According to Site Meter Stats, the average reader spends 96 seconds reading the average blog. 96 seconds!!! That is your window of opportunity to get your message across to your reader. With this short of time, writing and formatting scannable content is a useful strategy. Granted, your blog’s readers might spend more or less time on your site. If you want to know accurate statistics  for your blog’s reader, install Google Analytics .10 Tips to Write Scannable Blog Posts People will ReadUse Excerpts on Your Homepage There is nothing that annoys me more than going to a blog’s main page and having to scroll multiple times to find a post I want to read. Make it easy on your readers to find what they are looking for and only list the first few sentences of your post. You can do this easily in WordPress by installing a plugin such as Advanced Excerpt or Recent Posts with Excerpts.

Write Short Posts My rule of thumb is between 400 – 70 words. Anymore than that and you should break the information up into 2 posts.Write Short Paragraphs Blog readers get lost is paragraphs that take up too many lines. My rule of thumb is 1-4 sentences and then a line break. You page will look less overwhelming as a result.Create Lists Lists allow your reader to see your main points in a matter of seconds. List also make for great titles (# of Ways to… or # Tips to…) that other bloggers want to link to. When I see a title with a number in it, I immediately want to know what the items are. Check out the article, 8 Reasons Why Lists are Good for Getting Traffic to your Blog  from problogger.com for more ideas on how and why to use lists on your blog.Formatting Use bold, CAPITALS, italics, underlining, indenting, bullet points, colors and numbered list to emphasize your main points. Words of Caution – DO NOT go overboard and use all of these techniques in one post. Over-formatting your text will frustrate your reader and they will leave your blog. The key to using formatting to your advantage is to draw attention to you MAIN points – not every sentence you write.Ask Questions Why should you ask your readers a question?  Questions automatically beg for an answer and people will continue to read to learn what the answer is.  (See it worked!! You kept reading after I asked the question.)Headings and Subheadings Headings and subheadings accomplish two things at once. 1) They set up your document in a logical way that allows the reader to find what will interest them the most and 2) h tags (which stands for heading) also helps the search engines determine what your post is about, so make sure headings are keyword rich.Pictures Pictures are an awesome way to break up text, grab attention, emphasize points and draw people down into your post. I love having pictures on my main page to encourage click throughs.

There is nothing worse than long chunks of text on a page – break it up!Space Do not fill every inch of your screen. Creating space helps your readers avoid feeling overwhelmed and draws their eyes to what is not blank space.Make Your Main Points as Obvious as Possible An old saying goes, “Tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them.” How do you do this? State your main points it in the first few sentences. Then use headers or bullet points to highlight your main points. Finally restate your main points at the end of your post. The PS is another place to do this. Take a critical look at your blog posts and see if you can identify the main points within a few seconds. If not, use the tips in this article to make your blog posts the kind that people will want to read and link back to.