This post comes to us from the BrokerageU blog:

We are living in a visual age. The attention span of consumers and readers of your blog is constantly shortening. Bite-sized, easy-to-digest news and information is desired and long blocks of boring text are largely going ignored.

It's with that in mind that you might want to consider integrating some of these content strategies into your blog, in order to not only attract--but keep--your readers' attention.

Bullets, numbers and hyphens

Many of us outgrew our desire to read long, rambling sections of plain text without interruption dating back to our school days and dealing with assigned reading from text books. Nowadays, informational and leisure reading to be found online have to be broken up in order to receive the utmost attention.

One way to do this is to utilize bullet points, numbered lists and hyphens. All three serve the same purpose: to single out important tidbits of information and highlight it for the benefit of the reader. Too often, valuable information gets lost in the body of long-winded paragraphs, rendering that info useless.

Images

Visuals such as images are also useful in grabbing the readers' attention. Although it may seem like more work without adding any added value, including relevant photographs of the subject matter you're writing on can give the readers' eyes a break while also adding aesthetic appeal to the page.

However, be sure that the images you use are relevant to the topic you're writing on. Red flags will be raised should the reader find out they've been reading a post about the housing market and the image is of what is clearly an apartment complex.

Images + text = infographics

Combining both images and text to form infographics is also highly recommended if you want to get the most out of your content strategy. Infographics typically present heavy statistical data in picture form, complete with graphs, vibrant colors and large/bold text in order to appeal to the more visually-inclined learner.

The SEO value of infographics can be improved by simply crafting a blog post to coincide with the information presented in the graphic. Using relevant keywords in the blog post will draw the right readers to your site and the infographic will serve to keep their attention and build upon their knowledge base.

While having a professional infographic designed for your blog may be out of your price range, utilizing images and breaking up text are equally effective in attracting readers and won't cost you extra. However, a quality infographic can add credibility to what you're reporting.

At the end of the day, it's not just about attracting readers but also exposing them to quality, authoritative content that they can use to their benefit should they be buying or selling a home in today's market.