3 Excellent Techniques for Writing Scannable Blog Posts

(Reading time: 6 – 10 minutes)

Do you really know how to write a readable blog post?

It’s not that difficult, and anyone can learn the tricks. You just need to know what the tricks are!

There’s many ways to increase readability. Write in short, pithy sentences using short words everyone understands is great start.

Use very short paragraphs.

Find an emotional connection with your readers to compel them to continue reading. Using tactics like paragraph transitioning with “bucket words,” and writing scannable content are also excellent techniques.

All these readability techniques are so important to master, they all rate in-depth treatment by themselves!

For example, this article on using FD Word Statistics plugin will help you write with shorter words and sentences.

Let’s take an in-depth look at another tactic: writing scannable content. Scannable content allows your readers to very rapidly skim over your article to find actionable high points. Instead of reading your article in depth, your reader might read your title and subtitle carefully, skip to your first bullet list, jump on the next several high points, then land on your offer and… read very carefully again.

Sales copy style

Really good sales copy is highly readable.

If sales copy wasn’t readable, it wouldn’t sell!

Writing sales copy is called “copy writing” in the advertising business, not to be confused with copyrighting (establishing legal protection for creative written works).

Copy writing is an art requiring many years of practice to master, but copy writing principles are not difficult, and can be learned by anyone. There are two parts: form and content. Each part is related, the form helps pace the content, the content helps dictate the form. For example,

Good sales copy reads like a normal conversation flows

Do your blog posts flow normally?

Do mine? (By all means, let me know either way!)

Write conversationally. Such that readers are nodding their heads in agreement as they move from line to line, paragraph to paragraph.

Use punctuation effectively… to emphazise key points. Shift indentation and use highlighting to guide the reader. Every time you “change gears” by highlighting, the reader’s eyes are forced to practically stop and assess “what just happened?”

Use these techniques for guiding the reader carefully: too little is better than too much.

Always close with a call to action:

Don’t stop here, read on to get the next two scannability tactics!

Selective highlighting

Perceptive readers of Website In A Weekend noticed a new twist in writing style when I reported on Tim Ferris’s talk at WordCamp San Francisco 2009: in that report and many successive blog posts, every 1 or 2 paragraphs has a key phrase highlighted in bold type.

Tim explained that he highlights important phrases as a courtesy to readers. Readers in a hurry can jump from bold phrase to bold phrase, rapidly extracting the gist of the article. Highlighting is especially helpful in very long articles (for example, several thousand words). Of course, such readers will miss the back story and supporting elements… which doesn’t matter at all when you can slow them down at your call-for-action at the end.

For extra credit, tell me why you should keep each of these highlighted phrases under 125 characters long.

Sections and subsections

Most formal writing has a rigidly designed (and enforced) structure consisting of headers and subheaders. When I say “in the formal literature” I’m using code words meaning “written by people with post graduate or PhD degrees writing for peer-review.” Such articles are separated according to headers which introduce topics at a high level and subheaders expanding on key ideas in each topic.

For example, if this blog post was written as article for submission as a formal paper, the section headings would be pre-defined: Title, Abstract, Introduction, Methodology, Results, Conclusion. Many of these section headers would be further subsectioned according to author’s intent.

Take a look at the example above right, where I’ve made an outline of formal structure. Different fields of study (math, physics, engineering) have slightly different names, and may have these sections in different orders, but the principle is the same. And…

…strict form is not a bad thing.

Strict definition of form helps separates the form from content. When you don’t worry about the form, you concentrate on the content.

Most blog posts usually have little structure. Consequently, most blog posts aren’t very readable. (Or scannable.)

Using such formal structure will drive away readers who aren’t willing to work… while increasing your credibility as an authority… provided your content is accurate.

Now here’s a very curious fact which is well-known among copy writers. This fact about sales copy is so important, that any good copy writer will have already started sharpening his red pencil to take me to task for not mentioning it.

Let me give you a chance first: Do you know the points in common between writing with sections and subsections, and writing sales copy?

I’m going to tell you. I should make you guess harder and email me or something, but I’ll probably forget because I’m absent-minded:

Sales copy that sells is every bit as structured as the most formal paper proving a mathematical theorem.

Think I’m full of BS?

Well, I’m not.

I read plenty of math at Berkeley during 6 years of graduate school… and I just spent the last 5 months devouring everything I could get my finger on about writing sales copy. (Expect to see reviews soon.) I fully admit my sales copy sucks… actually it’s so bad that sucking would be an improvement… but my academic credentials are unimpeachable.

I’ll give even more away: The structure is there in sales copy, but it’s invisible. Sale copy structure doesn’t call attention to itself in the form of sections and subsections. But it’s definitely there… and 30 minutes phone consultation with Dr WordPress to the first person who can state the famous acronym (starting with “A”) for sales copy structure, and what each of the letters mean (offer expires July 31 2009).

You can write scannable blog posts

For demonstration purposes only, I wrote this article using all three techniques for scannability. “Kids don’t try this at home.” etc. Just pick one technique per article.

Take a look back through your blog posts. Which articles are scannable, and which aren’t? How many could you easily rewrite your blog posts incorporating one these 3 principles of scannability? It doesn’t take long once you get the hang of it, and your readers will thank you.

If you would like any help reviewing your blog posts and rewriting for scannability, contact me. Send me a link to your website, I’ll take a look at it let you know what I think. In fact, I’ll provide 30 minutes of free consultation to the first person contacting me (offer expires June 30 2009).

I’m also available for consulting if you need serious editing help (and not just for blog posts!).

---

[Last update: October 24, 2010]