How people respond to content online

I came across a great article called 9 ways people respond to your content online by Rajesh Shetty today, thanks to Guy Kawasaki's tweet that I am following. After reading, I can't help feel that Guy himself is ignoring the article, as sometimes I feel he just posts way too many tweets for me to keep up, resulting in me doing Spam, Skip, or Scan! However, he can be excused because of sharing some great articles like this.

In short, Rajesh says that people perceive content in one of the following 9 ways (quoted directly from the article):



Negative Return of Investment on Interaction

1. Spam: If your content does not provide a reasonable ROII (return-on-investment for an interaction) for the reader or is self-serving or simply useless, the reader will mark it as spam. Posting something that may be assessed, as “spam” is the fastest way to losing credibility.
2. Skip: The reader makes an assessment that he or she won’t lose much by reading it. In this case, the reader has not written you off yet but if you consistently create content that is worth “skipping,” the reader might write you off.
3. Scan: The reader thinks there are only a few parts that are of relevance and wants to get right to the core of the content and skip the rest.

Transform

1. Stop: The reader is touched by the article and stops to think about the article, it’s relevance and what it means to him or her personally and professionally.
2. Save: The content is so good that the reader might want to re-visit this multiple times.
3. Shift: The article is transformational. The reader is so deeply affected (in a positive way) by the article that it shifts some of their values and beliefs. In other words, this piece of writing will transform the reader and make him or her grow.

Leverage and Engage

1. Send: The content is not only useful to the reader but also to one or more people in the reader’s network. The reader simply emails the article or a link to it to people that he or she cares.
2. Spread: The reader finds the article fascinating enough to spread it to anyone and everyone via a blog, twitter or the social networks that he or she belongs.
3. Subscribe: This is the ultimate expression of engagement and a vote of confidence that you will continue to provide great content. When the reader wants to continue listening to your thoughts, he or she will subscribe.

He goes on to suggest some things to consider to re-think the way you write online content. I think this is a great way to look at how you create online content. In addition to his thoughts, I feel that you can still improve things more than just the content.

• Make it easy for readers to ignore (1-3) if you can't avoid having some content in that category. An example would be to mark it in the title with a specific type or prefix that your readers will know to ignore better. Thus, you can remove the prefix for content where you want your readers' attention. This would be great for Twitter, for example.
  
• Make it easy for readers to read (4-6) by proper spacing and lot of visuals to enhance their pondering capabilities. Visual cues are always great to help improve your thought process as people tend to think visually. If you have a transforming point, better to add a bunch of visuals to strengthen that point. For example, your blog content can be improved by adding some visuals.
  
• Provide unobtrusive tools to facilitate readers to perform (7-9) without having to search for it. Lot of systems do this already by providing links to share, send, or social bookmark and it's a great use of unobtrusive technology.

Kudos to Rajesh for a nice article.