How to Attract Good Quality Views and High Read Ratios
Tips to make your stories authentically attractive and deliciously digestible
As writers, our stats say a lot about the success of our content.
Getting views is vital to get eyes on our work, but views are only a part of the story. They are nothing without the reads too.
So, how do we get not only plenty of clicks to our articles but also reads?
One word…
Readability.
This is the simple rule that will either get you reads or not.
But what defines “readability”?
The basic recipe for “readability”
Your job as a creator of digital content is to pander to what current trends dictate. The ease of fast-loading sites, tab-switching, and effortless scrolling mean that we need to make our content as easy as possible for our readers to read, and engaging enough to continue to read.
Your content needs to be:
- Easy to skim
- Concise
- Objective
- Eye-catching with stand-out keywords
Now, let’s break each of these down.
1. Easy to skim
The first step is to abandon any academic or book-writing style you may have been taught to write.
Online content Vs offline content
Books, magazines, and academic material are the way many of us learned to format our writing in school. However, using this kind of formatting for your online content will be an instant turn-off.
Offline media prefers lots of grey space — ie, more black on white, longer paragraphs, fewer breaks. It’s a convention and, when reading a book or piece of academic reading, we fully embrace this convention.
In the online world, we have now been conditioned to scroll at speed and take in a great deal of information without needing to let our eyes linger.
Online, grey space presents a problem to us because it’s hard to pick out the basic information without lingering, and that means adjusting gears. Many will give up and move on.
The heralding of White Space
It’s simple.
Breaking up our “grey matter” — our finely tuned words — into small chunks and surrounding them with plenty of empty “white space” will instantly transform our work into a much more attractive and readable piece of content.
Instead of a few long paragraphs, have many short ones surrounded by plenty of white space. They can be as short as one sentence and rarely longer than three.
In any kind of written content, be it a blog post, a video caption, or a long-form Facebook post, if there is plenty of empty “white space”, a reader will want to linger.
2. Keeping it concise
Long sentences and multiple clauses are all out.
It may be easier to write drawn-out sentences than short ones, which is fine when drafting a piece. But, once written, they are easy to whittle down. With each sentence you write, read it back to yourself and ask yourself this:
“Could I have written this in fewer words?”
And…
“How can I break this into shorter sentences?”
Using personal stories
Personal stories that back up your points are a great addition, but use them sparingly and wisely. Not every point will necessarily benefit from a personal story and not every story will need personal experience added.
In addition, when you do share personal stories, keep them short, sweet, and to the point.
3. Keeping it objective
There is a marked difference between a piece of content that shares a personal opinion and some simple facts and tips. There is nothing wrong with either, but your reader needs to know, from the outset, what they will be reading.
This starts with the headline or title.
Let the reader know what you want to say and then say it.
An attractive headline does not need to equal clickbait
Of course, we all want our headlines to attract readers to click, but that then needs to lead to readers reading, or it’s a wasted click.
A headline is our promise to the reader.
Therefore, your title and subtitle need to reflect the nature of your post. Make sure that the reader is clear from the outset:
- What they are going to learn and
- How they are going to learn it.
Are they going to learn some unusual facts, helpful tips, or your personal gripe about a particular topic?
Stick to the subject and the promise
The main body of your article needs to follow the lead of the title. If you are sharing facts or tips, get into them swiftly and without unnecessary drivel.
If you are sharing your opinion, make that clear and be objective with that opinion. That is to say, acknowledge that other opinions are also valid.
Even rants have a place in the intelligent online space, but do them right and don’t bore your audience with a pointless rant.
4. An eye-catching layout with stand-out keywords
The white space is the best way to make your overall words more readable. But you can take it one step further to make sure that the words of greatest interest stand out.
That is by using the story editor (if using Medium) or similar formatting options on a different platform.
You can make individual words into bold or italics.
Or you can do that with whole sentences and paragraphs.
A varied layout
They say that variety is the spice of life. Well, it is also the spice of your articles.
My lovely friend and mentor in this world of Medium, Kristina God, even calls it “spicing up your stories”. It is when you introduce variety into the visual aspect of your article to avoid lulling your reader into boredom.
(Remember, in this fast-paced, seamless digital world, users get bored very quickly. It’s not you, it’s them!)
You can divide your content into sections using…
Headers
And even break those up with…
Subheaders
You can quote an article using this quotation format.
And you can pull out pieces of your own text…
with this format.
Read this guide from Medium to understand how to use the story editor.
You can also use emojis, images (remembering to always credit the source), and even GIFs to add another dimension 😉
Audio clips
With the growing popularity of audible content, some content creators have started embedding an audio version of the article or story. I believe this will become more and more widespread in the months to come.
And guess what that means?
The reader barely has to spend any time reading or looking at your content!
It’s a win-win!
Closing thoughts
Hopefully, this has given you some food for thought around getting your stories more readable, if they aren’t already. And, even if they are, it never hurts to try a few new things.
I was well aware of many of these rules when I first began writing on Medium and had been blogging for a few years, but trying a few new things, such as the addition of GIFs and emojis, and making more of the variety of formatting options, seems like it has helped me to both write better articles, and increase the time that people are spending reading my work.
So, give some of these things a go and let me know what works for you.
