Making Content Consumable Through Chunking & Clarity

I always say that attention is the number one currency today, but capturing and holding it is a difficult proposition. The average attention span of an adult is a mere 8.25 seconds.

This is why it’s critical to think about the “consumability” of your content.

In other words, you must make it easy for your audience to understand what you’re saying, writing, etc.

Here are a few tips on how you can do that.

Format in Chunks

You can forget what you learned in English about structuring your writing around ideas and topics.

This is how many of us were taught to form our paragraphs. Each idea in our essay was to be comprised in a single paragraph.

However, when you do this, you sometimes create long paragraphs that go on and on and on. You know, the ones that continue line to line and sometimes page to page. It feels like there is no end in sight. Before you know it, you have a huge jumbled block of text that is difficult to read and hurts your eyes just looking at it. Like the paragraph that I am writing here. You as the reader want it to stop, but it goes on. You’d love to have some line breaks before you lose your place and become cross-eyed.

This is why I write one or two-sentence paragraphs. This is called chunking.

It works even better if you can vary your type of content with applicable items such as images, videos, pull quotes and bulleted lists. Also, consider bolding or highlighting noteworthy information.

Be sure proper formatting is applied to headings, subheadings, lists, spacing, etc.

Not only does this help the reader, but it also makes it easier for search engines to index your content.

Clear Language

Those who write (including myself) have all been guilty of being too witty or trying to sound overly intelligent instead of writing for clarity.

The reader/viewer/listener is the main character. Always have empathy towards your audience.

This not only goes for the words you choose but how you put them together.

For example, an expression or reference that makes sense to you, might not translate to a different language or culture.

This becomes a lot easier when you have an established audience, especially if it is highly localized, but remember we’re a part of a global economy.

Again, always empathize with the person consuming your content.

One of my favorite pieces of advice is to write how you speak.

Framing your writing this way helps make it clear, friendly and relatable. You don’t want to write like a robot. Now, we have AI for that 😉 

Another tip is to write short sentences. Not only are short sentences easier to understand, but they also help chunk your content.

Rather than focusing on finding the right words or being clever, optimize your writing and speaking for understanding.

Couple this with proper formatting and keep your audience engaged in your content.