The Digital Age: Considering a Reader’s Platform

This digital age has given new meaning to the word brevity. With information that is able to reach masses with a single click, one needs to consider how the audience is receiving it before they hit the “publish” button.

As mentioned time and time again, blog posts that are short get the most face time. Keeping your posts short will  have a tremendous effect on how many actually read them. When faced with copy that overflows a page, how often do you choose to read it? More often than not, the shorter article wins out. Long posts often get passed up for something more visually palatable. Seeing an article that one is certain they can finish from beginning to end without too much effort is the likely choice for readers in this era and on this landscape. It  becomes even more true when we consider how our audience may be viewing our content.

People seeking information on the fly, want to be able to read it on the fly. Reading articles on a mobile device is a common activity these days. Consider how long, even the shortest article will look on a mobile device. 9 times out of 10, readers on a mobile device are passing time while waiting to board a plane, are on a plane or waiting to be called for their scheduled appointment. They desire to learn something new, or be entertained- briefly.

Yep, that’s right, less is best, for web copy, despite what you have probably been taught your entire life, with every other form of content you’ve written or been required to write. This is why being brief with our blog posts, isn’t as easy as it sounds…..try it, I dare you.

*According to Squeeze, an online news source, a study published by Pew Research on March 15th found that 60 percent of Americans get their news from an online source.