4 Reasons Why No One Is Reading Your Content?
A study conducted by DejanSEO found that four in five people skip over content just to read the relevant sections which interested them. That’s a significant percentage of people that barely skim over your written content.
We now live in an era where most readers like yourself are lazy.
Pure simple fact.
We want the answers upfront to our query. If we want an answer to something, our instinctive nature tells us to hop onto Google and ask Google the question.
We then get presented with a whole string of search results but what really matters is the first top 3 results. Let’s say we click on the first one… and begin by reading the title and then the first paragraph. If the answer is within the title, then great! My search query has been answered and I don’t need to read the rest of your content. But on the other hand, if it’s not there then I’ll be (somewhat) forced to read further just to gauge out the answer. And it could be daunting.
The truth is, most authors don’t know how to write for their website. They focus mainly on writing for the search engines and what they fail to realize is the fact that they should be writing for humans. Yes. Both you and I are regular consumers of content, on a daily basis.
The amount of strain content causes for the average human soul is horrendous. That’s if we can’t find the answer within your content. So why should we stay on and read your content if it’s not interesting… at all?
Little did you know, that there are 5 main ways to deliver content. Usually, they are delivered in the following forms, written, audio, podcast, video, and infographics. I prefer the latter – as you can really squeeze all these useful charts of information into one neat graphics image – better consumption, easier for your readers to follow and understand.
You also need to understand your readers. What type of content intrigues them? What makes them stay on your website? Take a look into the numbers of your social media profiles. Remember, understanding is key.
A study was released recently which interviewed several groups of people to see what they had to say on their preference of content consumption.
|
I need quick answers to my question |
56% |
|
It’s too boring. The text is way too long. |
47% |
|
I lost focus and interest in what I was reading. |
43% |
|
Very poor UX and layout. |
38% |
|
A difficult read. Worth giving up. |
18% |
|
I somehow do not trust this website. |
18% |
|
Other reasons |
7% |
And that just pretty much sums it up.
Down below are some useful tips on how to spice up your content.
Because without making your content more interesting, unfortunately, you will be writing your content for no-one. No-one’s going to read it. And that is a pointless exercise in itself.
So take heed.
Here are Some Ways That You Can Make Your Content More Engaging
It all starts with the title my friend. You need your title to be upfront engaging from the word go. Ideally, the title should contain an answer to the search query or it can work as a news title. For example, “Man goes fishing and comes back with two broken knees”. But if you provide a boring title that no-one is batting an eyelid too, again – you’ll be back to square one.
It’s truly the title and first paragraph that count!
The good news is that you make some immediate changes to adjust your content to make it more engaging. Draw your visitor to the point of taking action.
Capture their attention and engagement
To make a purchase.
To ask a question or
To make a product inquiry before they exit your page!
You do this, and you’ll have Google display your content highly on the search results in no time.
Here are four ways in which you can make your content more interesting.
1. Hypotext
How useful is it with a click of a button you can choose to hide or show more content. This is where hypotext serves this particular purpose. It functions as just a normal link but it retains your readers by having them stay on the current page, as opposed to exiting out.
Interested? Here’s why it helps with reader retention.
- Remove visual clutter with a single click of a button.
- Better UX (user experience) for your readers.
- Readers can carve their own way into reading through your content. By creating a personalized experience for them may provide that incentive for them to come back next time as they are feeling a level of comfort and familiarity with your website.
- Lower bounce rates as readers no longer need to exit your page. They stay intact and most likely, will read on.
A clear note to make here is that wherever relevant and possible to always include citations and references linking back to where you obtained the information or imagery from. This makes you highly credible and authoritative in your niche.
Always understand your readers.
Not everyone has a long attention span.
They might possibly only be interested in the title – and that’s it.
All you can do is to provide the right answers in your title or first paragraph.
It’s very easy to get started with Hypotext. If you are using WordPress then this is gold dust.
2. How Frequent Are You Publishing?
Don’t just publish because you can! Make sure that each time you are about to hit that publish button, that it’s all quality stuff you are posting. Otherwise, it’s all for nothing. Ideally, in a perfect scenario, you should be publishing a few times per week although some sites publish a few times per day. It all depends on your follower base.
Been the authority in your industry requires effort and time. You need to be disciplined enough to set aside some time each day to write and publish a post to build up trust and authority for your website.
And you thought it was easy?
It does get easier…
Because once your audience starts to read through your interesting content, they do have a tendency to share it amongst their peers and social networks. So you are getting referral traffic from different sources as well… without you realizing it.
All of this increases awareness and traffic – which is the desired end result right?
Do focus on producing new content and not just recycling other people’s work. Because your audience will know.
And what happens? You start to lose regular followers and contributors.
And here’s an interesting fact.
The Writing Cooperative found that blogging every day actually decreased their views compared to when they were posting just six times a month.
The end result is that they couldn’t maintain high-quality content posted on a daily basis. It degraded over time and obviously, their followers started taking action. In a bad way…
They stopped contributing, they stopped commenting and worst of all, they stopped following. So when you are writing your content, make sure you use a variety of ways such as the insertion of videos. So that your readers don’t get bored easily.
Because 53% of consumers said they’d like to see more videos in posts – it is appealing to them and they could find their answer within the video.
3. The Usage of Infographics
What happens when you have all these graphs and information but would like to display it all in one post?
To avoid the typical scrolling wheel syndrome whereby the user scrolls to the bottom of the page and exits.
The best form is Infographics. Here’s a great example of an Infographic in action. It’s interesting to state the least. It’s short but precise and colorful.
Venngage stated that over 41% of marketers said that infographics engaged them the most compared to other forms of content. But we just said video posts were more preferred right?
Yes and No. Infographics do provide everything in one hit, whereas with video posts – it takes a while to play the video, to be able to source out the answer.
The cognitive strain associated with an Infographic is virtually very little. Which eases the reader’s eyes leading to better absorption of facts and data.
4. Podcasts
Podcasts are useful for people on the run, so to speak. They can be driving a car or going for a jog, put on a podcast and you’ll be listening right away. Sometimes, we have such little time in our day that we need to multitask certain things.
It is with this fact that today, there are an estimated 67 million individuals listening to podcasts every month in the year 2017.
Audio content delivery should be included as an option as part of your content marketing strategy. Because not everybody is a reader.
Lauren McLaren
Latest posts by Lauren McLaren (see all)
- 4 Reasons Why No One Is Reading Your Content? - August 20, 2018
What a great post! Creating quality and engaging content is so important. I agree so much with the critical point of your post. Often times site content creators fail to write for humans and focus way too much on SEO considerations.
This was quite an enjoyable read. Fantastic stuff from Dejan. Nice research.
Lauren – I’d like to see more of your articles. If you ever read this, please let me know the other places that you post to. Would like to follow your posts.
thankyou for the sharing the useful information