As a blogger it’s getting incredibly difficult to sustain the interest of our readers. People have short attention spans and with social media it’s getting even shorter. You may work hours trying to craft the best blog content but if the level of engagement on your content is low then that’s not time well spent.

However there are ways you can sustain your readers’ attention when reading your blog and encourage them to engage with your blog content.  If you’re having trouble keeping your readers on your blog longer then here are some things you can do to increase the time people spend reading your blog content.

1. Make it easy for your readers to spot the value you give

Since people’s attention span is short, you need to make sure that you put value upfront. Make your content easy for your readers to scan through your content and spot areas of value. When you do this you’ll encourage your readers to stop on valuable points and read further instead of keeping them lost in a sea of words.

Here are ways you can achieve this:

• Break up your content using bullet points, subheadings, subtopics or takeaways.Let each section focus on a single idea. This makes it easy to scan through and if they come across a section they’d like to know more about then they’ll read more about that bullet point.
• Make use of quotes or call outs.You can creatively use quotes or call outs to capture the attention of your readers and encourage your readers to dive deeper into your content.

2. Incorporate imagery

If there’s anything that captures people’s attention it’s imagery. Readers relate with images a lot better especially when the images compliment the blog content. Images don’t only engage your readers, they also make your blog content colourful and more visually appealing. This makes your content so much easier to consume.

There are many ways you can add imagery to your blog content. Here are a few you can get started with:

• Break your content up with relevant images that enhance your content.Try placing images that represent the idea behind each sub topic. That way you’re creating a picture in the mind of your readers of the message you want to pass across in your blog.
• Insert infographics. Infographics present data in a creative, fun and engaging way which effectively sustains the attention of your readers.

3. Add videos

If there’s anything that can keep your readers longer on your blog, then it has to be videos. People love videos. Videos can add more context to your content. Although it’s so much better to insert your own videos, you can place videos from other sources on your blog so long as the videos you choose are relevant to the content of your blog post.

Here are some types of videos you can incorporate in your blog post:

• Instructional videos.These are ‘how-to’ videos which teach your readers something related to your content. Instead of going into detail about how a particular thing is done, you can insert a helpful video which does just that for you.
• Complementary videos.These are videos which focus on enhancing your content like videos that give examples or summarizes the content in your blog post.

And remember to enjoy your blogging journey. It is a journey into the unknown.