21. The job of the first paragraph is to make sure the second paragraph gets read. It’s the bridge. 25 words or less on the first paragraph.
22. Headlines: you have less than 1 second to get attention. Blurbs, viewers look at the first couple of words. “Eyetrack III, The Poynter Institute.”
23. Photos don’t make web copy more scannable, captions make it more scannable.
24. Online readers don’t typically read, they scan. 79% of the time, they are scanning.
25. Give lists a sub-head…always…
26. Does your copy pass the skim test?
27. Bit.ly is the link shortner that can be tracked by search engines. Use bit.ly to get a report of how many people linked to your story. If you use bit.ly on your browser, it will auto shorten the web pages you chose to link to.
28. In blog posts, the perception of effort to read them is as important as the actual effort.
29. Check out Poynter Institute for readability eye-scan research on web pages.
30. Screen paragraphs should be 1-2 sentences.
