Readability: A Key Ingredient to Boosting Content Marketing Engagement

By Travis Jamison

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Brands are constantly competing for their target audiences' attention. Not convinced that content marketing is a competition? Consider the fact that 23% of B2B organizations spent more than 50% of their total marketing budgets on producing and distributing content in 2022. 

Based on survey reports, it's clear that reaching success with content requires a few key elements. These include a well-documented strategy, a complete dedication to making data-based decisions, creativity, and a little bit of that elusive gut feeling that helps you gauge whether a particular approach will work (or not).

But, of course, there's always something extra that you can do to guarantee the success of your content marketing efforts. And, if you look at the research regarding how people read online content — spoiler alert, they don't — it becomes clear that making your blog posts attractive and easy to consume makes for one of the best ways to guarantee a high content marketing ROI.

In other words, the key ingredient to boosting content marketing engagement lies in readability.

Admittedly, you can check and improve the readability score of any text by using widely available tools. But the process is much easier and quicker if you know what ground rules to follow from the beginning of the writing process. 

So, if you're ready to take your content marketing efforts to the next level and significantly boost engagement, here are the readability hacks that will allow you to reach your goals.

Choose Colors Carefully

One of the easiest ways to instantly boost the readability of your blog posts is to choose the right color palette.

That's right. A hack as simple as picking the right font color will allow your website visitors to comfortably read the text without having to strain their eyes or squint in a futile attempt to discern the letters from the background. Moreover, making the right color choice will prevent you from making your content less accessible to web visitors with color blindness, plus it will improve visibility on smaller screens.

The easiest way to get the colors right is to use a simple black (or dark gray) text on a white background. Nonetheless, we know a black-and-white color scheme isn't an exciting prospect for most brands — even though brands like SIGMA do it spectacularly well.

 

Source: sigmaphoto.com

The alternative? Using a color wheel tool to help you pick a font color that provides sufficient contrast with the background. Note that usability guidelines suggest a minimum ratio of 3:1.

Not too keen on playing around with the color palette on your website? In that case, this guide from the Innovation Studio from the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh will offer an easy way to get the color and contrast right without experimentation.

Source: carnegiemuseums.org

Provide Visual Content Summaries

The second best way to boost readability and engagement on your content pages is to use the impressive power of visuals.

Research data suggests that people process images 60,000 times faster than text. So, if you can supplement blog posts with relevant imagery, you'll have made significant improvements to the readability levels of your content.

If you want to reap the benefits of utilizing visuals on your company blog, keep in mind that you won't get sought-after results with just any visual. In fact, irrelevant imagery, like stock photos, may harm your brand

So, instead of going with the same images of smiling people (that all your competitors are already using on their blogs), try to come up with visuals that will genuinely benefit your audience and make reading your content easy and enjoyable.

For example, one way to do this is to create visual content summaries, like the ones shown on Eachnight’s Best Mattress Made in the USA post. This brand created custom icons to stand for certain concepts — like warranty, sleep trial, and shipping — making it much easier for readers to notice, comprehend, and remember this information, which is hyper-relevant to their buying decision.

Source: eachnight.com

 

Infographics are also an excellent example of content summary visuals — particularly when they're used in a way similar to what Oberlo does on its statistics overview posts.

Source: oberlo.com

Break Down Walls of Text

Are you looking for slightly more traditional tips for improving content marketing engagement by boosting readability? If that's the case, know that even a little bit of formatting can go a long way.

Generally, people skim-read online content instead of consuming it word-for-word. So, if you want to make your blog posts skim-friendly, you'll want to make a few changes to how it's presented.

First and foremost, always avoid large blocks of text. They are not only a surefire way to deliver a poor user experience but can also make it difficult for people to identify important information. Instead, follow these readability-boosting rules:

 

  • Keep paragraphs short. Ideally, they shouldn't be longer than 3-4 sentences, with each section covering a single idea.
  • Shorten sentences. It's recommended that the average sentence length on your blog should be 20 words or less.
  • Use headings to structure your content into sections. This will set readers' expectations and allow them to jump to the part that's most relevant to their position in the sales funnel.
  • Break up text with visual cues. These can include bulleted or numbered lists or custom illustrations to let users know you're writing about different ideas.
  • Simplify the punctuation. While a semi-colon may reflect how you'd structure a sentence while speaking, it could make it more difficult for your prospects to understand the idea you're trying to convey.
  • Experiment with visual ways to present information. This can include quotes, images, or just embedding a tweet if it provides readers with valuable information.

Experiment With Two-Column Layouts

When you know that you need to publish a text-heavy post, it's not a bad idea to play around with webpage layouts. After all, people tend to read according to a few pre-determined patterns

Fortunately, you can present information to help web visitors consume your content more quickly (or easily). And choosing the correct layout will significantly impact the readability score of your content and automatically make it more engaging.

If you're not keen on playing around with how your texts are presented, you can stick to the good-old F-Pattern, like on the Rydoo website.

Source: rydoo.com

However, if you're willing to go a step further in boosting content marketing engagement, consider applying the two-column layout to your long-form posts. 

Why does this layout work, you might wonder? Well, it has to do with optimal line length for readability, which is 50-75 characters

Now, if you consider that this leaves a lot of blank space — especially on larger screens — it's logical that you should fill some of that space with content so that your prospects don't become overwhelmed by the sheer amount of scrolling they need to do to get to the end of your articles.

If you check out the MarketBeat U.S. Stock Market Holidays guide, you'll see that this is precisely what the brand does in the FAQ section of the post. It's a simple solution. Yet, knowing that the part of the article is more than 2.000 words long, it's the right choice to allow web visitors to have an enjoyable reading experience without driving them to think that the article will never end (and that they should stop interacting with it midway).

Source: marketbeat.com

Pay Attention to Typographic Best Practices

In some cases, improving content readability comes down to the typographic choices you make.

Now, while there is plenty of research out there regarding how and why typography impacts reading ease, the simplest way for you to avoid making a mistake is to stick to the best practices. You can find them outlined in most accessibility resources

Generally, these best practices include:

  • Choosing a legible font like Source Sans Pro, Merriweather, Public Sans, or Robot Mono.
  • Paying attention to font size. Generally, you should always use a size that is at least 16px.
  • Align text to the left. This caters to users who consume content according to the F-Pattern and is an excellent way to boost readability quickly.
  • Use enough padding when separating text boxes and images.
  • Surround content with sufficient whitespace — especially if you want to distinguish ideas from each other.

Use Suitable Language

Lastly, if you're looking to perfect your content marketing efforts by taking readability to the max (and thus encouraging higher engagement rates), don't forget to consider how you use language.

To make your articles and posts accessible to a larger audience, do your best to keep the text as simple as possible. This means avoiding jargon, using the active voice, and keeping your tone less formal.

Of course, if you're trying to appeal to industry experts and professional users, you can get away with a lower readability score. 

But, considering the fact that a high readability level drives conversions — particularly when presenting complex solutions — it's worth sacrificing some of those industry-specific terms and using a more suitable type of language if you know you're trying to attract the average user.

In Closing

There you have it, a few easy-to-implement tips for improving content readability.

As you can see, none of these hacks requires you to do a complete overhaul of your existing blog posts and articles. But, even if you only make a few improvements, like changing the color or size of the text on your website, you can rest assured that engagement levels will improve. And the result will include having an easier time capturing the interest of your target audience and, hopefully, converting web visitors into customers of your brand.

 

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