Blogs

how to hook your readers with words

September 2, 2012

A winning headline is important to attract readers to your web page or blog. But how do you make sure they read on?!

Here’s a summary of views from some experienced bloggers and web writers.

Australian Darren Rowse, founder and editor of ProBlogger, says your opening line really does matter: “Readers will make a snap decision about whether to read your post by how you open that post, both in the headline or title and the opening line.”

Read more from Darren at 10 tips for opening your next blog post.

Danny Iny of Firepole Marketing, in the United States, says “describe in vivid detail the current, frustrating experience of your intended reader. Then, at the very end, you hint that you have a solution, by saying something like ‘It doesn’t have to be this way …’, or ‘Here’s how you can fix it’, or ‘Here’s why some people don’t have this problem.’“

Melanie Lundheim, a freelance writer and founder of Good Copy Fast, says when thinking about what will make your readers “need” to read on, see if you can “invoke a strong emotion among members of your audience, and… strike on their pain points.”

Read more from Melanie at Writing for conversion: the hook, line and sinker method.

Debbie Weil, an online marketing and corporate blogging consultant in the United States, says “you have to reveal enough information to make the reader long for more of the same.”

Debbie has tips on writing an online hook at 5 tips to write a sexy teaser.

blogs are your friends

July 3, 2009

With blogs fast becoming authoritative sources of news in their own right, the avenues you need to reach to get comprehensive publicity coverage can sometimes appear infinite. But you do need to communicate with far more than just traditional media outlets.

Spend a bit of time online researching who is writing the most authoritative and informed blogs on topics relevant to your business. You will easily be able to find the blogs you should be talking to.

People in your industry will be aware of leading blogs. The Technorati website shows who the most popular global blog sites are. Google’s Blog Search works well if you type ‘New Zealand’ after whatever topic search you are after.

What is news on a blog?

How does news develop and grow in the online age, where blogs are taking on papers in the news-breaking game and often winning? American journalist and new media expert Jeff Jarvis defines it as “product versus process journalism.”

“Newspaper people see their articles as finished products of their work. Bloggers see their posts as part of the process of learning.”

The way blogs work include “collaboration, transparency, letting readers into the process, and trying to say what we don’t know when we publish – as caveats – rather than afterward – as corrections,” Jarvis says.

Traditional news outlets like to project the impression that their story is the definitive version .

Whereas, as the Irish Independent reports, journalism – as practised by bloggers – exposes the workings of a scoop. “[High-profile technology blog] TechCrunch, for instance, publishes the beginnings of a story that may only be a rumour. The responses to that rumour, often from reliable sources, generate updates to the story, which is polished with the help of readers to get closer to the whole truth.”

“This is journalism as beta,” Jarvis writes. “Every time Google releases a beta, it is saying that the product is incomplete and imperfect. It’s a call to collaborate.”

And that call to collaborate is drawing millions of blog readers and comment writers. If you want your company to be where the word-of-mouth action is, you need to be noticed in the blogosphere.

… And, lastly, just to add to the proliferation of news sources you need to pay attention to: Is Twitter the news outlet for the 21st century?

how to boost your blog using Twitter, social media sites and good old email

March 27, 2009

Blogs are a powerful way to pull readers to your website, to educate and entertain them and lead them to action on your website. But how do you attract readers to your blog?

Compelling, useful and regularly updated material is, of course, essential. But other communication tools can also be useful to advertise your blog across the web.

Twitter: I’ve been experimenting with Twitter for a few months now and have more than 100 followers (people who have clicked to ‘follow’ – aka subscribe – to my Twitter feed). This is a small number compared to the many people with thousands of followers but the number is steadily growing every day.

So how do I attract them to my blog?

I put up an appealing (I hope!) Twitter post (aka a Tweet) about each blog post I make, and link back to my blog post. My followers and the many other Twitter readers can see it and can visit my blog, if they are attracted to my message, simply by clicking on the link . If you search and monitor the Twitter traffic, you will easily find people with an interest in the information on your blog and can tailor your Twitter messages to attract them.

Similarly with social media sites: I put up brief posts about my blog items on a social media site with a similar subject matter to this blog. People read the post and then come to my blog to learn more. Measurement of my most heavily read blogs shows that a significant readership has come directly from this social media site.

Email: The Copyblogger site recommends pushing people to your blog using an email newsletter. Copyblogger says email your blog’s RSS feed as a newsletter; start a simple opt-in email newsletter; link back to your blog; and place newsletter subscription tools everywhere.

You have to experiment a bit with linking to your blog from various other online services, but give it a go and see what works for you.

You might also be interested in these articles from other sites:

Four ways companies use Twitter (Read Write Web)

Fifty ideas on using Twitter for business (Chris Brogan)