Content is the most important aspect of your website, your blog, your articles and your white papers. If you are creating something that requires other people to read it, the content is what will garner attention, what will provide information and what will engage your readers. You can have a fancy website, you can even have pretty fonts and colors and images, but if your content is sub par, you’ll have all these fancy things without any readers.
If you want to engage your readers, you have to ensure that you’re providing the elements that will pique their interests, inform them or entertain them, and get them coming back for more. The following are five no fail tricks to engage your readership.
1. Create the most compelling headline possible.
If you have a boring headline, you can kiss your readership goodbye. The headline is the first thing your readers are going to see, and if it doesn’t interest them enough, they’re not going to waste time on the rest of your content. Use keywords, ask questions, get emotional, pose some type of controversy—all of these tactics will give your headline more impact.
Take the following two headlines as an example:
• How to cook dinner
• Make dinner like a professional chef in 15 minutes or less
If you had both of these headlines in front of you, which one would you read? While they both could end up leading to the same content, the second title is going to generate the most interest because it is more descriptive and more interesting. If you implement interesting and catchy headlines into your content, you will have succeeded in the first step of engaging your readers.
2. Mix up your content.
You have a good grasp on your niche, and you write content that speaks about your expertise and your interests. The problem that most people have is that they get too comfortable with their writing that they always continue to generate the same type of content. For example, if you have a blog about food, you may find that you are constantly giving reviews on local restaurants. While reviews are a great way to gain interest from your readers, continuing to only write reviews will make some of your readers lose interest.
Readers don’t always want to see the same type of information, so you need to mix it up every now and then. Going back to the food blog, maybe you can write a review once per week, write a recipe another, discuss ways to save on groceries or dining out in another, show a video of how to perform a julienne cut, and so on. The more you mix your content, the more engaged your readers will be.
3. Use active voice.
If you forgot the grammar lesson from fourth grade, active voice is when the subject performs the action. For example, a sentence using active voice will look like this:
• You write content to be engaging.
A sentence using passive voice will look like this:
• Engaging content is written by you.
When your content is written in active voice, your readers will be more engaged because active voice is easier to read and is more upbeat than passive voice. When your content is more upbeat, it will be more enjoyable for your readers, and they’ll be more inclined to continue reading.
4. Mix up your content accessories.
Engaging content does not need to only be text based. Yes, the words you write will be the most important aspect to your article, but you can always accessorize your great content with images and videos. Adding this little bit of flair to your articles can be the just what your readers need to stay actively engaged in your work.
5. Continue to improve on your writing techniques.
Your writing can always use improvement. The best way to improve your writing is to continue to write and learn from your previous mistakes. You can also turn to books or online articles that offer tips on becoming a better writer. Websites such as Writer’s Digest and Inc.com can provide some helpful tips.
If you implement these no fail tricks into your content, you will easily generate compelling content that will engage and increase your readership.
How do you engage your readers?
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