Unless you are posting regular videos of cats or pictures of unicorns, the majority of the people who will see your posts will find them as boring information.
This is especially the case when you are in a very specialized niche that doesn’t normally capture the attention of the average internet user.
You may find the information interesting, but unless you make it interesting to your readers, you won’t have any readers. Let’s face it, the internet has lowered the attention span of the population to the point where you need to get your information across as quickly as possible.
Luckily, we are here to explore a variety of ways to present your boring information in interesting ways and hopefully catch the attention of a larger group of readers.
Slideshare takes the old idea of slide presentations and makes it possible to share on the internet. It combines a number of slides, both text and graphic, that are typed or hand-drawn and creates a presentation to share with others. Think of it as a modern-day form of the old slideshows that required your teachers to place information they had written on a plastic sheet onto a machine that had a light underneath and a projector to send the image to a screen.
Information that is more heavily based on text works best here. It is best if you can break the information down into bullet points or lists that speak for themselves. Online classes lend themselves to Slideshare, as do corporate meetings and brainstorming sessions.
In the quest to present boring information in interesting ways, video ranks among the best. We live in a visual society.
Video doesn’t really need much of an explanation. It is a visual presentation that allows viewers to watch and learn or be entertained. It can be set up with you talking to your audience, presenting instructions or including things like photos or film clips.
While the possibilities for video are almost endless, certain kinds of content seem to lend itself perfectly to this format. Interviews can do well, as they make your humanness more apparent to the audience. How-to videos are extremely popular. People often learn best by watching and doing at the same time and a how-to video provides that opportunity.
Another popular avenue is to create a behind-the-scenes video that allows your viewers a view of things they normally don’t see. The main idea is to keep the action informative and quick.
Infographics are the new kids on the block. They are excellent when it comes time to present boring information in interesting ways.
An infographic is a visual presentation that takes a topic and present it in bite-sized pieces. It normally includes simple graphics that help convey the information.
These graphics can take the form of graphs or charts or even simple cartoon-like graphics. These can be found on blogs, as photos on social media and in any other area where photos are acceptable.
Infographics work best with information that can be broken down into bite-sized facts. Statistics, trivia and lists all work. The best infographics combine a variety of facts, statistics, and trivia.
Infographics are made to provide enough information to peak the reader’s interest, but not so much as to bore them. When it comes to this form of content, the possibilities regarding content are endless.
A podcast is an audio file that is created for listeners to download onto things like MP3 players, computers and other listening devices.
They provide information or entertainment to the listener in a short, fun way. Most podcasts are done as a regular series. This allows listeners the opportunity to subscribe to the podcast and be informed when new episodes are ready for download.
The majority of successful podcasts are updated weekly, or even twice a week.
Podcasts work best for material that doesn’t need to be shown. For example, a how-to subject wouldn’t fare well as a podcast because people prefer visual instructions. Comedy, top-ten lists, news bites and interviews all do well as podcast content. Inspirational messages and serialized books are also popular content.
The main idea is to keep your information short and memorable. If you can make a listener laugh or think, then you will keep them returning. This is becoming very popular in regards to the attempt to present boring information in interesting ways.
By choosing the right format to present your information, you maximize the potential of your content and will see an increase in readership as well as engagement.
If you do not have any new content that fits into any of these formats, you can even go through your old content and pick one to be repurposed into these formats. Repurposing your old content into a new format is as good as creating a whole new content. You might even see a spike in your search engine rankings and traffic.
So do spend some time and craft your boring information in the right format because otherwise nobody will read it.
Which formats are your favorite and how did they worked for you? Let us know in the comment section below!
Updated: 14/7/15
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