Jamie Shriner
Standing out from the flock is getting harder as attention spans continue to get shorter. And yet, there is no need to panic with user-friendly content close at hand. Creating and sharing user-friendly content is one of the most effective ways to engage an audience.
Here’s how you can make sure your content is always user-friendly.
Understanding Your Audience
Key characteristics like age, location, and other demographic information can help you understand what will come easily to your readers. For example, young adults may enjoy the ease of swiping through a carousel, whereas older adults may prefer a simple image or video.
Using the data analytics built into many content publishing tools makes it easier than ever to research to better understand your audience. Take note of what gets the most engagement and which types of engagement are most important to your goals. For example, if you’re trying to get the word out about a new product, you may prioritize reposts over link clicks.
Clarity and Readability
Your content should be easy to read. Clear, concise language hooks readers. Long, detailed sentences like this one, however, that have a lot of words but don’t really provide any additional value, tend to be a turn off for most readers.
Free online tools like the Hemingway App are great at keeping your readability in check. You also captivate your readers when you use grammar and headers properly and opt for simple language over that of a more superfluous nature. Grammarly offers several free in-app options that make keeping your writing grammatically correct a breeze.
Headlines Are the Heroes
Most readers will skim an article before attempting to read it or to look for specific information. Because of the audience’s short attention span, captivating introductory paragraphs and headlines that draw readers into the text are a must.
Headlines and introductory paragraphs cannot simply dazzle readers. They must be informative as well. Striking this balance ultimately comes down to mastering the appropriate tone and voice for your desired audience.
Visual & Interactive Elements
Images, videos, charts, and other visual aids can drive home a point faster and with greater impact than mere writing alone. Including high-quality images and videos throughout your content may require extra work, but the payoff is sustained attention from your audience.
Other interactive features, like polls or quizzes, are a great way to keep your audience interested while also tracking their engagement throughout the content. How many readers participate in a poll at the beginning of the article versus the end? What does the information you’ve gathered teach you about your audience to inform future content?
Consistent Tone and Style
Whether your audience is serious and authoritative or fun and flamboyant, keeping the tone of your content consistent is how you keep users engaged with your content.
Tone and style are not one-size-fits-all, and you, as a brand, can adapt your tone and style throughout your content to match the segment of your audience you hope to reach. For example, the content generated for younger kids is going to be vastly different from the content for their parents or even their older siblings.
Though your tone can vary based on the audience, your writing style should remain consistent throughout to bring it all together. This is the best way to maintain brand cohesion, whether you’re talking to a teen audience or retirees.
Mobile-Friendly Formatting
Most readers – 70% of digital video content viewers, to be exact – consume content on their smartphones. For this reason, it is important to keep your content mobile-friendly with:
- Short paragraphs
- Bullet points
- Numbered lists
This keeps your content concise and easy to scroll through, even on the smallest screens.
It is also important to make sure that the website or platform where you share your content with your audience responds well on mobile. Putting the work into short paragraphs and eye-catching lists will only go so far without a platform that seamlessly transfers to mobile devices.
Feedback and Improvement
The best way to keep your content user-friendly is to ask your users! Regularly accepting feedback, formally or informally, allows you to continuously improve your content strategy accordingly. You can offer incentives on social media, send out email surveys, or include polls embedded in your content to get valuable insights directly from the source.
Analyzing user metrics is also an option that does not require asking your audience for feedback. You can simply observe how your users engage with your content, infer shortcomings, and make improvements accordingly.
Still stumped as to which metrics are worth tracking? Check out this recent article from the Content Cucumber blog!
Create User-Friendly Content with Content Cucumber
User-friendly content is engaging, concise, mobile-friendly, and designed with your audience in mind! Generating the perfect user-friendly content is not like cranking out that final exam with 15 minutes to spare – it is going to take some time to understand your audience and how to speak directly to them.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the difficult task of creating content that’s funny yet informative, charming yet sincere, and humble yet asking readers to buy something, you are not alone. Our team of passionate and seasoned writers is here to help you make your content user-friendly!
Schedule a call with one of us today to learn more about how we can take the hassle out of your content creation process.
