Imagine scanning a supermarket shelf with dozens of Christmas Cakes on display; you’d surely only bother taking a closer look at those which stood out. It’s the same with online content, people scan web pages rather than reading them in detail, and it’s all about presentation. If you want your online content to grab your readers’ eyes, follow our top “decorating” tips:
1. Add a catchy picture
The popularity of Pinterest, Instagram and Snapchat is testimony to the value of pictures in social media. With web articles with images getting a reported 94% more views than those without, you should be using images whenever you can. Find them at Flickr.com (the images under the creative commons copyright licence are free to use) or Unsplash Alternatively there are a number of places where you can buy images, including 123rf, Shutterstock, GettyImages and iStock
2. Leave some white space
It’s advisable when decorating a Christmas cake to leave some space between the plastic ornaments on the white icing, and leaving white space in your content will make it more eye-catching too. Keep paragraphs short with line-breaks in between.
3. Aid digestion: use subheadings
Breaking your content up into subheadings will make it much easier to digest. With a subheading for each section in place, a reader instantly knows what the article focuses on in this section. Clear and concise subheadings keep the reader engaged, acting as mini-headlines to keep them moving throughout the rest of your content.
4. Use bulleted lists:
- They look different from the rest of your text, so they provide a visual break for your reader
- They provide an easily-scannable way to present multiple points
5. Add relevant links
Internal links back to your own online content will keep people on your site and reading your best material, while including links to external content shows that you’ve researched the topic and want to share relevant articles for your reader’s benefit.
6. Highlight with formatting
Bold important concepts and key points to add emphasis to your content and enable readers to scan through and pick out the most important information at a glance.
If you pay close attention not just to what you put in to your online content, but also how it looks, you’re on the way to having a pretty perfect social media marketing cake. But the joy of baking is surely in the sharing isn’t it? Next week we’ll consider how best to share your scrumptious efforts out with an appreciative audience and establish your reputation as a master baker…now that really is the icing on the cake!
