Use Headings And Sub-Headings
This may seem like an obvious tip but it’s worth reiterating especially because many who begin blogging may not start out as writers. Learning the fundamentals of good writing is important and most bloggers (myself included) become better at blogging as a result becoming better writers. The two skills are linked.
Headings Capture Attention
From a copywriting point of view headings and sub-headings have proven to be effective at capturing and retaining the attention of readers. Copywriting’s purpose is usually to generate sales, or specifically to elicit an emotionally triggered response to the words written on paper or screen. While blogging doesn’t necessarily have the same purpose the techniques are just as sound.
Headings gain the attention of your readers and sub-headings ensure attention is retained from start to finish. Headings break down blocks of text to less daunting segments. Tests have been conducted on heading use which demonstrated that even if non-related headings were used they still were more effective at capturing the attention of readers than not having headings at all.
Speed Scanner
Many net users are notoriously impatient speed readers. They look to digest information as quickly as possible and only “screen” content by scanning over the page quickly to see if anything interests them. For this type of user the article heading and all the sub-headings are the most vital element to keep them reading your writing. If you don’t have them chances are they will completely ignore your article.
Flow Of Ideas
Headings help you as an author to sequence your thoughts and arguments into a logical order. I structure a lot of my major articles by thinking of the top headings first and then go through and fill out the content. This gives my writing structure and a blueprint I can follow to help get my ideas from my head to a computer effectively.
Apply Headings After The Fact
Sometimes you may have an article just pore out of you and you don’t want to stop the flow to break things up into headings. Once you have finished your article go through and break up each significant new idea into a section and label it with a nice attention grabbing heading.
It’s a simple rule - headings, use them!