Have you ever had a heated conversation over text messages or perhaps Twitter DMs and thought to yourself, “Geeze, please break up this massive wall of text, it’s impossible to read as new messages keep popping up!” The same exact thing can happen with your blog format and other types of written content!
There’s nothing wrong with having lots to say about a topic whether it’s a private conversation or a thought leadership piece. But while walls of text are a minor annoyance for the former, they’re a major engagement killer for the latter. When working with a new freelance writer who’s just getting started or a marketing team member who doesn’t typically handle writing duties, they may be used to posting walls of text so you need to steer them in the right direction with blog format examples that fit your online brand. Here’s a primer in how to break up those walls of text, and why you need to do so.
Using H2 Headings for SEO and Breaking Walls
Breaking up walls of text is not only important for visual purposes but when it comes to headings it also serves an important technical purpose. H1 headings serve as titles and the largest blocks of text in blog posts and web pages. H1 tags essentially tell your browser and search engines that this is the information that needs to stand out to people and should contain the target keyword or some variation of it. H2 headings serve as “chapters” or dividers more or less that guide visitors to specific sections on that page and the page’s source code reflects this.
By breaking up blog posts and web pages into sections using H2 headings, it makes it visually easier to digest and jump from one section to another since most browsers, as well as assistive technologies for visitors with disabilities like screen readers, use H2 tags for navigation.
Image is Everything!
What better way to break up and the overwhelming-looking wall of text than with gorgeous images?
Whether you’re using stock photos, illustrations, or GIFs, imagery is one of the most important ways to boost engagement with your content. There’s a variety of visuals you can work with so long as you’re consistent across the board as far as image quality and the message you’re trying to send with your content goes. Images should add something to the content whether they’re instructional, inspirational, or just plain look pretty– so long as they have some kind of context. Breaking up walls of text with images can help tell a story or instruct the reader on how to do something, and are especially important in visually-rich fields like food blogging and fashion. GIFs that show how to use software are helpful and they also be more fun and visually-appealing instead of solely instructional.
The possibilities are endless, and whether you or the writer picks out images just remember to put in the instructions where you’d like breaks for images.
Walls of text aren’t enjoyable to consume but breaking them up is easy to do. Once you select a top-notch writer from the WriterAccess pool, all you need to do is instruct them on how many H2 headings you need and how often they should come up followed by breaks for images and other visual content.
Rachel P is an indie game developer, writer, and consultant. She is also a content strategist here at Writer Access and would be happy to help you with keyword maps, customer journey maps, and buyer personas in addition to writing for you. If you would to like to hire Rachel to devise a content strategy for you, please contact your account manager or send a direct message.
