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Ways To Stop Yours Readers From Clicking Away
Marsha Maung
Jan 26th , 2010
View Image CreditOne of the best ways to bore a reader to tears if to ramble on and on and on about yourself. Realistically speaking, everyone's a little selfish and this is particularly true in the online, modern world that we live in today. When web surfers read stuff on the internet, they want to AUTOMATICALLY be acknowledged that they are reading it and they are going to gain something out of it. There ARE ways to write in a way that keeps the readers interested.
Make it about THEM. One way is to write it about them – as in 'you understand their situation' and 'here is some help that they might appreciate' or 'let's grieve over the unfairness of our society together'.
Shorten it. The other way is to shorten your paragraphs (check out how short the earlier paragraph is) and compare reading that to the first paragraph. Loads of difference? You bet. And another way to shorten the paragraph is to use
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Clear, concise, direct, no fanfare and to-the-point. This is how modern readers like it. They really prefer not to strain a brain-muscle and eye-muscle when processing information on the internet.
Title it. Instead of writing it the way you would write a novel, help the readers find the information that they are looking for by giving the paragraphs titles. This way, they get to scan the entire page within a second or two and decide if they are going to find anything valuable on that page. If they click away and you have something to sell to them, they are not potential customers anyway, so there is no waste of potential there.
Bold it up if you don't like to give it titles. When you bold up certain strategically-placed keywords in your article, the reader's eye is instantly drawn to the words, helping them find the part of the article that they most want to read. It also keeps the reader from clicking away because it gives the impression that there are more interesting things down below and they feel an unconscious compulsion to read on.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marsha Maung is a Malaysian-based freelance web copywriter with two kids. She spends her time ferrying her kids around, watering her plants, writing web content, SEO stuff, ghostwriting books and also indulges in the occasional Facebook-ing. Visit her blog for more dirty details on the life and times of a mother, writer, designer, housekeeper, coffee-maker, poop-wiper, chef...and just about everything else under the sun.REPUBLICATION RIGHTS! IMPORTANT!!
Listen up! I am a very nice person, if you think this article is neat and you'd like to publish it in your website, all's cool with me but with one condition. Only one and from the bottom of my heart, I wish that you would, in all sincerity, allow me my one single wish....to place the following codes into the your website at the END OF THE ARTICLE. It's not going to disrupt much, so please do it?
Either paste the above ABOUT THE AUTHOR stuff into your website (with links included) or copy the following codes into your website. That's it! Thank you! *muax*
<b>Marsha Maung</b> is a Malaysian-based <a href="http://www.marshamaung.com" target="_blank">freelance writer</a> with two kids. She spends her time ferrying her kids around, watering her plants, writing web content, SEO stuff, ghostwriting books and also indulges in the occasional Facebook-ing. Visit her <a href="http://www.marshamaung.blogspot.com" target="_blank">blog</a> for more dirty details on the life and times of a mother, writer, designer, housekeeper, coffee-maker, poop-wiper, chef...and just about everything else under the sun.
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