How to Write Content That People Actually Read
Crafting content that truly resonates with audiences requires more than words typed onto a screen — it requires a profound understanding of your reader’s interests, needs, wants, and preferences. Then, you have to be able to frame your content to exemplify your understanding of these key points. If you want to know how to write content that people actually read and engage with, you have to think about how you’re structuring, formatting, and crafting that content.
Here are a few suggestions on how to write content:
1. Know Your Audience
It all starts with your audience. You can’t write valuable content that people are compelled to read and engage with if you don’t know with 100 percent certainty who you’re writing to.
Knowing your audience requires you to be thoughtful and contemplative. You have to be willing to research, sift through the data, and read between the lines.
While most brands start with demographic information, you should really be going deeper than this. Study your audience by going to the places where they spend time – whether it’s specific pages on Reddit, Facebook Groups, message boards, or even the comment sections of popular news websites.
When you’re in the places where your audience hangs out, study the kind of things they talk about – including their biggest frustrations, goals, hopes, fears, and challenges. Make note of the words they use, the cultural references they make, and how they talk to one another. All of these factors should influence how you create your content.
2. Captivate From the Start
Attention spans are shorter than ever – some say less than that of a goldfish. You only have five to eight seconds from the time someone starts reading your content to convince them that they should keep going. (And in some cases, it’s more like two to three seconds.) The way you convince people to keep engaging is to be captivating from the start.
When learning how to write content, it’s a good idea to lead your content with an open loop or a tease – something that gives the reader a need to ‘stick with it.’ You can also appeal to the human side of things by telling a story that will suck people in.
3. Offer Practical Value and Quick Wins
We live in a day and age where people want things that are practical and helpful. They want content that communicates specifically to them in their current situation and experience.
“Good content is not about self-promotion or how great your products are,” Rankin PR explains. “It is educational, insightful, and even disruptive material that actually benefits your target audience.”
If you want people to stay super engaged with your content, give them practical value that they can implement right away for quick wins in their lives.
4. Write Simply and Clearly
Stop trying to show off your writing chops with lots of big words and academic language. Research shows that it’s best to write on a 7th grade reading level. This ensures better comprehension and allows people to consume content faster and with more efficiency.
5. Keep it Digestible
When was the last time you read a massive research paper or super detailed white paper? Probably never, right? The reason is that they’re perceived as being overwhelming. And much of this overwhelm has to do with the fact that they use massive paragraphs and big blocks of text.
To create content that people resonate with, make it digestible. Break up big chunks of text, use short paragraphs, and avoid long, run-on sentences. You can also leverage things like bullet points, numbered lists, and subheadings.
6. Use Visuals to Break Up Text
Another way to make content visually digestible is to use things like images, graphics, charts, memes, or even videos. As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. (And a video might be worth a million.) When you can communicate something visually, do it! It’ll increase comprehension and engagement.
7. Speak Directly to Your Reader
Always write your content in a second-person voice – just like this article. Write in a way where you’re communicating directly with your readers. This makes it feel more like a conversation and less like a lecture or impersonal “lesson.”
Turn Your Content Into Gold
You don’t have to be a world-class copywriter or marketing expert to create magnetic content that attracts people to your brand. The key is to follow the principles above and create content that your target audience actually wants to read. This article should give you a nice head start!
Featured image provided by picjumbo.com; Pexels; Thanks!
