How To Write Content So That People Actually Read It - A CXL Institute Review

Content.

A word that is exciting, humbling, and terrifying all at the same time.

Let's be honest here. Putting content out into the world is the 2020 equivalent of passing a girl the "will you go out with me, circle yes or no" note in 6th grade.

You're basically asking the world to show you that they either love you or hate you or even worse, that they don't even know you exist, which was the epitome of my middle and high school years.

Here's the thing, you can do everything else perfectly and fail completely because your content isn't up to par.

Your content is absolutely a deal breaker if it doesn't catch the person, offer value, and draw them deeper into your brand.

There are certain ways that we as humans interact with content that makes it very important for your content to be constructed in a certain way.

Meaning, you've got to have a science behind your art.

Headlines, formatting, words, video etc.

All of these need to come into play when writing content, especially blog content, which is where we'll live for most of the day today.

You ready? I'm ready! Let's go.

The Content Black Hole

Here's the deal folks.

In 2020, for your content to be considered good, it really has to be amazing, and for it to be considered bad, it just has to be good.

There's no in-between, your good stuff is useful, insightful, and draws people in, but bad content is useless, worthless, and resultless (yeah I just came up with that word!).

The bad stuff gets lost in the content black hole. It's where your hard work goes to die.

But.

aThere's a better way.

It starts with actually figuring out what your clientele wants.

I've discussed this in both previous articles and on Bootstrapped Growth.

But as a quick recap, you've got to be sensitive to the fact that what you like doesn't matter, it's about what your audience likes.

You've got to dig into what they're searching for by doing keyword research or simply talking with your audience to find out their needs.

You can use tools like Keywordtool.io or Answerthepublic.com to research what your audience is looking for.

You can also use a good old fashioned Google search, but man, nothing beats listening to your audience.

Listening is the ultimate source of topics.

Talk to your sales team. What are your prospects asking you about?

Talk to your customer success team. What are your most common questions?

Call your clients. See what matters to them.

And one bit of recap from last week, remember that not only should you be focused on what your customers want in your content, but add some controversy to your content.

Not negatively, but be provocative.

Don't be boring.

The content that keeps you out of the content black hole is research, research reviews, and opinion pieces.

Let's be real, most of our journalism today is research review and opinion and we eat that ish up all day!

Onward!

Headlines

Close your eyes with me for a second.

You're at the grocery store. You've got yourself a big bag of Lay's potato chips: Bet you can't eat just one, chips ahoy cookies, the soft kind, you're not a serial killer, and a pint of Ben & Jerry's chunky monkey, is there really any other flavor?!

No really. I don't think there is!

You're in line to check out. What do you see at the register? Oh wow! No Way! Is anyone else seeing this?

I'm so happy for Reba!

You pick it up, you thumb through it and you add that bad boy to your shopping cart.

Why?

The Headline.

It caught your attention, it drew you in and you can't read all about how Reba is now happy in the 12 seconds you have before you're asked: "is plastic ok?"

Quick side note, when someone asks you if plastic is ok, do you actually say no, or do you mindlessly mumble "uh huh" while wishing you had used InstaCart so you didn't have to interact with the world?

No. Just me?

Moving on.

Headlines are a huge part of the game of content.

What's a headline?

Is it an email subject line?

Is it the top of an infographic?

Is it a title tag?

Is it a header? H1?

Is it a social media post?

They're all headlines!

The key to every single one of the things I listed above is to get someone to click and move forward into an interaction with your brand.

The headline has to give the individual the answer to why they should spend the next X minutes investing in your content.

Why they should scroll through this content?

The question is how do you create a headline that has the stopping power of that Reba cover from People Magazine?

Bottom line, tell the person exactly what they're getting from reading your content.

The value of their time investment.

Whether you know it or not, before you even clicked on this article, you did an opportunity cost calculation in your head.

We all do it.

We do an internal ROI calculation before we click on anything and ask ourselves what value we actually get in return for investing in this next click.

Let's be real, we ignore most of the headlines we see all day because it doesn't speak to us in a way that stops us in our tracks, the way Reba's happiness does.

Your headline should tell your audience how their investment of time is going to make them better at what they're looking to be better at.

Let's be real, you clicked this article because I'm writing about creating content that people will read.

When people read your content, they interact with your brand, when they continue to interact with your brand they buy stuff, when they buy stuff, you make money.

I'm promising you something.

If you read this article and spend the next 10 minutes of your life with me, you'll leave here a better content creator.

It's that simple.

I also will make you laugh incessantly and you'll leave here happier than you were prior.

You're welcome!

Your headline should tell people exactly what you want them to get out of your information.

Wanna know how to write a blog?

10 Tips to Writing Forbes Worthy Articles

How to Write a Blog Post so More than Your Mom Reads it

The Ultimate Guide To Blogging

Simple, to the point, and you know what you're getting.

But Ned, how does that Reba headline make me better at something?

It actually speaks to a few of your biological desires as a human, Social approval, and a secondary desire, to be informed.

Once you read that article, you can then gossip with your friends and they'll look at you as informed and the alpha in the group! Thanks Reba!

Formatting

This is huge!

HUGE

H

U

G

E

Humongous!

Notice anything similar to how everyone and their mother writes now?

Why?

Because this is how we read.

Formatting is key to your success with your content.

Neglect this and you will fail.

The Nielsen and Norman group did a study of a bunch of content and they found that people read at most 28% of the words on a page.

That's not a lot of your words.

So visitors are not reading your stuff.

They're scanning.

They're scanners.

Accept it.

And work with it.

It's fine.

You're a scanner too.

You don't read every word on the page.

See what I did there?

So stop with the long blocky paragraphs with no visuals.

When you format that way, you literally slam your visitor with a negative pattern interrupt and they want to get off of your site as soon as possible.

Leaving them to feel like our good friend here!

Man, this meme really speaks to my soul on so many levels... but I digress.

Break up your content and add white space.

Clean. Modern. White Space.

Let me explain it this way.

Reading for Millennials is like working out.

We get tired and sore.

The words are like the weights, the white space is the rest time in between.

Give people the place to rest their eyes.

Even if only for a millisecond.

We thank you in advance.

My recommendation is to never write a paragraph longer than three lines.

I don't care how many words, sentences, doesn't matter,

Three. Lines.

Please and thank you!

I've heard it this way:

Short paragraphs get read, long paragraphs get skimmed and very long paragraphs get skipped.

Don't get skipped.

Words

Uh huh. The words you use matter.

Unlike my love life which consists of a lot of "Ned, it's not what you said, it's how you said it."

In your blog life, it's:

"Ned, what you just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard!

At no point in your rambling incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought.

Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul."

My advice here?

Write like you talk, my dog!

Stop trying to be fancy!

Stop trying to impress people.

I'm going to say something that may ruffle some feathers, but I really do believe that people use long fancy words because they're insecure, and they're afraid that the person who they're talking to won't think they're intelligent.

It's the same with people that talk in acronyms, but that is a different story for a different time.

Here's the deal, people are reading your content to get better at something, and unless your content is "How to sound smarter using these 5 long words." make it a lot more simple.

I had to talk my team at HALOS into this so I dug into the research.

The Nielson Norman Group proved this when they took a healthcare website and re-wrote it to bring it down to an 8th grade level.

The surprise of the study is that PhDs preferred to read at an 8th grade level.

They went from 68% to 93% read.

So, we should always be trying to bring down our readability levels.

Don't dumb it down, just make it simple.

Use the fresh usual words.

The common words.

The good stuff.

I'll end this section with this quote by Gary Halbert

"...in my opinion, a good writer is one who makes things perfectly clear. He makes it easy for the reader. Easy to understand what he is saying. Easy to keep reading."

User Video to Pad Your Stats

So, remember in the last article how I talked about how the length of time your audience stays on your page is a ranking factor in SEO?

Basically the pages that people stay on longer rank higher.

Well...

Beyond your headline which is the first click and the words that you put on the page and the formatting, you can really pad your page stats by adding video.

Put the video at the top of the page.

Before they get to any of your formattings, or the words that you say have them watch your 30 second to 2 minute video about the topic.

See how that will pad the on page stats?

Eh? Eh? Eh?

From there add pictures, diagrams, other videos, infographics and the likes throughout your article.

It makes it really easy for people to continue reading when you give their eye (and their brain) a rest in your long content.

Research has also shown that long content is shared more, linked back to more, and referenced more.

But...

People don't read, they skim.

So give them things that stop their skim and add time to your page, like Video, graphics, and the like so that you become the best page for your topic on the internet.

Congratulations

You are now the proud owner of new knowledge that will skyrocket your ability to create content that people will actually read.

Here's the synopsis:

1. Write content about stuff your audience cares about
2. Tell your audience what they'll get if they click on your article with the headlines
3. Format like people read in 2020 aka, make it skimmable
4. Write like you talk. No one cares about how many words you know Karen.
5. Add video to pad your on page stats.
6. Rake in ALL THE CASH

Until Next Time.