If you spend time in the blogosphere, you’ll find many talented writers.
Some bloggers are great word smiths. Some write posts which read like a book you can’t put down. Whereas others write so concise no word is wasted.
Sadly, sometimes words are wasted.
Wasted because some of our readers don’t understand them.
Today’s Lesson
When we blog, we try to envision a target audience and write our posts accordingly. However, we may be forgetting an important factor – what “level” are we writing at?
By “level” I mean grade (reading) level.
For example, the grade/reading level of the content on a scientific or technological blog will most likely be higher than the grade level for this blog.
Since I write about blogging and know anyone can have a blog, my audience could be bloggers ranging in age from ten to 90 (or older). Plus, I also have readers who are foreigners and English is not their first language. Knowing this, I feel it’s important (for me) to keep my wording as simple as possible.
A great way to determine if we’re writing for the age group or reading level we’re targeting is to test our content.
On the site, Readability Formulas, it’s easy. Just copy and paste 150-600 words (from your blog) and hit “check text readability”. Within seconds you will have the scores from eight different sources.
Here are my overall test results from a portion of a previous post:
Readability Consensus
Based on 8 readability formulas, we have scored your text:
Grade Level: 8
Reading Level: standard / average.
Reader’s Age: 12-14 yrs. old (Seventh and Eighth graders)
I’m happy with the results and feel most anyone who lands on my blog will understand what I’m sharing.
How about you?
Today’s Assignment:
Do you consider the age or reading ability of your potential visitors when you publish?
Take a moment and test your content. How did you do?
Care to share?
Photo Credit: Emborg
Hi. I'm Barbara Swafford and I'd like to welcome you to Blogging Without A Blog. Grab a seat, share your thoughts and join in the conversation. 
Every time I write a post about comments and how to receive more, it becomes a popular one. The most recent one, Five Ways To Increase Blog Comments, is no exception.
Comments are what makes a blog interactive and is why many people enter the blogging arena.
To be heard.
Today’s Lesson
When I commented on Betsy’s post Life Skills: You Don’t Have to Explain Certain Things I went back later to read her response. In a comment that followed, Betsy wrote, in part,
Her words reminded me how with blogging, as much as we love receiving comments, one of the reasons we may not not get any (or very few) is just that, our readers are just not that into what we’re posting.
Ouch! That’s a blow to the ego.
In fact, when we hear that, our first reaction might be “Then why do I bother to post?”
And in truth, that’s a good question to ask ourselves. “Why do we blog?”
If it’s only to receive validation or to PROVE our point(s), we could be setting ourselves up for disappointment.
Maybe, no one cares.
Or maybe, as Betsy eludes to in her post, our readers don’t feel the need to explain themselves on the issues we’ve written about.
So that leads to the question, “Does a lack of comments mean our readers are just not that into us or what we’ve posted? Or might our visitors be reading but feeling they don’t need to explain their viewpoints to us?”
Since bloggers are usually the readers who comment most often, for today’s lesson, let’s take the commenting discussion further and share what inspires US to comment, or not.
Today’s Assignment
When you read a blog post, what inspires you to leave a comment?
Also, what hampers you from commenting?
Care to share?
*A book with a similar title, He’s Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys
was popular several years back. (*affiliate link)