

You can go on repeating the same structure throughout your post to create a desired pattern. Following this tip will help your readers go with the flow and read your entire article, from the post title straight through to your conclusion. Your target audience will appreciate that. Such consistency creates a pattern and makes reading easy. When you’ve read through the first three sections or so, you will feel a sense of consistency. If you look at this post, I’ve started each section by introducing the idea. (You’ll also naturally write shorter sentences as a result.) When you start writing in the active voice, you’ll start placing the most important information right at the beginning of your sentence. At the sentence level: Ditch the passive voice.Basically, you need to make your point right at the opening of each paragraph. At the paragraph level: Just like your post’s opening line(s), your paragraph’s opening or leading sentence should summarize what that paragraph is about.

But keep it clear and tell your readers what your post is about and what its key message is.

When venture capitalist Tom Tunguz moved on from Google to Redpoint, he felt that his messages weren’t as convincing as they used to be at Google. It’s also called the inverted pyramid approach to writing content. The approach of offering the most important information before filling in on the secondary details is called frontloading. And, then come quotes, stats, and other supporting details. The first 2-3 sentences tell you what the story is about.Īs you read further, you’re filled in on the secondary details. The leading few sentences (often called “the lede”), answer questions like: Who, What, When, Where, Why, and more… If you read a newspaper story, you’ll see that it covers the most important questions right at the beginning of the piece. Take the inverted pyramid approach to writing each post, paragraph, and sentence Here are 12 of the most effective writing and formatting tactics to give you a head start. If you’ve been spending hours whipping out long-form content, know that your readers have been ignoring most of it.īut, there’s help: You can use findings of various web readability studies and other general web writing and styling practices to boost your post readership. Imagine how little people are reading if they are only sticking around for 15 seconds! It would typically take about 5 minutes to read a 1,500-word article. Wondering how I know how many words your readers will “actually” read from your long post? Oh and yes, this number too is on the higher and hopeful end.

And so, we all strive to reach that number.īut, what if I were to tell you that your readers read your articles for less than 15 seconds? Readers also love sharing posts of this length.
