How to Bore People in Five Simple Steps
People can be incredibly boring to talk to. Have you ever been immersed in a conversation with someone and then find yourself thinking about a million different things totally unrelated to what they are talking about? There’s something hypnotic, if not soothing, about someone who chooses to speak in the key of ‘C’ for the entire length of a conversation. You can feel your eyes sort of glossing over as you nod and struggle to appear as if you are still hanging on to their every word. You almost wish that they would come with you back to your home and sort of stand in the background as you nestle yourself under the covers and prepare to fall asleep.
The fact of the matter is that while people can be incredibly boring from a verbal standpoint; they can also be incredibly boring from a written one. On the Internet, writers have to work extremely hard to keep a reader’s attention. Often they are writing somewhat blindly. After all, you are not able to stand over the shoulders of every person that reads your blog or web site and calculate the exact moment at which they will suddenly click off of the page altogether because they are bored or indifferent. Therefore, it is our job to engage readers-not bore them!
Five ways to Bore People
- Using Big Words: Unless you’re writing for some sort of clinician or medical-related web site, try to cut down on the big words. Picture your blog post or content as smooth, sandy beach. Big words are like throwing gigantic rocks onto the smooth, sandy shore. They only get in the way, leaving many readers frustrated.
- Too Wordy: If you are overly verbose in your blog post, you’ll lose not only the point of what you’re trying to say, but you’ll lose your readers as well. Keep it simple; get to the point and you can’t go wrong.
- Bad Design: If there’s one thing you might want to invest some time and money in, it’s the design of your blog or web site. When a potential reader lands on your page, that’s the first thing they see…the page! Readers don’t have all day to go on a scavenger hunt looking for things on your site. Therefore, if they can’t find it, they’ll leave. Make sure the layout of your page is easy enough for a five-year-old to navigate. If you can’t find it; you need to re-think the design.
- No Pictures: It is highly recommended that pictures be included with any blog post that you do. You don’t want to go overboard, but depending on the length of your blog post, it’s always a good idea to include at least one small picture or even a video. This does two things: First, it helps to break up the text, giving readers’ eyes a break; and secondly, it keeps things interesting.
- Same Style; Different Day: Readers like consistency when it comes to blog posts. They like knowing that if they subscribe to a particular blog, that the posts will almost always be good. So, what does that mean for you? Don’t always write in one type of style. Change it up a bit. See what sorts of different topics you can talk about. Maybe include a post from a guest writer one week. Introduce different styles of writing this way readers can still get the great quality- just in a different way.
For more information about Internet Marketing, contact Create Business Growth today!
August 13 2008 02:00 am | Marketing
Karl Staib - Your Work Happiness Matters on 14 Aug 2008 at 12:20 pm #
Pictures are worth a 1,000 words. I think they are worth more than that when they make a person laugh. I think that’s one of the biggest differences, for me, of a good or bad presentation. When the person uses images, his body, photo or video that makes me laugh I’m more likely to remember the person’s message.
Martin on 20 Aug 2008 at 7:11 am #
This was useful.. by using negative examples sometimes you get to see yourself and have a laugh with it as well.
Janelle on 20 Aug 2008 at 8:20 am #
@Karl – I totally agree- pictures definitely leave a more lasting impression than words sometimes…
@Martin- Thanks for the comment
Work Happy Now! » 30 Seconds of Laughing and a Few Minutes of Learning on 21 Aug 2008 at 8:44 pm #
[...] quickly forgotten. Janelle over at Create Business Growth wrote a cool article about knowing the rules that bore people during a presentation. We are visual creatures and we need stimulation otherwise we’ll just [...]
joe huddy on 25 Aug 2008 at 1:32 pm #
i agree that pictures are the best way to convey a message but sometime it can create negative impression also ….!
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