Have you ever come across anarticle on Facebook that everyone is sharing?
Folks, chances are, you’ve seenit.
So that’s exactly what I’mtalking about: the article that gets the attention.
You might be wondering how thishappens because you’ve written a whole lot of articles across multiple blogs,but it didn’t happen.
The one thing I want you to doright now is STOP WORRYING!
Because I’ve got your back.You’d find out a lot of things that will get you there. Most of you would beable to pull this off.
Seriously, I got multiplethings in my mind to tell you right now that will get your articles attentionthey deserve.
Or, I’d say that I’d help youwrite articles that would bring in the attention.
Easy-peasy!
I’m so pumped up that I’m goingto talk about something that will massively impact your blogging career. If youunderstand it, experiment with it, and keep on trying it, you’d be able to seethings that I’ve seen.
Please remember that no onegets there in a jiffy; it always takes time.
I wish I knew all these thingsa long time ago.
As far as your blogging journeyis concerned, it would happen to you if you lay the groundwork first, meaning,there are certain things that need to be done to make that happen.
Don’t worry, we already knowsome of these things, but we don’t always pay attention to a few things that weknow until someone emphasis on them in front of us.
Before I dig into the methods to get the attention on your blog, I highly recommend reading three key elements that will make the whole process easier:
3 key elements of content writing.
Personal Experience
To get the attention of theaudience, sometimes adding a personal experience does the trick. People payattention to the content because it seems obvious that you’re sharing yourexperience in it.
It doesn’t have to be specificto the articles with the titles such as “ConvertKit Review: Why ISwitched from Aweber + 30 Days FREE Trial.” Instead, you can infuse thepersonal experience from time to time in most of your articles. Your audiencewould start to understand that you always add your experience to the story toclarify the context. Most of the times, it’s in the form of examples.
Delivery of Value
You have to be 100% sure you’redelivering value through that article. Make sure people respond to your articlewith compassion, meaning, comment underneath it or share on social mediabecause the article delivered value to them. So don’t compromise on the qualityof your content.
A lot of people ponder ondelivering the value; it could be the solution, any idea, a suggestion, tool,product, or past experience that could help the readers.
Relevancy
Relevancy refers to theconnectivity of your topics with the audience. If your article topics aren’trelated to your niche, your audience might not pay attention to your content.It’s compulsory for the article topics to be relevant to the audience.
Without any further ado, let’s take a look at the eight essentials of writing an article that gets the attention:
8 Essentials of content writing
#1. A Problem-solving title
The article’s headline or topicplays a huge role in getting attention. The reason people click through thetitle is that they feel interested in the topic. So a better blog post titlecan impact the number of reads.
A problem-solving article titlesends out a clear message about the nature of the content. Once the readersfind it attractive, they rush to check it out. A problem-solving title doesn’tonly work on social media — it works everywhere whether it’s an emailnewsletter or blog.
Moreover, a problem-solvingarticle title could be based on your experience, expertise, or information. Forinstance, I wrote an article, “Why I Left MyFull-time Job and Became a Professional Blogger” on BloggingCage. Not onlydoes it have a story in it, but it also portrays a solution for others.
I’m not specifying that a problem-solving title must include the words like “How I Did” or “How I Solved,” but instead, it could be any type of title with a clear message. However, such wording does show your personal experience.
You can simply choose a “how-to” term to title your article. Just focus in on the problem-solving part. If your content doesn’t solve the problem, then it doesn’t matter how good your article’s title is.
#2. Author’s friendly voice
It’s essential for a blogger tohave empathy and gratitude towards readers because these things translate intowords. If you’re a blogger and you’re referring your readers with the words“dumb” or “idiot” or “stupid,” then it won’t work out for you. The reason isthat no one wants to be insulted. If you keep humiliating your readers, they’dstart to back off, and ultimately run away.
What you need to do is developa friendly voice instead. Your readers must feel safe when they’re reading yourblog. They should feel that you’ve gotten their back. When it becomes yourhabit, it would help you gain more attention just because of your empatheticvoice.
This happens in real life too.Nobody likes to hang out with bullies. So don’t let your voice turn into anegative thing if you want your articles to get attention.
#3. Engaging writing style
An engaging writing style means that your content is keeping the readers engaged. It could be anything that is stopping the readers from walking away, for instance, humor, the way of talking, stories, lessons, or personal experiences.
Readers don’t leave the article if they keep getting value or there is an anticipation of better things to come along in the content. So avoiding stretching the article would help in writing engaging content.
It’s not necessary that you have to have a specific writing style from day one because you develop it over time.
And, above all, don’t over-think if you don’t have a writing style. All you need to focus on is your writing skills because that will lead to building your own writing style.
#4. Content filled with examples
Examples in the articles notonly keep the content interesting but they also help explain the point. It’sessential to include relevant examples in your content. There are numerousbenefits of adding examples to the articles, for example, they avoid thecontent from being boring, it becomes easier to educate the readers, andexamples catch the attention of the audience.
Most of the readers are either looking for a solution or they want to learn something from you. When you add examples to your content, you’re making things easier for them to understand.
It does make a lot of difference when people are benefiting from your content. Sometimes, links or screenshots help convey the examples.
Moreover, you don’t always have to give examples from your blog. Instead, consider adding the other blogs too if that makes the context clearer.
#5. Attractive subheadings
If you don’t know aboutreaders’ content scanning, then you might not be focusing on subheading. Mostreaders often scan the article before start reading. They scroll through thepage to see how long the article is, what subheadings are written, how longeach point is, and anything else that may interest them.
So adding attractive subheadings give them a clue that this article is worth reading. Moreover, subheadings could also be helpful in describing the message of the article. Subheadings, undoubtedly, bring in the attraction in the copy.
If you write an article without any subheading, no matter how good your content is, some readers won’t go through it because they don’t see anything catchy in it.
On the other hand, if you have subheadings, they’ll likely to read a few subheadings and build up their mind to read it.
#6. Short sentences and paragraphs
Writing short sentences and paragraphs makes your articles more composed and understandable. Although it’s a typical writing tip and we’re discussing a slightly different thing from the blogging standpoint.
You’d find writing experts saying this as well. It doesn’t matter you’re writing a blog post or an about us page, writing short and to-the-point sentences would benefit you.
When we write short sentences, it helps us avoid writing mistakes in the content. It’s essential in blogging to keep the readers engaged. Sometimes, the long sentences of the copy make it boring and readers leave the page.
Similarly, writing short paragraphs does help in keeping the content interesting, especially in blogging. You’d hardly find any blogger who writes long paragraphs. Most pro-bloggers know this. Check out Copyblogger and Problogger, in case.
#7. Clarity in the Narrative
This is perhaps the most important step in writing an article that gets attention. Let me explain why I said that. If your narrative isn’t clear about what you want to say, then you won’t be able to build a clear-cut message in your article.
Simply define what you want to deliver in the article and create content around that. However, the title of the article often sets the direction of the article, but if the article doesn’t deliver value up to the mark, then it could bounce back.
The clarity of the narrativeshouldn’t be a scary element of writing an article. All you need is to be surewhat your purpose of writing that article is. There could be various steps orparts of the article, but the purpose would solely be one. Consider clarifyingyour purpose of writing that article beforehand.
#8. Conclusive Ending
If you want your readers tocome back to your blog, then try ending articles on a high note. Meaning, yourarticle must give a sense of direction to the readers. Some bloggers do mostthings right such as the title, subheadings, and the content, but they don’tend the article so well.
One of the best ways to end an article is writing a portion naming “conclusion” or “the end” to make sure that you’re summarizing the whole point in a few lines.
You’d often find how-to articles and tutorials that abruptly end once the steps finish.
A conclusive end ensures thatyou’re making it easier for your audience to grasp and squeeze the core messageinto a few lines. Not only does it build trust, but it also develops arelationship with the readers because it benefits them.
Takeaway
The idea of writing this blogpost was to share bits of blogging that most blogging starters don’t know ormany don’t even come across. I wanted to make sure that I share things that Ilearned about getting attention to the content in the past few years.
Have you noticed that all thesepoints aren’t lengthy enough?
Well, I tried to keep themshort on purpose.
See, people tend to bypasslong-form content unless they are in deep trouble.
So I tried to make this blogpost almost irresistible for my readers. And, there is a lesson for you tolearn as well. You should do the same from time to time and see how it worksfor you.
Blogging isn’t completedwithout helping the audience and providing them value.
So the next time you sit downto write your article, make sure that you’ve gone through this list. I’m suresome of these tips would help you create content that will boost your blog.Maybe you’d soon publish a blog post that gets ranked in Google or goes viralon Facebook.
What did youlike the most about this blog post?
Let me know.
