How often do you take the time to read every single word in a blog post? Nielsen’s research say about 79% of people scan web pages, so you’re probably a scanner yourself. If not, you are one of the treasured readers bloggers love. Most people scan read, so it helps to make your blogs easy to skim to you get your message across as easily as possible.

Use our five tips to write for scanners and make your posts more efficient.

1. Highlight the important bits. The keywords, key points and links need to stand out. Don’t overdo the highlighting though, you’ll become annoying. Highlight words by using bold, italics or colour.
2. Subheadings indicate the points being addressed in the content below. Skim readers like to know if the content is worth reading. They can also be used to deliver concise information, something scan readers appreciate.
3. Bullet points break up the content. Use bullets or numbered lists for pleasurable reading and let your readers absorb the information.
4. Whitespace breaks up huge blocks of text for readers who may feel they have no time to ingest such large chunks of content. Whitespace organises your blog posts and make it look more manageable.
5. Each paragraph needs to be focused on one point. Readers can take-away the information they need and this technique helps you to add plenty of whitespace too.

Attract the attention of the scan readers by giving them content that grabs their attention. Make your blog posts easy to skim read and allow people to consume your content in easy portions for a greater reaction.