Before writing we, technical writers, analyze the audience. His/her technical level what I mean. But how true it is that we are not creating any interest what the readers want to read. True that we are not writing any novel or blog but at least try to create some amount of curiosity in the readers. What I believe is whatever we write should sound interesting, funny or curious no matter what and where, field I mean, are we writing. We may not all the time do technical writing or content writing or blogging so why not keep the same blood for all of them, at least for some time on experiment basis and see the difference. Reading is entertainment, gaining knowledge, so let’s try to make it funny, curious. There is at least no harm in trying though I am not advocating doing so mandatory.
Do not have the attention: When we do content writing does not always mean that people are going to read, at least all of it. They are more interested in “their interest” rather than “my intention” of writing. Take for example, you write something on the page with few images here and there and even a scrolling text. Ask any one to look at it and ask to make a guess what it’s only a matter of seconds that the reader will let you know. And then you will also know what the reader exactly wants, something good, something interesting, in the page that he desires. Now make some amount of text change, not with the start but with the middle or the ending part of the content. Ask the same reader to read it again and he may not find any change.
Or ask the reader to have a look at the website and let know what the interesting thing in the website is. Now you will make the change at two things, one which interest him/her and another one a general one. Let him view it once again and when he is finish his inspection he/she may not notice the general change but will notice the change that interested the reader. Though this is more appropriate with page or website building but I think content can also be camouflaged.
What would you do? Whenever the reader starts reading the sentence reader generally does the guess work what the writer is going to write, I mean the reader is with the flow as long as the sentences has something interesting but the movement he loses the interest reader may quit reading further and there is a possibility that you may just go on writing and that does not mean anything to them.
Many of you must have been confused while reading it concentrating more on grammar rather than the subject and not read the whole line. Audience tends to lose interest reading longer sentences. They prefer shorter one. They like it. Like just what I did. 100 characters per sentence and the graph of reading go down. 45-75 is acceptable.
Now writing in columns is another challenge. Suppose you have a single wide column with longer sentences. Break them down in 2-3 columns with shorter sentences and try to avoid something like half of the word in upper sentences and half of it to the next line. People read faster with single wide column and with multiple or even 2 columns we are forcing them to stop reading faster. Fast reading lets them know the future of the sentence structure and least make them read. But try to write in multiple columns. Even if they switch to columns without completely reading it, they won’t understand where they missed something. One simple thing: do you prefer what they want to read and you write what and how you want to write. You can always write what you want but also what the readers want to read. It’s just the matter of placing the words.
Forget it: People tend to forget things after about 20 seconds. If they try to remember, they hold on to it in groups. We also should try to write that way. New group new paragraph. Because if at all they want to re-call what they were reading previously they remember the paragraph location and you make their life easy.
Perspective: While reading people tend to make imaginations. So its fairly simple to write what the readers would be imagining. Of course the imagination will differ but what I mean is on an average. Various people will have various imagination. So why not change the perspective of the readers what they imagine. For blogging or doing content writing this can make a very good difference.
Unconscious: Are you buying a television set? What comes to your mind, ratings, price, brand, quality, suitability. Even if you want to think consciously you may not able to but you can make the readers to do that. What else advertise your shop on internet saying that we give a month or a weekends trail free, want to negotiate with price with highest quality and see you will have maximum customers clicking your website. Even if you think that ratings, price etc are the conscious decisions making factors but they are not. They are the common factors that come to mind and you may unconsciously make the decisions. Our mind is filled with the data that we read, reading that may come “sometimes” or “often”. Do not evolve something irrational or bad amid efforts to create consciousness. Trust me while watching the television how many times do we really care about advertisement except for those who are funny and hilarious. It’s difficult to engage the readers to keep them on reading unless you are a very good writer and the reader is not so good forget about making them click your site. Write something unique and different but not irrelevant.
Memories: Research has shown that memories are not like the one we all do storing the files in the hard drive. But they are reconstructed each time we see, hear, smell, touch or even taste it. Lets concentrate on seeing. Try this. I appreciate your reading. I love your reading. Even if the context of “appreciation” and “love” are totally different but they do make an impact and people can recall the memories when they read a word or a paragraph or even a blog. We do not want to change the context of the subject but why not try to change the words that we write. May be that will also increase our clicks. What wrong when we write 2-5 words out of the context of the subject.
Google: Did you ever wonder what if Google is not there? Or worst Google site is down for 3 working days? What I am trying to say is we generally tend to SEARCH out what we want and spend more time when we find something interesting other than what we were searching. Human mind cannot ignore what interests him/her. You may have heard that dopamine controls the “pleasure” systems of the brain: that dopamine makes you feel enjoyment, pleasure, and therefore motivates you to seek out certain behaviors, such as food, sex, and drugs. Dopamine causes us to want, desire, seek out, and search. May be that is the reason for Google, Facebook, Twitter or maybe you can discover something sometime.
A drug is a drug or cocaine and a medicine is also called as drug.
Colors: What are the other things that makes the readers are more interested or fascinating? What about the background color and foreground or font color. Try with different colors and see the effect.
Choices: People want to have multiple choices. Taking a simple example of shopping and you enter a shop where there are only few items and you tend to lose interest in that shop. Now you enter a mall where you have multiple items with multiple varieties and your will forget what actually you have planned to buy. So having multiple choices makes interesting? No they actually found a different style altogether with what they had thought to buy. And that’s what we should make them click. During my email campaign, I was also trying to run around the subject, not very away though, instead of writing what the actual subject was. I see it as “HYPNOTIZING”.
Habitual: just watch the video and work it you self.
It’s not easy: To make the readers to read text is very difficult task. How to do it? Break the writings into groups, as discussed earlier, or into chunks, use easy readable fonts, make some funny backgrounds, use icons or images in between, add some personal experience in form of humor.
I will be writing more when I will be reading more on it. What else I feel like writing for audience is like feeding a baby who do not like what is being given. In such cases what do you think that you do to make the baby to eat it?
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