I subscribe to a lot of blogs. A LOT. And, to be honest, I simply don’t have the time (or patience) to read everything. I don’t know who would, without spending 100% of their life on the computer. So there are some posts that I skip. And some that I don’t. I thought I would share some things that I look for when scanning through my reader and what generally catches my eye, versus what I generally mark as read and move past. WIthout further ado, here’s how to get me to read your blog post:
- Publish full feeds. I cannot stress this enough. When I’m crunched for time, the blogs that publish partial feeds are the first ones I skip (and that’s if I’ve even subscribed to them in the first place). If you don’t care enough to put up the full feed, I don’t care enough to click through to read the post. Simple enough.
- Avoid long chunks of text. This means long paragraphs that aren’t broken up. I’ve been known to do this myself, so I apologize. But when flipping through reader, trying to get things read, I tend to skip over the posts that are just large blocks of text because, quite frankly, they take the longest time to read.
- Don’t post about sports. Or music. I don’t care. I’m not a sports fan. And I’m not a music fan. So post your fantasy football picks and your favorite You Tube videos all you want, but I’m gonna pass. It’s just not my cup of tea.
- Don’t start off a post by warning me that this is a long post. Because I will glance at the clock and say to myself, “Oy, I don’t have time for a long post.” And I will skip it. And then I’ll go back a week later and mark it as read because I still don’t have and now the post is hopelessly outdated.
- Include pictures. I love to read posts that have lots of pictures. The pictures are not only interesting to look at but break up the monotony of the text.
- Post little snippets. Not every post has to be a super-long narrative. A small conversation from the day, a picture you took, a thought that made you stop and think again… I love these. They’re interesting, quick to read and then I can move on to the next post. I often don’t follow this one. I’m sorry.
- Vary the tone of your posts. You may be going through a rough time, but if EVERY post is depressing then I’m going to want to skip over them. I’ve tried to be particularly mindful of this and that’s why after a couple of “woe is me” posts, I’ll try to post something light. If I see the fifth whiny post in a row from someone I subscribe to, that post gets put on the chopping block. And if it keeps up, I unsubscribe altogether.
- Don’t post a lot about an issue that I am opposed to. This is particularly true during election season. Now, this isn’t something that a lot of people can (or should) help. But the fact of the matter is, if I subscribe to a blog and then they start ranting about liberals or how McCain is the Second Coming? I’m not going to read it. NOPE. I guess this is why I’ve TRIED (not always successfully) to tone down my own political posts. Because I know half of everyone wouldn’t want to read that.
- Don’t just put out posts full of links to your other blog gigs. If I open up a blog and see that the latest post is full of links to their paying gigs and nothing else? I skip it. If I want to read their other blogs, I’m already subscribed to them and hence already know about the posts over there. A better way to promote your other gigs is to throw a line or two in at the bottom of a regular post with a link. I’m far more likely to actually read that.
- Keep review posts to a review blog. Even if you aren’t a member of BlogHerAds and don’t need to separate the two. Because when a blog I subscribe to publishes a review for something I don’t care about (or worse, that smacks of “pay per post” type deals), I skip the post. Again, like I said above, put a link in a regular post to your review blog. If it’s something I’m interested in learning about or if there’s an associated giveaway, I’ll go check it out. I do subscribe to some review blogs and some of the posts I read and some I don’t. But I like to know, going in, that that’s what I’m going to find.
That pretty much covers it for me. So I want to turn the question on you guys. What posts do you generally skip when you’re trying to burn through your readers? What makes you more likely to read a blog post? Do you have any hot-button issues (like the full feeds thing is for me)?
