The content of your blog is important; so your blog writing skills need to be honed. It needs to be personable, professional (if you’re writing for business), grammatically correct and most important of all EYE CATCHING! You need to get the attention of your reader so that they are drawn to your post and read the content.
Here are 10 tips for creating an eye catching blog post.
1) It’s all in the headline. These are the words that you select with thought, to scream out to potential readers “READ ME!” Make it something on-topic that will catch the eye and be appealing without giving too much away. You want to raise interest to read further, not give it all away in one go. Use keywords that are relevant to your post, inject a bit of humour or word play or ask a question.
2) Use quotations. A quote can be a great way to introduce your blog post. It starts of the topic nicely by providing an example as to what your article is about. Make them bold and in an alternative colour text to draw attention.
3) Highlight text that you feel are keywords to your blog post. The use of certain colours can really help draw attention to the feel of your writing, and how you wish for the information to come across. Make things bold if you feel something is of high importance.
4) Don’t shout too much! Nobody likes a noisy post, so keep your use of CAPITALS TO A MINIMUM, unless you need to emphasise something above everything else. Use it constructively.
5) Everyone likes to look at pictures. As a child when you were given a book, you were always drawn to those ones with the most attractive illustrations. As an adult this still applies (we can just read better!) Insert into your blog images that relate to your topic. There are many places that you can obtain stock photos to do so. Just ensure you include any image credits where required to the owner of the image.
6) Moving pictures are the future. Everyone these days is familiar with You Tube, so why not include a relevant video in your post. This can be something you’ve found interesting, or if you like to make your own videos then a great opportunity to showcase your skills.
7) Don’t talk too much…take a breather! Break down your blog post into sections. If an article looks like too much information in one big chunk, the chances are people will think they don’t have time to read it. Bite size readable chunks are the key, and they also look so much better to the eye.
8) Basic grammatical errors are ugly. Make sure you give your blog a thorough proofread before publishing. We all make mistakes, it’s only human and sometime the odd quirky spelling can add personality to a post. However, you want to look professional, so give that grammar and spell-check tool a click, and get it to do its job.
9) Be original. Nobody wants to read the same thing over and over again. Add your own individual sparkle to your post. Get creative and make your article stand out from the rest.
10) Don’t make it all about you! Relate to your readers, talk to them and ask them questions. Give them a reason to comment on your post so that you can engage in conversation. After all, that’s what blogging is all about.
I’d love to hear your ideas on blogging too.
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