One of the main keys for an effective ad agency blog is to understand how people read on the web.
And how do users read on the web? The answer is, they don’t ... they scan.
Nielsen Norman Group ’s research found that 79 percent of their test users always scanned any new page they came across; only 16 percent read word-by-word.
For your agency’s blog to be effective, your text must be scannable.
Jakob Nielsen offers this advice:
- highlighted keywords (hypertext links serve as one form of highlighting; typeface variations and color are others)
- meaningful sub-headings (not “clever” ones)
- bulleted lists
- one idea per paragraph (users will skip over any additional ideas if they are not caught by the first few words in the paragraph)
- the inverted pyramid style, starting with the conclusion
- half the word count (or less) than conventional writin
Nielsen’s research also found that users detested “marketese”; the promotional writing style with boastful claims.
I’ve often said that …
“the moment you start to sell on your agency’s blog is when you will lose your audience.”
You need to understand how people read on the web and learn to write for them effectively. One of the best resources that I have found was Jakob Nielsen’s website. This is very dated material, 1997 but you will find that the top blogs follow Nielsen’s style guidelines remarkably well. How Users Read on the Web
Jakob Nielsen has been called:
- “the king of usability” (Internet Magazine)
- “the guru of Web page usability” (The New York Times)
- “the next best thing to a true time machine” (USA Today)
- “the smartest person on the Web” (ZDNet AnchorDesk)
- “the world’s leading expert on Web usability” (U.S. News & World Report)
- one of the top 10 minds in small business (FORTUNE Small Business)
- “the world’s leading expert on user-friendly design” (Stuttgarter Zeitung, Germany)
- “one of the world’s foremost experts in Web usability” (Business Week)
- “the Web’s usability czar” (WebReference.com)
- “the reigning guru of Web usability” (FORTUNE)
- “eminent Web usability guru” (CNN)
Web users generally prefer writing that is concise, easy to scan, and objective (rather than promotional) in style.
There are additional, interesting findings about users’ detailed reading behavior in Nielsen’s eyetracking studies.
Posted by Michael Gass 
