Brief Blogging: How to Get More Points Across with Less

I had a revelation last week.

It struck me like a highly charged doornob of static electricity. Youch!

It had to do with my blogging, and yours too probably.

And I just couldn’t not write it down.

What I discovered last week

What I discovered was something about my writing, and your writing.

Something that’s preventing our writing from being read!

I realized that being brief, concise, and simple will get us more reads.

Let me explain this revelation…

I mean that putting fewer sentences in front of your reader ensures those sentences will get read.

Or at least, increase the chances. As opposed to putting a LOT of text in there.

Huge chunks of text are dangerous, because people tend to avoid them.

See, as bloggers we have things to say. That’s why we blog. To be heard.

But put too much in your posts and you’ll risk them being completely overlooked!

Pointless, huh? If your posts are overlooked then they are essentially worthless…

If you have 10 great points to make and try to make all of them, you may end up landing none of them.

But briefly describe just 3 of those points and you may make all 3. 100% accuracy.

Brief or dense: Which is more valuable?

These two paragraphs make the same points. Which one do you prefer reading?

You tell me (in the comments, duh) which one of those paragraphs got through to you more?

Which one gave you more information?

Which paragraph was more valuable to you?

Are you being brief? Well, let’s see…

Is your blog brief enough?

Or, are you showing off your essay writing skills to your readers?

😉

To see if your blog is brief, let’s look at the start of your articles – your introductions.

Is it one sentence, separated by white space? That usually works pretty well.

People will surely read that and if it’s gripping, then they’ll read the next sentence…and so on.

Another question: do you use images, video, and other rich media?

An image can be a brief way of explaining a point, and a video is even better.

Plus, people often skim blog posts before reading them entirely to see if useful things lie within.

On my page where I discuss how to blog for money I inserted a picture of frustation.

It speaks pretty well to people, I think.

A final way to see if your blog is brief is to look at the comments.

Are people commenting?

Are they discussing the point you made in the comments?

If they are, great! People read. People listened. That’s what you want after all.

If there are zero comments, then…well, okay it’s not the end of the world.

But definitely an indication that you may have lost a few people.

Oh yeah, and last point: use varied texture.

What does this mean?

It means bolding, italics, headers, and -bullet points. The human eye likes seeing variety.

Browse through my blog posts and you’ll see they’re all hyper varied and hyper-organized.

That’s because I understand people like seeing varied texture.

Brief blogging: how to be brief

I’m not an expert.

I’ll admit, some of my longer posts are anything but brief.

I probably bored some people to death.

So, to show you how to be brief, let’s look at examples of success.

In other words, who is using this technique really well.

~ Example 1: Daniel Scocco ~

Daniel Scocco sends you an email newsletter after you subscribe by email.

The beauty of it is A, the branding, and B, the format.

It’s a skinny column of text with lots of juicy info and I usually read all of it.

I can’t help it, it’s just easy to read. It practically reads itself.

What Daniel does is use a good hook sentence or two, then he takes advantage of our short attention spans and uses narrow margins to keep you focused on his text and his good points about blogging.

It’s pretty smart stuff.

~ Example 2: CopyBlogger style ~

CopyBlogger is a mammoth of a blog that sells their own hosting, themes, SEO tools, writing tools, etc.

But their blog uses a pretty nifty style. Read through it, you’ll see very few posts with dense text.

Instead, CopyBlogger’s post have short, highly information rich, gripping statements.

Questions that target your interest.

Questions that tell you “Hey, read this post! It has stuff you need to know!”

And it works. CopyBlogger has something like 150K subscribers. They get HUNDREDS of comments.

~ Example 3: Derek Halpern ~

Derek Halpern is a guy I hated at first. He’s goofy looking and reminds of that kid in middle school who’d still tell on people at the age of 13.

But start reading his stuff at Social Triggers and you’ll love Derek Halpern.

His writing is just intense, gripping (again), and flows.

Watch a video of his and you’ll love him even more.

It’s crazy! He knows how to make you love him.

He also uses this sort of CopyBlogger style I mentioned above.

And the videos especially are great. Really brief, targeted to your interests.

Conclusion: More on brevity

So, what do you think?

Yes, there are millions of examples of brevity out there.

On the web, in our surroundings, at home, everywhere.

Just think about the content you love reading, the sites you love visiting.

To end this post, here are a few questions for you:

1) What sites do you love visiting, and are they brief?
2) Do you like the bloggers I mentioned above? Which ones and why?
3) Do you feel being brief will connect with more visitors?

Let’s have a brief chat in the comments 😉