In today’s social media dominated society, consumers can visit 5 different sites in the matter of seconds. So the biggest struggle may no longer be getting consumers to the website, but keeping them interested when they arrive. With the average consumer’s attention span being under 20 seconds at a time, these quick five steps can ensure you make the best of it.
1. Firstly, know what the readers want and create it. This works by researching audiences so organizations know who the most engaged users are, how they will arrive at your site, how they spend their time and what drives their attention, frequency and engagement. Also, check out websites that get the most attention and see what they are doing, is their content humorous? Colourful infographics? Find out what’s popular.
2. Next you need to tell audiences how long the piece will take to read. There is never too much information on an article, the more the audience knows, the more likely they are to read it. Online tools help to keep things simple and easy for reading. When stating the amount of time, consider rounding the time off to a whole number.
3. Make your content shareable. In recent publications it has been recognized that our society is increasingly relying on public opinion in order to make decisions. Organizations can take advantage of this by making their content shareable by social media. This will help organizations reach a wider range of audiences and will increase time spent reading. Often time’s audiences share the same opinion and interests as their friends and family, which will increase the number of shares and reads.
4. Next you must be able to break it up, if audiences lose interest they will stop reading. Breaking content up into sections will make an article easier to ready and keep the reader engaged. This involves using short concise thoughts, and incorporating images where possible. Headings give a concrete idea of what the reader is getting into.
5. Finally, go mobile. 63% of smartphone users use their phones to go online, meaning a large portion of audiences aren’t reading your content off of their computer but instead browsing with their smartphone, tablets or other mobile devices. Mobile devices require organizations to tailor their content to sizes that will fit smaller screens and still remain easy reads.
To conclude, organizations need to remember that time is of the essence when writing content for their audiences. This is why knowing the readers, indicating the amount of time they need from them, making content shareable, breaking it up and going mobile.
Are you keeping your audience interested?
Disclaimer: Based on original article: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/239092
