I follow a lot of blogs…and I bet you do too. There is so much awesome content being produced and I know I don’t find near all of it. But here is the fact. I have a real job and a real life. So just like my e-mail and just like my snail mail, I make quick judgements about which blog posts I will read today and which ones I will breeze right over. How do I make those decsions? Probably the same way that you do. Here are four reasons I may not have read your blog post today:- The title of your post did not connect with me. This is by far the number one reason I skip over a post. But if the title does catch my attention there are still a few more filters that may result in me skipping your post.
- I use a “reader” to organize all the blogs I follow. Feeddler for IPad is my favorite. If I click on the title of your post but I can’t see the entire article, I am very likely to skip reading. If it is going to take another click I might not go there. Lame? Maybe. But I bet I’m not alone on that.
- I lose interest in the first few lines. There is no hook. There is nothing really there that keeps my attention, so I move on.
- The post is LOOOONG. What is long? That’s hard to say. 750 words? 1,000 words? It really depends on how good the information is that I’m reading. But if you are going over 1,000 words, it will need to be full of information I can’t live without to keep me reading.
The second item on this list is an easy fix. My friend Ben Eubanks over at upstartHR (follow him on twitter at @beneubanks) got me straightened out on this in the first few months I started HDLeader.
The other items take some effort.
What causes you to skip over reading a blog post?
Happy Blogging!
from HRleader.com, Jeff Williams
