Are your readers finding your blog rather ho-hum? How often are your posts shared or commented on? It’s time to do some writerly analysis and start writing to engage your reader. Instead of boring him into leaving your blog.
Don’t write to an amorphous audience “out there”. Write one-on-one as if you were talking to a friend. What would interest him or her?
Readers are always searching for nuggets of information on the internet.
Doing an article on “excavations”? Pop in an intriguing quote:
“A new type of human ancestor, Homo naledi, with human and ape-like features, walks upright and may have used tools. Just reconstructed from amazing fossil finds in Rising Star cave near Johannesburg in Africa”
Captivating facts about things your readers are interested in will catch their attention. You can present them in the form of bulleted lists, block quotes or pull quotes, footnotes, or slides.
Whether it is in the realm of holidays and tourism, health, work, sports, child care or elder care, or social media or Google, you’ll find some amazing facts to support your story.
Did you know that Google was originally called Backrub? Here are some more facts on the world’s most popular search engine, in the form of slides.
Infographics and data visualization are a great way to present information visually. Pictures speak louder than words because they can capture emotion, movement, contrast, vibrancy and color. The internet has made the world more visual than ever before. Infographics take the best of both worlds and put information, graphics, and data together to deliver a message effectively. You’ll notice that the infographics below provide useful nuggets of information in a creative and visually attractive way.
Infographic: Anatomy of the Games – this spread explains the Beach Games in Oman in 2010, and got an award in SND 32 | Marcelo Duhalde, Adonis Durado, Lucille Umali, Winie Ariany
Create amazing infographics, with ready-made infographic elements from Entheos! Here is an example of a ready-made big infographic bundle below.
Most Use Essential Infographic Mega Elements
Case studies are a great way to showcase your company’s skills and strengths in a customer-friendly way. Address a specific customer pain point while you’re at it and you’re on your way to making your next sale! Content that addresses a customer’s felt need and provides a solution is content that’s more likely to be read and shared.
The web is an online medium, unlike face-to-face sales where the salesman asks a few questions and finds out what the customer is looking for, and in the process, gets to know what he or she likes and doesn’t want. Getting to know your customer online may take a little longer, (especially if your customer is in another country) but you can win her trust by asking some questions, providing examples of your work, asking for samples of the kind of work she expects from you, confirming if you understood her right, and so on. Being professional and knowledgeable, yet approachable and friendly, can get you closer to understanding what your customer’s pain point is, and addressing it in order to provide the best solution.
Make your own designs – add visual appeal to your content!
Visually, you can do so much with media using photographs, illustrations and a combination of the same with text, speech bubbles and graphics. Choose a font that suits the subject of your text – for instance, a poetic line can be placed in an elegant hand-written font. Less is more – a beautifully shot photograph with a visual focal point will center the viewer’s attention on the object being focused on, and the text can be placed above or below it, in a size and font that does not distract.
Collages can make a number of photographs look visually appealing if they are selected carefully for color harmony or contrast. Bold headlines catch the eye and subheads provide supplementary information, for example in a poster for a dance class, the main visual can focus on the trainer and his prowess, while supplementary visuals can show the types of dance taught.
The Web has opened the doors to great scope for creativity and innovation in presentation, and there’s no reason why you can’t spice up your blog with it! There’s lots of user-friendly software out there to make your social media posts engaging. Here are a few:
A healthy dose of inspiration can lift you up and carry your reader through her day with optimism and hope. Simple pull-quotes will do for a start. Or get creative and make some motivational posters, desktop wallpapers, or Facebook covers. Let your blog have bite-sized bits of wisdom to chew on, in the form of quotes, proverbs and adages, poetry, humor and warm thoughts – things that take your reader’s mind off those routine, everyday chores. Add some sparkle to his day!
So what are you waiting for? Design some happiness-making art and post it on your blog! Best of all, it’s likeable and shareable too!
5 ways to engage your blog reader – and put the ‘AH’ into your BLAH content
1. Write to ONE person, as if you were writing to a friend.
2. Provide facts that people search for. Facts draw attention.
3. Captivate with infographics. Infographics use text, graphics and visuals to deliver a message effectively.
4. Tell a real story with a case study – provide a live demo of your company’s strengths.
5. Create presentation pizzazz. Photo collages, quotable quotes, posters, Facebook covers, slideshows, banners, desktop wallpapers, video and audio all communicate in their special ways. Use them – relevantly, picturesquely, effectively to create really great content!
