How Can You Make Sure Your Content is Consumable…and Downright Tasty?

Writing is sometimes the easy part.

Formatting and optimizing your content in a way that makes it ideal for your blog’s visitor can be the hard part.

It takes time, requires patience, and knowledge of strategies to help pull it off well.

Given the lack of time you have to make an impression with your reader and to provide intended value, you have to make sure your content is set up for success.

Here are 5 ways to make your content consumable.

1. Keep Your Content Relevant

Are you publishing blog posts with no strategy or general awareness of who you are talking to?

If so, you need to fix that, pronto!

The first step for any blog is to understand who your target audience is – who your avatar is.

Sit down and really try to write out who that person is, down to a level of detail that seems ridiculous.

For instance, a 41-year-old male, married with kids, working full time, living in the suburbs, looking for a side hobby, loves to write but lacks overall creativity and confidence could be the avatar for Top Shelf Blogging.

Not saying that it is, but it could be.

Once you identify your avatar for your blog, make sure you talk to them in your posts.

Use language they understand. Use terms they are comfortable with.

And make sure you talk to only one person at a time. Use words like “you” and “we” instead of “I” or “everyone”.

It’s important to connect with your reader on a personal level.

2. Keep Your Content Short

We are all busy. We have limited time online and we are ready to click at a moment’s notice. Don’t tempt us!

No one wants to read an essay or dissertation on your blog.

Ain’t nobody got time for that!

Long-form content can be valuable from time to time and useful for particular topics, such as a deep dive blog post into a technology or a how-to guide.

But simply writing extremely long blog posts because you can, will win you no friends.

Keep it short.

3. Keep Your Content Simple

You don’t need to use complex words to impress your readers. I see this all the time at the day job and within the online space.

The use of extensive language tries to impress the reader but really ends up turning them off.

If you are trying to teach them something or explain a complex topic it becomes even more of a turn-off.

Why would you want to read or learn something from a know-it-all horse’s ass?

You wouldn’t, so don’t strive to serve that role with your readers.

It is hard to be brief sometimes though and I understand your pain, but you need to try.

Leonardo Da Vinci said it best when he stated, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

The ability to be brief, concise, and on point is a gift. Embrace it.

4. Keep Your Content Focused

Once you’ve identified who you are writing for and have crafted a short and simple blog post for them, you need to make sure you keep it focused.

Don’t go all over the place with your topic.

Bloggers are constantly looking for new material for their blog. If you find yourself going on and on about a particular topic, break it out into several posts instead.

Your readers will love you for it and you’ll have content queued up for weeks to come.

If you wander with your content, your readers will wander somewhere else.

5. Keep Your Content Organized

The last method for keeping your content consumable is to make sure it is organized.

There are two ways to look at how to organize your content – logically and structurally.

Logical

From a logical standpoint, make sure you address topics in a consistent and organized fashion.

Use a story to wrap your audience, then break down what it means to them and their situation.

Have a strong introduction that reinforces the value you are going to provide later in the blog post.

Think of the old hamburger teaching method for papers in elementary school if you have to.

The introduction serves as the top bun, 3 paragraphs of content serve as the burger and condiments, and the bottom bun is the conclusion.

This may be an elementary way of looking at how to organize your thoughts, but sometimes just pulling it up in your consciousness sets you on the right path.

Structural 

When dealing with the structural layout, make sure you spend a fair amount of time after writing your awesome blog post by formatting it properly.

The use of headers within your content not only helps the reader navigate the blog post, but it also helps your SEO efforts.

Draw attention to important points within your post. Bold sentences, use italics to convey focus keywords, use color to draw the reader’s eyes.

Break up your paragraphs so it’s easy for the reader to move down the page. If they see a huge paragraph of text, they are leaving.

You can even go as far as using single sentences as paragraphs.

Separate logical sections. As soon as you start talking about a new topic in the post, break into a new paragraph, maybe even with its own header.

Use bullets. Use lists.

If you use images in the middle of your text, make sure the transition from pre-image to post-image content is seamless.

You want to make it flow naturally so they continue to scroll down to read the rest of the post.

With all of these formatting options, make sure you don’t go overboard.

Too much formatting can be just as distracting as too little.

In Summary

Do right by your readers by creating content that is easy for them to get the value they seek.

Follow the 5 methods listed above and provide high-quality beautiful content to those that take the time to visit your blog.