12 Surprising Ways to Make Your Blog Posts More Interesting
Every web writer wants a huge number of daily visitors to his site. To make this wish come alive you need to keep your blog post look unique and the content fresh. Unique content drastically reduces the bounce rate and increases the readership of your site.
Stale, outdated, age old content makes the reader skip to another site.
So, here are some proven tips to produce content which is interesting to the readers.
1. Your blog post is not a research paper:
Research papers and blog posts are different.
Research papers are for academically intelligent readers. Blog posts are for common people who came to you for some solution.
Typical characterstics of research papers:
- Complex vocabulary
- Lengthy paragraphs
- Not in everyday conversational style (complex sentence structure)
- Passive voice
So don't forget to avoid these features in your posts.
2. Site design:
Some sites make us interested simply by their blog design. This doesn’t mean that their content quality is low. When you and your competitor are equal in terms of providing quality content, then your blog design certainly gives a little edge over them.
Look at these sites, I like their design, fonts, appearance very much.
Oatmeal.com
Socialmediaexaminer.com
Zenhabits.net (extreme simple one).
3. Surprise readers:
The best technique to keep audience engaged till the end of your post is make them surprised at the beginning.
Surprise makes your post open with a bang.
One simple technique is, opening your post with a paradox.(This may not be possible everytime, but you can try.)
Paradox is a literary device, which appears to be contradictory statement.
Have a look at these lines.
- “I know who killed me” – A Hollywood movie
- “I must be cruel to be kind” – from “Hamlet”
- “child is the father of the man”- by William Wordsworth.
4. Edit…rewrite, Edit….rewrite:
Yes, I know. Nobody likes editing again and again.
You spend your precious time in developing ideas, keeping them in perfect order and writing.
You feel exhausted.
You are eager to hit the “Publish” button. Yeah, I like it too.
But this could be the most valuable advice you ever receive…
Just take few hours gap (preferably one day) and come again.
If you read it, you certainly feel some editing is needed.
- Remove the words that are not needed.
- Check your grammar. You can use MS word or Ginger software (paid version).
Here is a simple technique, if you feel bored while editing.
Take a print of your content and get away from the computer. Sit comfortably wherever you want and start reading it and marking with a pen necessary changes to be made.
5. Give examples:
Sometimes writers mistakenly imagine that they and their readers are on the same intellectual plane. They assume their readers know some basic fundamentals of the topic being discussed and continue with their content.
Here, the reader stops and ask “what does it mean?”
Hence it is necessary to give examples whenever and wherever needed. Before publishing the post, if you get feedback from your friends then that could be helpful to you.
6. Images:
When I was a kid, I used to avoid story books without pictures. I didn’t know how much the stories were enchanting, I just looked for images. If there were images, I thought they were good.
There is nothing new. We all may have similar kind of experience.
Images bring life to articles. Without images articles appear lifeless.
Novice bloggers do not like buying images, because they have meager revenue sources.
So, they choose images from free stock photos sites like Freerangestock.com .
One downside with this method is, these images from stock photo sites are used by many more bloggers. So, these become familiar among blog readers and gradually with time, these images fail to evoke any emotion among readers.
So if you can’t afford buying images,
- Try creating your own images by your own mobile
- Use free graphic creation services like Canva.com.
7. Killer title and subtitles:
If you have decent organic traffic to your site, then your traffic is mostly from search engines. When a reader searches a keyword on a search engine, he could find thousands of search results in front of him. Out of these massive number of results, you need to distinguish yourself from others.
Even if you have killer content inside the post, but have post title which doesn’t arose any interest, then your hard work is of little value.
Pick a good title that makes the reader irresistible to click on it.
Never hit the “publish” button eagerly.
You publish your post today or tomorrow, that doesn’t make much difference (unless you have a deadline).
So, take your time, find a killer title for it, then publish.
8. Use story telling:
Who doesn’t like stories?
If you watch thriller movies, you find the plot may be simple but the narration or screenplay keeps you on the edge of your seat.
A simple plot is transformed into a thrilling nail biting movie by a director. The same movie plot is picturised as dull, lifeless movie by another director.
So, it is not the plot but the narration that makes the movie thrilling.
Why can’t you apply the same principle her?
It may not be possible in each and every post, but occasionally you can try.
9. Use good vocabulary:
Choosing your words in your writing makes a lot of difference.
Certain words tend to evoke certain emotions.
These make the reader visualize what is being told. Once it is visualized it is imprinted in his memory.
Some of the powerful words.
Warm
Fantastic
Gorgeous
Mind blowing
Ultimate
Persuasive
Excellent
Spectacular
surprising
Passionate
Eager
Keen
Confident
Optimistic
Challenging
This is just a simple, small list of useful words. If you look for more words online, you can find many comprehensive lists.
10. Add humor:
If you have the innate talent of writing humor, it is wonderful.
Some of you may feel you don’t have the skill to write humor. But they can be acquired by observing and learning process.
Keep reading blogs with humor and find how the humor is created.
11. Coherence:
The sentences in your post should be interlinked with one another. It brings a sense of continuity. Or else they appear to be fragments and the reader has to take the laborious task of interpreting what you mean.
So they have to read your post again and again. Unless your post is a highly valuable one, nobody takes on the burden. They just skip away and go to other site.
12. Create little controversy:
Creating a little bit controversy may be necessary in the beginning days of blogging career.
Controversy creates curiosity and that brings traffic to your site.
But make sure the controversy should not cross the limits.
You should be able to put an end to it, when time comes.
After gaining a brand image, you don’t need to opt for this kind of strategies.
One wonderful example of creating controversy is Neil Patel’s ( Quicksprout.com) post “Why successful people are douchebags”
