It’s no secret that content is king. If Blogussion was stripped of its users and its fancy design, there would be nothing but content. Writing content for your own website shouldn’t be too difficult. But writing effective and captivating copy with a writing style that automatically promotes your website isn’t so simple and requires much more effort.
The Basics of Writing Interesting Content
Let’s break the writing process down.
- You come up with a post idea.
- You think about your topic and come up with your main ideas and a few main points.
- You put it all together.
What’s missing? The step where you actually make the content interesting. Actually, this added step should be merged with step 3 to save time. In other words, when writing, once you’ve finished gathering some great ideas for your article, you should start working on putting it all together in a unique and interesting way.
Why?
Why should you focus on writing content like this? A captivating article will act as linkbait, “tweetbait,” and “sharebait.” All it requires is some extra thinking and some good English.
There’s a lot you can do to make your content more interesting to readers.
1. Write an Attractive Title
The title of your post is the only reason readers stop to actually read it: it’s the first thing they see when they visit your blog. Visitors won’t spare a single second to read your post excerpt if they haven’t been captured by the title.
The title, which serves as the headline, probably is the only reason you stopped to read this post. Two great templates for a post title are “Top 10 [Ways To Do Something]” and “[Something] 101″. These kind of titles bring in the most traffic as they are naturally attractive to readers.
There is a list of 65 exciting words, as well as more solid headline templates.
2. Create a Capturing Excerpt
A lot of the time, bloggers forget that the excerpt of a post is almost as important as its title. They choose to let their theme automatically generate an excerpt for them. This is a big mistake.
The key to writing an excerpt that hooks your readers to your content is answering a question they were looking for an answer to. This doesn’t mean give all of your post content away however.
For example, if your post title is “How To Build A Blog,” you may want an excerpt such as:
Blogging is all the rage these days. A new blog is built twice every 2 seconds. Why? Blogging is one of the only ways to share anything to a large worldwide audience. Once you’ve built your own piece of the internet, blogging is pretty straightforward.
In this excerpt, I answered 3 questions a beginner to blogging might ask: “How popular is blogging?,” “What can I do with blogging?,” and “After I build my blog, how is maintaining it?” So now that you know how to write a great post excerpt, it’s time to learn how to make your internal post content better.
3. Use Powerful Headlines
Using headings in you post content makes the reader a lot less overwhelmed when they see your content, a page full of words. These headings organize your post into something a reader can understand and work with.
Headings also make your page a lot more interesting. I’ve noticed that many blogs I read don’t use any headings at all in their posts. This makes their posts a lot less pleasant and interesting to read, even if they provide great content.
4. Use Lists
Readers love lists. Not only do they provide valuable information in a digestible nugget form, but they also spice up your content so your blog posts don’t look like a bunch of paragraphs put together to form a big block of words. If you haven’t noticed, this post has 2 lists, and for a good reason.
5. Don’t be Repetitive
It’s never a good idea to say the same thing over and over again. But if you want to make your copy interesting, you’ll have to take that idea to a whole new level.
Of course, you shouldn’t just be rephrasing the same sentence throughout your article. You should also be sure not to repeat the same words over and over again in your articles. This will give a sense of repetitiveness to the reader.
However, make sure you’re not going overboard with non-repetitiveness. This can bring a negative effect on the on-page optimization of your content, as using your main keywords more frequently in your content is good for SEO.
What Else Makes Captivating Content?
That’s it! Just remember, writing content that helps readers isn’t enough anymore. As the internet grows, readers get more and more used to copy with more than just quality content. Your writing style is almost as important as your actual content, so take these tips to heart!
If you liked this article, I encourage you to retweet and share. Now it’s your turn. Share some of your own copywriting secrets in the comments!
The Discussion
Leave a Comment Read Again?well done,good job.
I love your emphasis on good english and writing style. It’s a shame to see the careless, complacent attitude towards quality that seems to be spreading among some bloggers these days.
Good stuff- thanks, Karan!
Thanks for your thoughts Steven. The problem with blogging now is that anybody can blog with little to no money involved. So the quality of writing that blogs are known for is diminishing.
Valid point
And at last they lost in dark.
That’s why Darren is still going so strong and most respected blogger so far.
Writing list posts surely do increase attention and they are pretty easy to put together, just make sure formating is done correctly and you are doing the appropriate promotion.
Another great thing about list posts is they allow you to gather more individual post ideas from each list item if you want.
Thanks for your comment, Derek. That’s the reason why I love incorporating lists into mine own posts – They are so easy to set up and they produce great results for both you and the reader.
Yes such lists work like they are showing path to your readers and they guide readers till the end.
Hey Karen,
Awesome Post man. Those are awesome tips to write captivating content. (as Derek said) List posts are surely a great way to get attention. Good stuff.
Thanks for sharing this great Post. Keep up the good work.
~Dev
Top advice, especially the sections about titles and excerpts. These are usually the two aspects of the content that catches the readers eye and draws them in.
Adding image/s to your excerpts is also a good way to appeal to the reader, so is adding images to your content as a way to break up the content and make it easier to digest.
Yes images work like as lubricant.
But however if the contents are great than you will hardly need it.
Like we can read a good novel in first seating if this one have interesting story.
Really Great post!
Making use of headings is very important because some readers just skim the post rather than read.
Thanks a lot for the great post,
-Onibalusi
Exactly right. your headline is your one chance to grab a reader’s attention.
Karan I think you should add your face in Gravataar instead of this T.
If this is your brand logo than I think you should change it and get some good and attractive one.
What do you say ?
I’m sorry, I’m just 12 years old and I don’t think I should be putting my picture up until I’m at least 13 or 14… I’m currently redesigning Trafficke, and the logo has also been redone. Thanks for your thoughts.
Whoa! You are only 12 Years old??!!!
Wow, I am impressed!
I mean I couldn’t tell you are 12??!
I agree with Karan.
There is good advice there for all of us.
I would add that long posts are not ALWAYS better than short, to-the-point posts. Sometimes, short posts are better than long posts.
Infact, on a blog the other day, there was a whole posts regarding the merits of short posts. The writer said that it is actually harder to write short posts which get to the point than long, boring posts.
-Nabeel
P.S.Typo in summary:
“There’s a lot you can do to make your con tent (content)”.
Actually this happens a lot at this blog. If I copy something from the article (for quotation purposes) and paste it to the comments in here, some words appear like con tent (with spaces/gaps in between).
Alex, have any idea on whats going on?
lol, yeah I’m 12. That’s not that early if you consider other bloggers who started when they were like 14. I say the younger the better – more creativity!
I’d say that it does not matter how long your posts are, as long as they provide for the reader and have some personality.
Couple more:
Short paragraphs and bold wording in a couple of places helps draw attention.
Tell a story or relate your post to something in your life.
Write your post to one person only, like you’re speaking to that person.
Thanks for sharing your own tips like I asked.
@ Mike –
Valid Point … I will also keep this in mind along with Karan tips.
Karan, great tips here.
I’d add that it’s important to have a good and logical outline for writing, and also that a good post is tightly written, meaning minimal extra words and sentences that don’t add to the message.
Great post!
thanks for sharin’!
I think the purpose of the content dictates what is captivating and what is not. Half our blog entries are written for the sole reason to garner search engine traffic. These blog entries are frankly a bit dry, but they do their job in providing us new customers to develop a relationship with.
In my opinion, the title of the article is important. We can only attract people to start to read the article with an attractive title. If not, no people will read our article even we have an useful content. Thanks for your sharing!
Great tips.. I think Title and List work best. and if you throw in some #’s in that title your set.
Perfect tip. Numbers are a great way to get the reader longing for more.
Title is your primary weapon, then use first paragraph as your secondary weapon, and use your post idea as your secret weapon.
Wow – that’s completely right. I can’t even tell you how important it is to write your post like that.
Nice tips man. Though most of them are basic ones but still they are put together in a unique way. You are teaching through clarity of your example.
That’s the bestest way of teaching.
All good points you mentioned.
Another I would add – create interest by connecting headlines and pop culture to your topic.
I agree with the Headlines and the excerpt. This is what draws the visitors in.
This is especially important for Social Media sites as that’s about all you see – that should be enticing enough for visitors to check out the scoop
I agree you need to have a strong headline for sure, people are too quick to move on. Isn’t the online attention span something like 2-3 seconds…so you have to grab them in your headline or at the very least your opening sentence…
Karan that was really great read.
Did not move till I complete.
Method of my writing is very simple.
# Got the idea – Note down the reason of such idea (so that you never forget the source)
# Divide them in main points and keep thinking about other points
# Get the perfect example of such post which suits that.
# At last add some spice and make it more spicy.
Excellent points, and all true. That said, it is certainly not all. What you are missing, surprisingly, is pwersonality.
One key point to returning visitors, is personality; at least for me. Interjected into every article, readers just eat it up. If you write like your solely writing for the search engfines, or like a tech manual when it is not, you will go nowhere fast.
Controversial or intriguing content also could captivate your readers to read the whole post.
I also did this one in my guest post in SmartBloggerz and it really earned much comments where I compare the two best blog marketing techniques.
I post the title, “Content vs Marketing which is better?” That was a good example of a captivating title that would awaken the ideas of your readers.
- Felix Albutra
Nice idea, comparisons are always loved by visitors and they are really good keywords for SEO because if I’m looking for a comparison between 2 phones for example, I’d search “phone1 vs. phone2″, and so would your visitors.
Good suggestions about how to write compelling copy. Lists are cool. Surfers like to scan. And they scan down the left side of the page first, so put your most compelling words in the beginning of the list.
Write in storytelling form. We all love stories and it’s easy to fall into stories and fables without even knowing it. We get lost in it and that’s a good thing to hole the reader’s attention.
I agree with your all tips about writing good content. specially i like your 1st tips about the title of your post. every reader first read title of post. If they like its title then they will read whole content. otherwise they will go out from your post.
so, Title is the most important for your post.
I follow these simple steps when I’m writing articles about my products:
1. Make your point.
2. Explain why that’s your point.
3. Give examples.
4. Close the article by reiterating your point.
5. Write 3-4 compelling sentences on the article resource box.
I like to keep it simple, and yet captivating.
Articles must be short, concise and straight to the point and avoid a lot of flowery words, it sure won’t get anybody’s attention.
thanks for revealing the secrets to successful content writing.
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Writing on the internet is a new true art. You listed a lot of great idea. These days it seems that good writing for the internet takes a lot of lessons from traditional direct response copywriting. As a writing teacher, kids also seem to like these fun ways to captivate your audience. Word count seems to be really important on the internet. Captivate your audience, but don’t overstay your welcome!
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