Hooking Readers And Keeping Them

The biggest part of the writer’s job is to captivate readers. It doesn’t matter whether you’re looking to get the best positioning for your blog or you’re looking to sell your goods to the prospects in your market, supplying the kind of writing that holds a reader’s attention is what it’s all about.

Generally there are several ideas that everyone can agree on as to how that should be done.

The first technique should come as no surprise but it’s obvious enough that it often gets overlooked. If you can establish some kind of communication with the reader straight away you’ve got a much better chance of keeping their attention.  Remember that an opening that draws the reader in so they can see that commonly held beliefs are actually widely accepted fact help to capture their attention right away.

We’ve all seen these beginnings before. They start out with sentences like,

‘Everyone knows that something needs to be done about the cost of healthcare so that the average person can afford it.’

Every blog that you write needs to start out with a strong opening and these types of affirmations combined with a strong headline create the kind of one/two punch that grabs the reader right off the start.

Reader Interest

Then, once you’ve got the reader interested, it’s time to sweeten the deal and get them to believe that there’s something waiting ahead only if they keep reading on. You need to convince them that the common premise that you’ve agreed to is only part of the deal. This part is all about fostering a need.  Continuing on with the healthcare example, the next sentence might read something like this:

“But everyone also knows that the more you understand about healthcare the easier it is to get the kind of health insurance policies you want.”

Now you need to go back and take another look at the headline that you’ve penned. You made a promise here that they’ll get a benefit when they read every word that you’ve written (eg.The Best Way To Get The Healthcare You Need ) and now is the time where you’ll want to follow through.

When you start looking at how this pattern is used, you’ll see that good copy writers and bloggers like to make sure that they use bullet and numbered points here to clinch the deal and get the points across they’ve wanted to in the first place.

Remember too that you’ll need to write in a conversational style or at least one that you’re comfortable with that most resembles the way you talk. Nothing turns readers off more than affectation or arrogance on the author’s part.

And there one more thing that you’ll want to consider so that you can get the maximum mileage from this advice. Make sure that you always choose the simple word over the more complicated one. Unless your writing for an academic audience, you readers will appreciate simple straightforward language they can understand without having to run for the dictionary.  

Written by Rob Starr from Rob Starr
Posted on October 4th, 2009 and filed under Promote your blog
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