Remember we mentioned that having a website or a blog is one of the most essential things to building an author platform? If yes, have you created a blog for yourself? If it’s a yes again, you need to know how to differentiate your blog from tons and tons of blogs out there. For that, you need to write an engaging blog on the niche of your blog.
If you think writing a good article is easy, you’re right! Anyone can write a good article. All you need to do is select a good topic, research well, write an error-free content, and post. Simple! But do people look for good articles? No! They look for articles that are shareable (viral posts); something that will fascinate them, engage them, and enlighten them. So, to create an engaging blog post, you need to do these:
Start with a Bang
Start your blog post with a striking first line. With loads of web content flooding the internet, people take no time in deciding if the content they’re reading is worth their time or not. So, you need to hook your readers from the very first line. Start with a statistic, a question, or a quote. It’ll instantly kindle curiosity and keep people retained to your content.
Make your Content Scanable
Readers have a very short attention span. So, you need to make your content scanable to your readers. By scanable, we mean including bullets, using short sentences, including images to present information, incorporating infographics for a better appeal, and adding tables. If readers are accessing your blog post, you need to make sure they get the information they were looking for with 15 seconds. Unless and until they’re not looking for a tutorial post, they’ll leave an article in a very short time.
Sound Authoritative, not Pretentious
Using technical jargons and heavy (yes, heavy) words doesn’t mean you have an authority on what you’re discussing. Authority is reflected in the information you provide to them and not in the language you use. Further, if you use complex words, readers will just jump to a different blog, where language is way simple and comprehensible. Also, using hard words makes you sound pretentious.
Make your Content Relatable
If readers find your language and blog posts relatable, they’ll like you. So, to relate to them, you need to write in a language that they are used to and find interesting. Include quotes from movies, TV series, comics, song lyrics, or basically pop culture references to make your content likeable. Trust me, this works!
A Sparky Title and an Actionable Conclusion
Your blog post should have a stunning, sparky title for readers to click and arrive to your blog. No matter how great the body of the blog post is, if the title is not captivating, readers wouldn’t care. Similarly, end your post with actionable content. It can be anything that will entice readers to make a decision. By actionable, we also mean asking them to like and share your post on social networking websites. Take inspiration from content and posts from Buzzfeed and 9Gag to kindle your creativity.
Writing an engaging blog post is no difficult task. You just need to get a hang of writing such stuff. If you feel you can engage your audience in a unique way, share them over the comments section.