
How about the opening lines of Star Wars (one of my all-time favorite cinema classics)?
Maybe you were enamored by the opening lines of Kafka’s Metamorphosis:
“When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.”
Or Nabokov’s Lolita:
“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee.Ta.”
Maybe it was the opening line of The Hobbit that made you sit up straight in your chair, suck in your breath, and clutch the book a little tighter at the sheer joy of the story to come:
“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.”
While each of these stories came from a different part of the world, different culture, and a different time, each has one thing in common: they grab you, and they won’t let go.
This is storytelling, in all its richness and beauty.
Why Stories Matter
Storytelling in copywriting is the perfect way to engage readers and claim their attention. To understand how to tell great stories, though, it’s essential first to figure out why they matter so much.
Stories are integral to human society. Stories are and have always been, a part of life. Since the excellent way ancient beings painted petroglyphs on the walls of caves, to the day when Rowling sat down to write the first few lines of her Harry Potter series, not much has changed. Stories are meant to entertain and delight, to help people pass the time and uncover deeper meaning in life.
Today, the methods by which people tell stories has changed, but the importance they hold in society hasn’t. As such, marketers who understand how important telling stories is can succeed capturing something rare and extraordinary that allows them to reach the next level of connection and emotion with their readers.
The Connection Between Copywriting and Storytelling
You don’t think copywriting and storytelling go hand in hand? It might be time to think again.
What do you think you’re doing when you write up that long product description or your latest press release? Sure, you’re providing customers with the facts, but you’re also telling a story. It might not be something from the Brothers Grimm, but it’s a story nonetheless. And this story helps delight your readers and assist them to make a connection with the product, good, or service you’re writing about.
When you tell the story the right way, you have the potential to make a new connection with your readers and help them remember you the way you want them to remember you. This is a rare opportunity afforded to only the best and bravest marketers.
How To Incorporate Storytelling In Your Web Content: 5 Epic Tips
Even if you fancy yourself more an inbound expert than a mythologist, it’s still possible to create unforgettable stories. Here are five epic rules for incorporating storytelling into your online content, starting now:
1. Keep it Relevant and Interesting
A great story teller knows who is going to read it, and tailors its voice accordingly. The same needs to go for your online writing. Relevant stories perform better with their audiences, and help perpetuate that feeling of enchantment and mystery.
Luckily for you, staying relevant doesn’t have to mean getting boring. To keep your story relevant and exciting, find ways to tie it back to your target audience consistently. As you write, ask yourself if they would appreciate, connect to, or identify with the topic of your story. If so, keep going. If not, reevaluate. The more relevant you can keep your tale, the better it will perform with your readers.
2. Do the Opposite of What GRRM Did
George R. R. Martin is known for his lengthy descriptions of banquets and the gigantic nature of his A Song of Ice and Fire novels. He is also known for taking eons to publish his books. They are amazing, there’s no doubt about it.
But if there’s one thing online creators should learn from George, it’s what not to do – and here’s why.
If you want to succeed at storytelling online, do the opposite of what George did. Instead of going into painstaking detail so extensive you lose the online reader, who has 8 seconds to keep their attention on one topic, take a large-picture approach and ensure that what you’re writing is useful and exciting, first and foremost.
Don’t write extremely long stories and don’t take forever publishing your content. While there’s some evidence to suggest that long-form content performs better online than short-form content, this isn’t a good reason to string your content along just because you can.
Remember: there’s a difference between long-form and overstuffed. Today’s successful online content needs to be more than just long: it also needs to be helpful and exciting. With this in mind, avoid cramming your content full of junk just to extend its word count or make it seem more extensive.
3. Read, Read, Read, Then Write
As Stephen King says, “If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.” Reading is paramount for crafting great stories. You will not be able to come up with something witty and intriguing if all you do is look at Facebook every day.
Note that when I say read, I mean things both inside and outside of copywriting. While it’s smart to read your industry papers, publications, and journals, you should also venture outside your industry into the great novels, stories, and poetry of the world. While it might seem like there’s nothing to be learned here, these storytellers can give you a master class in how to construct and deliver appealing content to the masses.
To put this another way, when you read things that will inspire your writing, you give yourself the competitive edge in a very competitive industry. Try checking out Orson Scott Card’s Ender series or Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials.
If science fiction and fantasy aren’t your jam, try Agatha Christie, Mark Twain, Lemony Snicket, Fyodor Dostoevsky, or Charles Bukowski. No matter who or what you love to read, reading more and writing more will both help you flex and build your storytelling muscles, and enjoy more compelling stories in no time.
Remember: you don’t have to tie yourself into a particular genre or brand, either: just find an author you love to read and go with it. It doesn’t matter if you’re hooked on presidential biographies or fantasy novels, just as long as you’re reading.
4. Treat Your Brand Like an Epic Tale
Think about fairy tales for a moment: they’re some of the most archetypal stories out there.
Each of them has a few things in common: a separation, initiation, and return, and a series of characters that typically includes some assortment of a wise old sage, a young hero, an animal assistant, and a villain. While stories like The Little Mermaid and Bluebeard may seem very different, they share some key ingredients that make them work.
If you want to incorporate storytelling into your web content, one of the first things you’ll need to learn to do is to take a hint from these epics: treat your brand as a story for the ages, and it will become one.
When you look at it this way, your brand launch wasn’t just a launch: it was a great quest for a distant goal. Your founders aren’t just founders, they’re adventurers paving new roads. The problem you’re seeking to solve isn’t just an annoyance: it’s a foundational villain you’re out to destroy.
The more you can incorporate the storytelling structure into your content, the more successful you’ll be both in the long- and short-term.
While this doesn’t mean you need to use fantastical language or create fantastical demons to star in your product descriptions, it does mean that incorporating the structure of storytelling into your daily life can help you master the art of online copy.
5. Craft a Narrative Arc
For the stories in your online copy to be as compelling as possible, they need to follow a narrative arc that takes them from the introduction to the conflict to resolution. Not only does this keep the reader interested: it also serves to structure your story and makes it more recognizable as a story than as marketing copy.
Keep the narrative arc in mind as you write your stories, since this will provide the foundation and roadmap they need to become truly unforgettable.
If you’re having a difficult time finding the narrative arc in your story, consider having someone else read it for you. The second set of eyes will be helpful to identify storytelling structure and help you improve it accordingly.
Happy Storytelling to You!
You’ve read the tips for interweaving stories with your web content, and now it’s time to get to work integrating the age-old practice of storytelling into your daily writing and life.
Need an example of a brand that does storytelling well?
Look no further than Starbucks!
The coffee chain released a story about their siren logo and how it came to be within their brand. Are you surprised they pulled it from literature? Or that people loved its inception story so much?
Telling a story about your brand and how it came to be is a great way to garner more interest in your company, as well as establish a personal connection with customers. When you master it accordingly, your readers and your brand both stand to benefit far beyond your wildest dreams.
What’s more, telling a story is one of the only ways to hone your writing, improve your brand, and make your products, goods, and services unforgettable to your customers.
Need expert writers to help you craft high-quality stories starting today? Visit our Content Shop today to get started.
Buckle up and settle in. It’s harder than you may think.
Good content that people want to read isn’t just well-written. It’s also:
Organized
Concise
Scannable
In other words, it’s easy on the eyes. You don’t have to do much work to make sense of it.
But, why is this important?
It’s simple: People read differently on the web than they do anywhere else. “Anywhere else” includes papers, books, magazines, and other printed matter. Whatever the physical medium, people do not read them the same way they read a web page.
If you’re not optimizing your web content for the way people read on the web, you’ll be turning them away more often than inciting them to dive deeper.
Want people to get the most out of your content? You need to fan the flames of their interest, not douse them in freezing cold water.
Why Do People Read Web Content Differently?
Why do people read differently on the web than they do for printed matter?
We could surmise that people don’t feel like they have time to read every page they encounter word-by-word. The web is so large, and there’s so much information to sift through, something’s got to give.
Think about how many pages you click through daily. If you have no idea, check out your browser history for yesterday. How many websites did you visit?
If you’re like me, the list is most likely a mile long. There’s no way I would have digested all that information unless I scanned it.
Deep reading is not conducive to web browsing.
What Does Research Say About Reading on the Web?
Research backs up the fact that people don’t read web content like they do books.
In fact, the Nielsen/Norman Group found this was true 79% of the time in an eye-tracking study they did. They measured over 300 people’s eye movements as they browsed hundreds of websites. They came to an overwhelming conclusion:
People do not read on the web. They scan.
Slate came to a similar conclusion when they tracked how far people scrolled down their web pages before leaving. Even if people do stick around long enough to scan the page, they don’t stay for long.
About 50% of users stopped scanning at the halfway mark in a Slate article before they clicked away from the page. Across the web, people stopped at about the 60% mark.
Here’s Slate’s conclusion:
“Few people are making it to the end, and a surprisingly large number aren’t giving articles any chance at all.”
Another Nielsen study found that to be true. According to the research, people only have time to read (or choose to read) about 28% of any given web page.
If this isn’t discouraging for web content creators, I don’t know what is.
If we can’t get people to read our content, how do we make any impact at all?
There’s Hope: You Can Get People to Scan and Scroll Your Web Content
Yes, you can improve your chances that people will scan your content, read at least some of it, and scroll all the way to the end.
On the internet, where attention spans are shorter than a blip, that’s a huge deal.
Some of these tips to achieve these goals may be obvious, but some may be surprising. Here are five ways to make people more likely to skim, scan, and read.
[clickToTweet tweet=”Learn the five strategies to get people to scan and scroll your web content via @ExpWriters!” quote=”Learn the five strategies to get people to scan and scroll your web content via @ExpWriters!”]
1. Organize Your Content Well
Well-organized content is scannable content. It’s a cinch to read, plus, you can easily find ideas within the text. Some examples of good organization:
Bulleted lists
Numbered lists
Headings and sub-headings
Short paragraphs with one main idea in each
Meaningful links
These all have one thing in common. They’re all ways to break up your content so it’s scannable. Readers latch on to these text markers – all of them are alerts that say, “Hey, this is important. Pay attention.”
And, luckily, most readers do!
So, what does the opposite look like? This leads us to my next point:
2. Don’t Build Walls of Text!
You can find content with zero organization most often in that infamous “wall of text.” You know what I’m talking about.
It’s hard to scan and will make people want to punch their computer – never a good scenario.
Because they can’t punch their computers, instead, they’ll leave your website without a backward glance.
3. Make Your Organization Logical
A page that’s organized is great, but if that organization isn’t logical, you’re still not helping your readers.
What does logical organization look like?
It means ideas are grouped together. One paragraph, one idea. One bulleted list, one main idea. Here’s a fantastic example:
Note that all items in each list go together. On one hand, there’s the list of ingredients. On the other, there are the instructions. These groupings make sense. They’re logical.
Here’s an illogical example:
Note the formatting. Some of the items have punctuation; others don’t. Some are one-word long; others are sentence-length.
Also, note the information itself. All the items in this list relate to ice cream, but they don’t all belong there. A bulleted list needs to have the same type of “thing” next to each bullet.
Don’t make these errors. Instead…
4. Format Your Bulleted Lists Well
Good organization helps your readers immensely. It also makes them want to linger on your page.
When your page is easy-as-pie to scan, your readers can glom-on to important information. They’ll grab the hook and get caught on your line.
Here are some main keys for strongly organized lists in your content:
Don’t mix sentence fragments with full sentences in your lists. Use phrases exclusively, or only use sentences with periods – not both.
If you find yourself typing out long lists with commas in paragraphs, consider breaking up that information into a bulleted list.
Try to use the same sentence structure and type in your lists for each bullet. For instance, don’t mix statements with questions.
Don’t overuse bullets or lists. Employ them when it makes sense, especially when they clarify your ideas.
In short, to make sense, use common sense. Try your best to enlighten your readers, not confuse them. Break up your content, organize it, and do it logically.
5. Use SEO Strategies
SEO is how you make your website usable and readable for both search engines and humans.
This optimization double-whammy is exactly how you should go about boosting your content for a better user experience.
SEO tenets, like the use of keywords, headers, meaningful links, and more, contribute to readability.
Plus, according to Yoast, readable text ranks. On the other hand, text that’s hard to read will not rank. Think stilted sentences, strange wording, or unorganized blocks of text.
Bottom line: Search engines loathe walls of text in web content. You should, too.
Get Read More Widely: Format Your Web Content the Right Way
Unfortunately, most internet users don’t do any deep reading on the web.
That blog post you spent hours composing? It may not get skimmed past the third paragraph. Even more people will bounce before they ever read the first line.
These are not good reasons to get discouraged and quit, though. Instead, take them as motivation to format your web content so it’s ultra-readable.
This means a logical organization with zero text walls. It means using bulleted or numbered lists to break up chunks of information. It means being smart about including meaningful headings and links.
Don’t forget the SEO! This is the perfect way to optimize for both search engines and people. Implement basic SEO tenants and you’ll find that organization is inherent to its success.
To sum it all up, pay attention to what you’re saying, but don’t neglect how you’re saying It, either. The way your words appear on the web can dramatically affect how people consume your content.
To feed the most people, make it easy to digest. Make it readable.
If your content is suffering from lack of structure and organization, call on Express Writers to help. We produce web content that’s simple to read and well-written.
