How many times have you read a blog post and thought how boring it was?
There are lots of ways to make your posts come alive with interesting content, the right layout and carefully chosen images.
Here are 6 ways to make your posts pop!
1. Give Step by Step Info
Providing information in an easy “how-to” style is an amazingly simple suggestion, but this type of article offers loads of value and actually helps your visitor by answering a question they already have on their mind.
This can also aid in bringing in search traffic, because people do actually search with entire questions, such as “How to fix a Mansfield toilet?”
2. Break It Into Chunks
I’ve noticed articles that use numbers in them really do get a better response.
For example:
“The 8 Ways to Increase Sales” or “The 3 Most Common Ways to Make Money Working From Home”.
There is just something about breaking content into groupings or a finite number that attracts people’s attention.
In fact, you may find that older articles you’ve written could be retro-fitted with this style to appear fresh and new.
3. Tell real stories giving details about success or failure loaded with solid lessons.
People don’t just want to be told how to do something, they are actively interested in what prompted you to do it and what happened along the way.
The lessons you have learned through personal experience are so much more interesting to others than canned responses and they want to know about your successes or failures and how you turned them around.
One area that is particularly successful here is weight loss. People really want to know how you’ve managed to achieve losing weight and how you’ve kept it off.
Just telling them to eat less and exercise more just doesn’t inspire them!
4. Write about things people are actively interested in…
Try to find a subject that people are actively interested in and do some research so that you at least sound knowledgeable about the subject.
You can use Google to find the most used search terms and then choose one that interests you.
This is important because if you have no interest in the subject yourself it is likely to be hard work for you, but it’s likely to be obvious to your readers too.
5. Narrowly define your audience.
This is one of the most basic, yet often overlooked, keys to success. If you don’t know who you are writing to it will be fairly difficult (even impossible) to know what they want or how you should address them.
So, please, don’t underestimate its significance.
Always do your research, take time to detail your audience persona or personas and know who you are writing to.
6. Use photos and subheads to break it up!
Your visitors will decide within 0.5 seconds whether they want to read your article upon arriving on your website, so you need to grab their attention straight away.
Would you feel compelled to read a huge thick paragraph of copy that says “I’m long and boring” or would you be more likely to be pulled in by an article that is light, with short paragraphs, compelling subheads and a few nice images sprinkled in?
Blog writing and academic writing are very different and therefore require a completely different mind-set.
Your audience may be different, but nobody wants long and boring. So follow these guidelines…
- No paragraph longer than three lines.
- Use subheads to break up content and make it easy to read.
- Bullet out lists where possible.
- Use attractive images that help illustrate your point — unique images (not stock) are best.
So, next time you think about writing a blog post consider it carefully before you begin.
Choose a subject you like and do some research to gain some interesting content.
Then think about whether it is suited to a step-by-step or how-to style and break it into easy to understand chunks.
Finally jazz it up with some attractive images and you’re good to go!
