Formatting Matters: The Barrier for Your Readers

How much attention do you pay to how you format your copy?

​Whether it’s a website, a blog, or a marketing piece, simply throwing words on a page and not leaving instructions for designers can mean that your content is already restricting its true potential. In other words, it’s not going the extra mile to reach and engage your audience.

Everyone knows today how crucial content is for business success and we all spend so much time trying to get copywriting right, yet one of the most important rules always seem to get broken, and it could be costing you your precious readers!

The Missing Link

Is your formatting and visual display of your copywriting turning readers off? Why, when it’s so important and easy to do? There’s no excuse!

Successful businesses today realise that well written and high-quality content produces so many essential benefits, including SEO, KOL status, engagement, customer service, supportive materials, and the list goes on and on. This is why a good copywriter can really make or break how you cut through to your audience.

However, you can spend hours crafting the perfect content, developing the right tone of voice and devising the best strategy, yet completely ruin it all with poor formatting!

So, What Do We Do?

The lesson? Keep it simple, clear and really easy to read. Your reader is human, very busy, highly distracted and looking for information that is relevant- don’t make it any harder by making it difficult to read, too!

Don’t intimidate your reader with slabs of text, poor grammar or displeasing structure.
Instead, make your content easily digestible and a pleasure to read. Sentence fragments, one-sentence paragraphs, beginning with conjunctions and ending in prepositions are all fine, even desirable if it makes it appealing.

Make A Reader Want To Read It

One of rules of copywriting is to make it inviting to look at - if it doesn’t entice the eye, no one will read it! With the flood of content online, shrinking attention spans, and skimming readers, if your content doesn’t have eye appeal, it won’t get read or shared. This means that you’ve wasted your time.

Also, think of your audience- they may be reading your piece on their phones, on the fly, between meetings. If you want to earn their attention, then good structure and the way it is displayed really is essential.

Example of Bad Formatting

Example Of Good Formatting

So how do you give your copy the eye appeal you need?

Tips To Improve Your Formatting 

(1) Bold headings and titles to separate the writing into pieces
(2) Left aligned is more comfortable for English readers (I hate justified with a passion!)
(3) Bullet points to give quick snapshots
(4) Call outs and quotes break up the content
(5) Use supportive photographs
(6) Keep consistent, so it’s not difficult to read on the fly
(7) DON’T disturb readers with annoying pop-ups
(8) Check all grammar and spelling, so that you don’t disrupt your reader’s attention

Formatting Matters!

How you present your copy will have a huge influence on how well a reader receives it, because first impressions make all of the difference. Clear and clever formatting can make your copywriting a lot more readable to the intended audience, and set you apart from other articles and copywriting out there.

Goodluck,
Christopher Melotti
www.melottimedia.com.au
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