Blog writing requires a unique style of writing. After all, we live in a world where readers are more likely to skim an article rather than sit down and read it in its entirety. It’s quite understandable. People are pressed for time. That said, they typically register within the first few seconds if an article deserves their attention or not.
This means that you, the blogger, only have a few seconds to lure a reader in. While some of these attention-grabbing techniques are learned over time, below are a few blogging “secrets” that are taught to those pursuing blogging as a profession: multimedia college majors.
4 Secret Online Blogging Tips Taught to Multimedia Students
1. Write Engaging Headlines / Have Attractive Images
Before a consumer will glance at the actual content, he or she will first notice two things: the headline and the accompanying photo. These two elements alone can convince a reader that your blog post is worth reading. That said, you need to work on writing headlines that “engage“, perhaps it can ask a question, sum up research findings, or use superlative adjectives.
Either way, you need to come up with a creative way to convince your readers that the blog post deserves their attention. A photo can also help. Finding an interesting, high quality royalty-free photo that can give the reader a preview of what the blog post will be about and that can persuade a reader to give your article a shot.
2. Make the Article Relatively Short
Like mentioned before, most consumers don’t have time to sit down and relax to read an article like in the good ol’ newspaper-reading days. They want their information fast. We are now an “on-the-go” society. If a consumer sees that an article is too long—it’s not broken with bullet points, headings, and lists and it goes beyond a page, meaning they need to click on an additional tab to continue the story, chances are he or she won’t read it.
You need to present your blog post in the most compact and informative way possible. That said, articles typically should not exceed 500 words. If you have a lot to write, consider breaking the article into a two-part or three-part series. Or, you can try to make your writing tighter and more concise by following the next tips.
3. Avoid Passive Voice
One of the easiest ways to have tighter, cleaner content is to change your sentence structures: you want to make sure that you write in active voice, not passive voice. When writing an active voice, the subject of the sentence performs the action expressed in the verb, as stated verbatim on Purdue Online.
Not only that, but active voice helps eliminate unnecessary words which can help you meet the desired word count. For example, a passive voice sentence would read something like: “The boy was bit by the dog.” An active voice sentence would read: “The dog bit the boy.” The first sentence has seven words, the second only five.
4. Present Material in Different Mediums
Last but not least, remember that a successfully blog post doesn’t necessarily have to come in the form of an article. There are other multimedia options you can pursue that your readers might enjoy more, such as a podcast, instructional webinar, or a s sound slide-show. Try to get creative with your posts to break up monotony.
Wrap Up
Getting in tune with what your readers like and formulating attention-grabbing techniques may take some time, but with some patience and effort, your blog can be launched to profound heights.
Guest Post by Alvina Lopez :
Alvina Lopez is a freelance writer and blog junkie, who blogs about accredited online colleges. She welcomes your comments at her email at [email protected].