6 Effective Yet Little-Known Secrets of Writing a Successful Blog

Sometimes, as a blogger, it may feel like the odds are stacked against you. You have only a few seconds to get the attention of the potential reader using your headline, tease them and convince them to open your blog post. 

If that is all there was to it, it would have been okay. But there’s more: 8 out of 10 people will read your headline, but only 2 out of the 10 will actually click the link.

What’s more, blog readers spend approximately 37 seconds reading a blog post according to statistics, and 43% of them skim through content rather than reading it thoroughly.

Let me put this into perspective: you have a couple of seconds to convince less than a third of those who come across your headline to click the link and open your blog post for only 37 seconds. Are all your blogging efforts going to waste? Is there any way that your blog can achieve its goals with such odds? 

Of course, there is. If you follow the five tips below, then couple it with this ultimate cheatsheet to writing a successful blog, your blog will achieve its objectives, no matter how many odds are stacked against you.

1.Know Your Audience

Who are you writing to? What do they want to know about? What are they looking for? For your content to resonate well with your readers, you need to target a specific group of people. By understanding them and creating content curated specifically for them, they will relate to it, and your blog will be able to achieve its objectives.

Writing to the general public makes your content feel impersonal and not many people will relate to it. To properly target your audience, you need to come up with reader personas.  Reader personas are semi-fictional representations of your ideal readers. They are based on market research, data on your current readers, and some educated assumptions. They help you understand and relate to the audience you want to speak to.

2. Craft a Compelling Headline

It could be the first or the only (80% of your readers never go past the heading) impression you make on a prospective reader. So, if you do not create a headline compelling enough to turn a browser into a reader, the rest of your blog may as well not exist.

To come up with a compelling headline, here are some tips.

• Choose an interesting topic. This is in line with knowing your audience and knowing what they would like to know about.
• Stick with what works. There are certain types of headlines that have proven to be more successful than others. They include list posts and “How to” headlines.
• Engage your senses. Make use of sensory words to give words to their exact feeling.  For example, instead of “Steps to Take When You Have a Migraine”, you could say, “How to Soothe Pounding and Blinding Migraines”
• Tease a bit.  You should find a balance between being too vague, and giving everything away in your headline. Your readers should understand exactly what they are getting from the body of the content without actually getting it. If your heading is too vague such that your potential readers don’t know what your blog is about, it will not be able to spark interest.
• Make it short. As a rule of thumb, your headline should range between 6 and 13 words.

3. Craft a Compelling Intro

Basically, the goal of the topic is to get you to open the blog and read the first sentence. The goal of the first sentence is to get you to read the second one. And the purpose of the second is to get you to read the one after that, and so on, all the way to answering your call to action. And with rising impatience levels, it is quite hard. If they stop at the heading or the intro, you are dead in the water.

If you can manage to hold the attention of your readers past the intro, you have a higher chance of delivering your message successfully. How can you achieve this? By creating a great introduction.

A simple but effective way of grasping the attention of your readers is to ask them a question addressing their problem. You can also tell a joke or a story. Then, as you complete your introduction, tell them how reading your guide will help them solve it. This will give them a reason to keep on reading.

4. Break Up Your Content

It is up to you as the writer, using the three tips above, to come up with content that will keep your audience hooked, reading sentence after sentence. But you can only do this up to a point because most people don’t read blogposts word-for-word. Instead, they scan through to get the information they need.

Formatting is very important to your blog because it makes your content scannable. Once they skim through and see that your blog contains the information they are looking for, they may decide to read only that part or read the entire thing but one thing is for sure: they now see you as the go-to blog for certain information.

You can make your blog posts scannable by:

• Using subheadings to help your readers see the main topics of your post. This helps them navigate around the post with ease.
• Using short sentences and paragraphs as they are much easier to read. Longer ones make it harder to see the main point immediately.
• Using bullet points when you have a list instead of listing the items in a sentence.

5. Use Images

The brain processes images faster than text. Even if your content is well-structured, it can not be as visually stimulating as that which includes images.

Images are important because they help you illustrate your point when you are explaining complex topics. Visual assets such as tables, charts, images, and infographics are necessary for your audience to grasp complex or abstract topics and engage with you.

Images also help light up the mood. A funny image or gif chosen appropriately can inject humor into an otherwise boring piece.

6. Craft a Clear and Compelling Call To Action

As you conclude your blog post, you should include a clear call to action that indicates what you would like the reader to do next.

For blog posts, the typical call to action asks the readers to share the post if they liked the post. However, you can also ask them to leave a comment, purchase a product or service, register for an event, download a book, read a related post or follow you on social media for updates and new content. Nonetheless, whatever you would like them to do make sure you have stated it clearly, leaving no room for guesswork.

To prevent distraction and confusion, you should have only one call to action per blog post. For your call to action to compel them to take action, try to explain to the reader what is in it for them if they take the action. How will they benefit?

It is not easy to get your ideas the attention they deserve. Not with the various online distractions and rising impatience levels. Luckily, equipped with the proper writing skills and the tips above, you will be able to grasp and maintain the attention of the readers throughout your blog, allowing you to fully deliver your message.

But, why spend precious time writing blog posts for your business website, while there are professionals who are skilled and experienced to do the work at the fraction of the time? If you’re wise to know that it’s best to delegate this task to a professional, Zoey Writers is at your service.

Check out our blog writing services today or contact us so we can discuss how we can help. 

Photo by Caleb Oquendo from Pexels: Thanks Caleb!