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Sometimes it’s just too much, isn’t it?
Have you had that one story that keeps getting engagement, but not in the places you want it?
This week I was checking over one of my articles, and realized that about 99% of the article was highlighted!
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Sure, it’s great to know that people enjoyed your article. But not only is it annoying to read, but it takes focal points away from the places you may have intended.
How does this happen?
It depends on both your content and your audience, but I have 3 ways that might help.
Bigger, blockier paragraphs
From looking through my own article, I noticed that all my sentences were short n’ brief. This is great for a short article focused on quick reading, but not great when every point becomes highlightable.
If your small paragraph contains an eureka! moment within every. single. sentence. Then taking a moment to add more detail and words to describe your sentence would help.
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Take time to explain points
This goes along with having larger paragraphs, except with the focus on format.
We all love reading through bullet points, but is there a way that you can explain them better by incorporating them into a paragraph?
While I didn’t see people highlighting my bullet points so much, they could’ve been incorporated with the points before it, so each point was cohesive…
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With an exception to this one.
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That one person…
You know that person who highlights the whole paragraph? Yeah, if you’re out there… it’s great and all, but highlighting a lil’ phrase would be nicer!
This is the last way that I’ve seen which depends on the audience rather than the writer. So, all I can say is for people to please remember their gradeschool days of learning how to highlight. It’s about highlighting the main points rather than all the extra fluff that makes up a point.
These were 3 ways I’ve noticed from my own article that you can use to cut down highlighting in your own story, no matter how much engagement you may get.
Unless someone is keen on highlighting the whole article… there are formats you can incorporate to help alleviate the engagement.
While it would be nice if we could ‘un-highlight’ sections ourselves, this is the best we can do.
What are your strategies for cutting down highlights? Or do you enjoy them as is?
Update
The guy who was doing it responded 😂
“Welp. I may be guilty of this. I’m an avid over highlighter. In my defense, I didn’t know anyone was bothered by this. lol”