readers

Develop a 4-part fear appeal

Avoid losing readers in these hot spots

Fear appeals persuade. But they can also paralyze.

Strong fear appeals persuade … The stronger the fear appeal, the more likely it is to move your readers to act, according to 50 years of research and 100 studies reviewed by researchers Kim Witte and Mike Allen.… Read the full article

How to organize a blog post: before & after

Content marketing writing structure made easy

“Always grab the reader by the throat in the first paragraph,” said Time magazine reporter Paul O’Neil, “sink your thumbs into his windpipe in the second and hold him against the wall until the tag line.”

Writing structure — how you handle the first paragraph through the tagline — makes all the difference in how riveting your story can be.… Read the full article

Headline writing don’ts

8 approaches to avoid

What’s in a name?

A great headline can mean the difference between a story that gets read — or one that gets passed over.… Read the full article

Why is storytelling important? [Research!]

‘Whoever tells the best story wins’

Here’s an argument for storytelling, if I’ve ever heard one: In a trial to determine whether the defendant, Johnson, was guilty of stabbing another man, Caldwell, to death in a barroom fight, it didn’t matter what evidence lawyers presented as much as how they presented it.… Read the full article

How to write email that’s easy to skim

3 ways to get the word out to nonreaders

Email newsletter subscribers read word-for-word just 19% of the e-zines they receive, according to the Nielsen Norman Group’s latest eyetracking study.… Read the full article

Is the juice worth the squeeze?

Fraction of Selection model shows how readers choose what to read

Every day, your readers get way too much to read. In fact, according to a study by USC’s Annenberg School for Communication, your readers are bombarded with the data equivalent of 174 newspapers — ads included — every single day.… Read the full article

Focus your web copy

Make it relevant

Usability guru Jakob Nielsen recommends condensing copy by 50% online.

That’s certainly a useful guideline. But no single, overarching rule makes sense all the time.… Read the full article

Why scannable web copy?

Because ‘readers’ don’t read

Here’s the title of one of usability expert Jakob Nielsen’s earliest web-writing articles:¹

How Users Read on the Web

The first paragraph:

They don’t.

… Read the full article

Improve your fact-to-fluff ratio

Aim for a 1:1 proportion

Readers are busy. Fluff takes space. Space takes time. So let’s cut the fluff and get on with it.

To cut the fluff, aim for a fact-to-fluff ratio of at least 1:1.… Read the full article

Why display copy?

Because ‘readers’ don’t read

I’m often amazed at the amount of energy writers put into perfecting the sentence structure in the fourth paragraph of their piece when those same folks toss off a headline in the 17 seconds before happy hour on a Friday afternoon.… Read the full article