Avoid Turbulence: 5 Simple Ways to Pilot Through Your Content
They’ve chosen the destination of their choice, submitted their boarding pass and are ready to take this content flight with you. They picked your “airline,” clicked your title, and now its up to you to fly them smoothly through a painless trip with the content you guide them through.
You aren’t the flight attendant feeding them peanuts, enticing them to click your headline, you’ve already got them aboard. You’re the captain flying this content show.
As this pilot, how do you avoid content turbulence or a scary written plane crash?
1. Visuals
When I board a plane it can go two ways, either it’s a pleasant experience or a miserable one. With the latter, the misery can be pinpointed to terrible, decrepit seats, no place to put my carry-on, and the dreaded middle seat. I can envision all of it now; however, I have had great flights, sans first-class seating, that I can picture perfectly. And that’s exactly what your passengers/readers can do too. Visually appealing images can capture a reader and signal them to keep reading. Whether it be infographics, high-resolution photos, pictures of corgis, all of these things can help the reader along to consume the content you are presenting them. Cartoons or more creative images compare 2:1 or sometimes 3:1 to standard stock photos. Avoid stock photos because as generic as they are, readers could associate your content with that too. Visuals will keep your reader stimulated and help ease the flight through your piece.
2. An Effective Amount
Long or short content varies just as much as the amount of time you are going to spend on a airplane to the destination of your choice. Sometimes people mistakenly think that longer content drives conversion rates down and deter people from reading over 1,000 words. However, that isn’t always the case. As pointed out by Neil Patel in his piece on how content length affects rankings and conversions, he finds “The average content length for a web page that ranks in the top 10 results for any keyword on Google has at least 2,000 words.”
The data is there to point out that many of these pieces of content are more successful because they are longer; however, that doesn’t mean you should start writing novels.
It brings back to the idea of flying. Traveling to Australia is going to take 13+ hours depending on where you leave from and then flying to New York from DC would take about a couple of hours. Logically the first is longer because you are traveling to a different continent and the second is shorter because its basically a hop, skip and a jump away. Writing effectively about SEO could take a lot longer than writing about Corgis. Unless of course you do in fact want to read extensively about corgis (Here at TrackMaven we really have to hold back on this), we wouldn’t ramble on and on about how adorable corgis are. Establishing the effective amount of content to deliver your points properly is essential. You wouldn’t want 3 layovers and 10 delays adding negatively to your flight to Australia or New York, so solving the Goldilocks dilemma in finding what is “just right” in the amount of content you are producing.
3. Format
Maybe this is an obvious one or not; but I think its a point that can be reinforced with another set of wings. Format…FORMAT. It may be a small patch of turbulence, but for me as a easily motion-sickness prone person it will make or break a trip for me. A simple format of a piece can help me read the content or make me click back so fast there would be zero point in you trying to calculate my actual dwell time.
If your piece looks like a huge cluster of words…I won’t read it. Same goes with a plane. If there are a hundred of seats thrown haphazardly on a plane (i.e. if its increasing the probability of me getting a middle seat) I’m not boarding your plane.
A simple break between paragraphs or points are simple formatting techniques that should always be present in your content.
I would also like to point out if your piece has comic sans, size 24 font and in a neon color, I’ll gladly give up added frequent flyer miles.
Another formatting issue goes with clear, correct grammar. We all slip up and make grammatical errors from time to time; however, editing your piece, reading it aloud and/or then having someone else check over your content is a surefire way to avoid those silly mistakes.
Stick with distinct, separate paragraph breaks, clear font, and correct grammar. You’ll be well on your way to helping your reader soar through the air gracefully.
4. Headlines and Transitions
You’re up 1,000+ feet off the ground and comfortably resting your eyes on the words in front of you. But, wait where are you? Not to worry…
“This is your captain speaking and you are now reading the second point of this article.” Wow, thanks, that answered my question. You never want your reader to wonder where they are in your piece and you can easily put yourself in the pilot seat to map out exactly what they are reading. Sometimes the most simple things are forgotten when trying to develop something great. Headlines and transitions are a given, but also numbers, bolded words, subtitles or headlines help the reader transition from each point to the next. They effortlessly guide them through the piece without bumps, especially if they are trying to reference a point in your piece, they are more likely to find the statement under the headlines you so helpfully provided them.
Transitional words are another way to seamlessly guide your readers through your text. I was drilled in school to add transition words like however, although, furthermore, and nevertheless into my paragraphs because it lead my reader into my next points without an abrupt turn. Do you really want your readers to resort to the barf bag in front of them because of all of your bumpy thoughts? I don’t think so.
“Attention all passengers, please put your seat belts on as we begin our descent.” can easily read as “Finally, the corgi saves the day…”
5. Comments
This is going to come after the initial flight, but it surely reflects your pilot-ship There may be zero to hundreds of comments on your piece, butinteracting with your readers is essential to keeping up the customer service end of your airlines. From negative to positive comments, commenting encourages engagement and interaction. And answering the thoughts in a timely manner helps let your readers know you are listening.
Flying a plane may take some practice, but that goes with writing content as well. Like the simple ways stated above, you can develop ways to make sure that there is a smooth flight. You’ll soon be taking the wheel and successfully soaring through the sky. Remember, don’t let your content turn into one of the terrible airplane magazines that try and get you to buy an inflatable corgi. Oh. Oops.
