Different writers take different approaches to churning out content.  Some are short, to the point, and concise.  Some say what needs to be said without being wordy or brief (the "in the middle" folks, if you will).  Others, like myself, tend to be a little bit longer winded.  No one style is really "right" or "wrong" and, in many cases, the medium or location of the content dictates the extent to which writers can express themselves.

It should come as no surprise that our busy society has created a readership that likes to scan, glance, and spend the least amount of time on any one article as possible.  You can't really blame them.  Most of us have more things going on than hours in the day to do them.  And I could certainly use an extra pair of eyeballs.

Today's Content Workshop looks at the latter of the three types of writers and explores a few ways to make longer articles, blog posts, and other chunks of content easier to consume.

If you're a long-winded writer, continue reading to see how you can keep people's attention without cutting content or stifling your creative juices.

The Case for Saying It All

When your primary medium is the written word, it makes expressing yourself a little more difficult than, say… speaking.  Now if you're a strict-news writer you might not need to express yourself.  But a lot of editorial, opinion, and blog writing is more than "just the facts" kind of content.  Opinions and commentary published without explanation, support, or a little detailed clarification can often lead to confusion and misinterpretation by your readers.  I'm a firm believer in the value of personal expression and opinion - as long as I can tell what has led you to the conclusion you're making.

To Picture… or Not to Picture

Pictures can help break longer articles and posts up.  But here's the thing about pictures:  they need to be relevant.  If you're writing a story about Pop Tarts, a picture of a bowl of cereal might not be the best choice.  Sure… it's all breakfast food (technically).  But the cereal will only distract your readers from the point of your content.  I covered some great tips about images in websites published by the Online Journalism Review yesterday.

You have to be careful with pictures, though.  Irrelevant or over-used images can turn readers off of your content.  If you've got a picture between every paragraph or section, it might be time to cut back on images.  You also have to keep in mind that pictures will slow down loading of your site (especially for readers with slow connections).  It may seem like everyone has broadband these days.  But they don't.

And finally, make sure images aren't interrupting the flow of your content.  The best way to do this is with off-centered or text-adjacent graphics.  You'll notice that the images used at the Internet Marketing Monitor are almost always off-centered.  Unless the preceding text explicitly leads readers to looking at a picture, keeping them out of the way is a good idea.  Make sure your text flows around the picture as well, otherwise the off-center approach is worthless.

Sometimes it's better to just skip the images and use another approach.

Series / Multi-part Articles

Articles that could potentially take a while to read can also be broken up into multiple pages, articles, or posts.  Very, very long topics can even be converted into a series of subsequent articles or posts.  We don't really do this at the Internet Marketing Monitor.  But I do it quite a bit on my personal blog.  If I know I have a lot to say about a topic, I'll create a "series" of posts.  The series are usually about 5 posts long, spaced a week or two apart, and all interlinked.  Interlinking is important because it helps readers follow the series from start to finish.

Maybe your content is long enough for a series… but it's longer than you'd like to put on one page.  Most content management and blogging software allows the creation of multiple-page content.  Some, like WordPress, have built in ways of breaking a post up a bit (like I did with this one).  While it's not technically on two pages, including a "Continue reading…" or similar link gives your readers the ability to scan the first part of a story (since they love to do that) and decide if they're interested in the rest.  WordPress plugins and several content managers allow you to break your content up into physical pages that readers can flip through like the pages of a magazine.

There are a couple of things to keep in mind about breaking up posts.  Some publishing platforms (like WordPress) only send the content leading up to the first page break to your RSS feed.  There are ways around this, but the default settings usually truncate your posts before publishing them to the feed.  So if your readers are used to a full content feed, they may not realize there's more to the article.  A simple way around this is to include textual clues in the article (for example, you might say "Keep reading for the rest of the story" or "The conclusion, which is on page two, was quite shocking").

Headings, Subheadings, Lists, and Other Website Elements

As you can see, I divided this post up with bolded subheadings.  Depending on who you talk to,  you'll hear different things about the use of the actual heading tags (H1, H2, etc).  But you don't have to use big, flashy font to make a subheading.  Bold, italic, colored, and text using a different font can all serve the purpose equally as well.  I personally avoid underlined text on the Internet whenever possible simply because it is so easy to confuse with a hyperlink.

Bulleted or numbered lists are also great additions to long posts.  Not only do the break the monotony of long posts up, but they also offer readers another way to quickly scan and process your content.  People love lists.  If possible, give them what they want.  If you're presenting data, a table in the middle of a long block of text can help make the surrounding text more consumable.

The general rule of thumb with other website elements is the same as for images:  make them relevant and make them add to the flow your writing.

Blurbs, Snippets, and Summaries

I used to do a lot of snippeting with my personal blog. But I was using WordPress and quickly discovered that I was completely using the software wrong to do it.  Haha.  But WordPress is simply one example and a lot of content managers make something like this easier (and there are actually plugins for WordPress that simplify the process now).

Basically, blurbing, snippeting, and summarizing involves publishing a quick, one-paragraph summary of what the full article is about.  Write just enough to let people know what you're talking about and get the reader interested.  At the end of the blurb or snippet, provide a link to the full content.  Not only can you get more of your content covered in a smaller space, but it also plays heavily on the above-mentioned scanning tactics of a lot of online readers.

For the curious… I used to write my posts on "pages" and then use "posts" to provide the summary.  What can I say?  I was new to blogging and even newer to WordPress.  But I eventually got it all figured out.

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

One final piece of advice for those long-winded writers out there: regardless of how much you try to make your content easily digestible, some folks won't read it.  So it's always important to re-read what you've written to make sure it couldn't be cut down or shortened.  If you can convey the same thought in two sentences as opposed to two paragraphs, by all means… shorten that bad boy up.

But don't sacrifice your expression or the message just for the purpose of being brief.