When you're taking a stroll through the internet, the last thing you want is to be faced with the Mt. Everest of content, especially when all you wanted was a walk-in-the-park blog post.
With so much to do, and so little time, coming upon a wall of text is intimidating, if not just plain off-putting. How do you combat writing a mountain when you have so much to say? Break it down!
- Use headings to separate distinct ideas
- Try bullet lists instead of paragraphs (see what I did there?)
Breaking your content up helps readers decide how deep into the topic they want to go. Think of it as choose-your-own-adventure digital content. People can skim over the intro and subheadings to get a sense of what's being discussed, and read further into a given section if they feel so inclined. Headings and bullets both build in a hierarchy of information; this structure allows readers to decide for themselves how much detail is enough.
What else helps make your content less intimidating?
- Be concise
- Insert hyperlinks on complex topics
It can be far too easy to wax poetic on a subject that you find interesting or know a lot about, but too much is definitely a bad thing. I'm guilty of this myself, more often than not. It's important to know what's important, and what's just extra detail. Distill your discussion down to the key points - if it merits greater discussion, then there's your next blog post! Instead of over-analyzing a given subject, hyperlink off to good definitions or
other posts on that specific topic. Again, you're letting the reader decide how much they want to learn.
In the age of short attention spans and rapid-fire consumption, turn your content mountain into a molehill by breaking it down into sections, identifying the main points in headers and bullets, and letting your reader decide just how much they need to know.
