Feb. 10, 2010 at 2:05pm

Make your copy scannable

Tips for keeping eyeballs on your on-screen message

Posted by Guest Blogger in Community Relations, Internal Communications, Media Relations, Publications
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©iStockphoto.com/skynesher
 

As much as I hate to admit it, I’m part of the majority of on-screen readers who don’t read but scan. Jakob Nielsen found “only 16 percent read word-by-word.”

The barrage of e-newsletters and announcements in my e-mail inbox provides an opportunity to observe what gets my attention. A couple recent examples:

From Ragan’s PR Daily News Feed:
How to Use Twitter as a Powerful PR Tool
The author of this post, Bill Rice, the CEO of Kaleidico, said, “Twitter is a public relations professional’s dream or nightmare.” True — so don’t make it a nightmare. Here, Rice provides an outline for how to make Twitter a PR pro’s dream.

From Hospital and Health Networks Weekly:
Improving Health IT Infrastructure for Better Care
Ordering tests and viewing results are more efficient with electronic health records, but integrating the system with the laboratory will really make a difference.

Why did these make me click through?

• Short headlines that made the topic clear.
• Descriptions that told me specifically what I would learn if I clicked.

With this information, I easily decided these articles were relevant to my interests and might offer new information.

When I went to the Twitter article, the key lessons were presented as subheads. The details of each idea were presented in no more than three short paragraphs. In less than a minute I could scroll and get the five steps for a positive Twitter experience. Or, I could take another minute or two to learn about each one.

Once I accessed the IT infrastructure article, I found:

• Text broken up with subheads
• Results presented using bold-faced text that made them easy to find while scanning: Laboratory-based decision support for chronic disease management. Many clinicians interviewed felt that the clinical decision support for ordering HIV tests and cervical cancer screening was ineffective. The primary reason is that lab results do not consistently show up in the system's decision support tools, such as disease management forms, which in turn render protocol-driven prompts for testing inaccurate. Consequently, clinicians ignore the prompts. Still, clinicians recognize the value of having clinical decision support in the EHR; they commented that the reminders for laboratory ordering are useful when they are accurate.
• A bullet-pointed list of lessons learned

This article required more engagement than the first, though I was still able to get the main ideas in less than five minutes. Had this article not been presented this way, it would have been too text heavy and I would have stopped reading – regardless of my interest in the topic

The elements that kept my eyes on the screen in these examples are what Ann Wylie of Wylie Communications includes in her list of micro-content:

• Headlines
• Decks
• Subheads
• Bold-faced lead-ins
• Lists

 

Try some or all of these next time you're drafting Web site copy or conveying key points in an e-mail.

Diane Schuirman-Hagedorn is an advisor at JayRay Ads & PR

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