People read differently on the web than they might in print. Readers often visually scan an article, your marketing copy, or a blog post before (or in lieu of) reading your material in full. That’s why it’s important to create scannable content for your company blog.

Making your company’s blog content more scannable isn’t difficult. It doesn’t require a lot of extra work. It’s a simple matter of structure.

Let’s explore what “scannable content” is and you can make your company’s blog posts easier to consume, and more helpful, for your visitors.

What is Scannable Content?

Your readers — in many cases your potential customers — want specific information. And they want it quickly. Scanning a page of blog post should make it easy to find what they’re looking for. That’s what scannable content does.

Scannable content simply means a reader should be able to pick out key points or key sections of your content at a glance. They shouldn’t need to read everything to understand the essence of what your content says.

Now let’s look at what you can do to make your company’s blog content more scannable.

How to Write Scannable Content for Your Blog

Here are five simple things you can do to write more scannable content for your business blog.

1. Write short paragraphs.

Keep paragraphs to no more than a few sentences. And keep most of those sentences short.

Large blocks of text can be difficult to read on a computer screen. They can be even more difficult to read on mobile devices. You don’t want to lose your readers before you get your message across.

2. Use subheadings.

Break your copy or content up using subheadings. These are usually bold and in a larger font size than your body text, using heading tags (such as H2, H3, etc. in a hierarchy).

Subheadings are used to break up your main points or major sections of your blog posts. They should clearly identify your key points or sections of your content. Incorporate important keywords in them not only for SEO purposes, but also to help readers find what they’re seeking.

3. Include lists.

Bulleted and numbered lists are also good ways to highlight important information. Lists can benefit your company blog in several ways.

For example, lists in blog content can:

• make blog content easier to read;
• serve as linkbait and attract more visitors seeking easily-digestible content;
• help you organize your blog content in a more logical way;
• allow readers to quickly find the data or points they’re most interested in.

Lists can be used either as indented content in more of an outline style, or you can include numbered lists in your subheadings. You can see examples of both list styles in this very post.

4. Use images and pull quotes in your content.

The most important aspect of scannable content is breaking your text up visually to help readers navigate your posts. Images are another way you can do this.

That said, including images just to include images can also become a distraction. So avoid filling a post with stock images that don’t help you illustrate a point.

If you have particularly interesting quotes in your content, and you’d like to feature them, pull quotes can also add visual interest. You can do this as text in your content, or you might create sharable images of those quotes.

Just be careful about quoting yourself. It can be tacky and unprofessional. Use pull quotes to highlight stats, quotes from third parties, or at least don’t add your name to self-quotes as if you’re quoting a third party.

5. Take advantage of white space.

The absence of content can be just as impactful as the words on your page. Use white space to help visually break up your blog content and make it more scannable.

This might not be something you have full control over when writing blog content. You might need to have your web designer make adjustments to naturally build white space into your content by default. This might include spacing between paragraphs, spacing between lines, or spacing around subheadings.

This isn’t always the case however.

For example, when adding images, you can control the padding and margins (blank space) around them using inline CSS. Or you might center non-full-width images to leave extra white space around them.

Ultimately, use white space on your blog to avoid making your content appear cluttered.

Don’t worry if all five of these tactics don’t make sense for your content. You don’t need to use them all at once. A good rule of thumb is the longer your content is, the more you want to break it up visually to help visitors find what they need.

If writing web content just isn’t your thing, or you have a large archive of posts that you want to make more scannable, no worries. You can always hire a pro to write your copy and blog posts for you or clean up your old blog content.

This post was originally published on January 27, 2014 and was updated, expanded, and re-published on its currently-listed publication date.

The post How to Write “Scannable” Content for Your Company Blog appeared first on Pro Business Writer.

While it helps to form a long-term content strategy and come up with your own unique blog post ideas before you begin, I can point you in the right direction with some reusable blog post ideas.

If you’re feeling stuck, try these five angles on for size. You might even want to alternate these types of posts on a regular basis by turning them into series.

1. Share Industry Insights

Keep an eye on industry news and post commentary about any important stories. You can do this by monitoring social media updates, industry news sites, or setting up Google Alerts for industry-related keyword phrases.

A perk of sharing industry updates is that the ideas come from other sources. You just share your thoughts and expert insight.

2. Inform or Educate Your Customers

Will you be presenting at a major industry conference soon? Is your company about to unroll something big? Have you been getting a lot of similar questions about a product you sell?

Good blog posts are often designed to inform or educate readers. You can do that by posting company news, answering customer questions, or even posting tutorials on how to use your products and services.

3. Post Status or Support Updates

Is your company experiencing shipping delays because of inclement weather? Will your website be down for planned maintenance, especially if it affects a web-based service or your e-commerce operations?

Keep your customers in the loop with updates or advance notice of potential problems on your blog. An informed customer is a happy customer.

4. Offer Stories and Case Studies

Why not use your blog to showcase some of your successes? Bring on key customers or clients to share their stories of working with you, or post case studies explaining how your past work led to successful resolutions for your clients.

5. Publish Customer-Centric Posts

While case studies can work well for service-oriented businesses, what if you run a retail operation? Well, why not get your customers in on the action too?

Consider highlighting your best customers or stories about how customers are using your products. Your company’s fans will love that you care enough to put the emphasis on them once in a while instead of just selling to them.

Need help coming up with blog post ideas custom-tailored to your company blog? Get in touch today. I can help you plan out your content strategy or even write your blog posts for you.

The post 5 Business Blog Post Ideas appeared first on Pro Business Writer.

• Corporate blogs are a way to disseminate important and timely information to your visitors, customers, or other audiences about your company, before that information is sent out by someone else (and more directly than using a press release alone). This allows the company to appear more transparent with members of their market.
• Blogs offer benefits over other social mediums of connecting with a target audience due to the fact that editorial control (over posts and comment approvals) is in the hands of the company or their blogger.
• A corporate blog allows the company to be officially represented by an authority individual (CEO, other executive, etc.).
• Blogs are a natural networking tool, allowing a company and its owner to network with others in their industry (which can lead not only to connections, but also backlinks leading to targeted traffic and greater exposure).
• Blogs are usually updated fairly often, which search engines love. A well-optimized blog can help to draw in additional search engine traffic that might be interested in what the company has to offer.

Corporate blogging isn’t for all companies. Not all owners, CEOs, or executives are good bloggers naturally, and not every company will realize every benefit of business blogging. As with all things, know your market / audience, and tailor your efforts to them.

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