Simple Edits That Will Improve Your Writing

We all struggle to make our content engaging and compelling. It doesn’t matter if you are writing for your blog, your website or just a landing page, you want your readers engaged and reading everything you write.

Here are 3 tips that will make your readers read on.

Open with a question that gets the reader to say ‘yes’

The idea is that the more you get your readers to say ‘yes’ to your questions, the more likely they will keep reading and say ‘yes’ to everything you say.

Why? Because your readers will feel like you understand them and know exactly what they are going through.

If they say ‘yes’ enough they will feel like your product or service can help them solve their problem. And they will hire you.

Use white space

White space can draw attention to something that you feel is important. Don’t crowd your webpage or blog with words. Use white space to your advantage.

Having space for the reader’s eye to rest makes your content less intimidating and more readable.

Use a Call-to-Action

Before you publish your article or web page, be sure to include a call-to-action. A call-to-action tells your reader what to do next.

Be clear and concise, urgent and compelling. Make sure it communicates the value they will receive by doing what you ask.

3 Easy Steps to Create Useful Content

Content truly is king online. Google has confirmed that high-quality content is important for your search rankings.

As a small business owner, you really need to step up your online content so it is useful and provides a great user experience. Here are three steps that will get you creating useful content.

What does your audience need?

The first step in creating useful content is to determine what your target audience’s need is. Look at your customer feedback and data you’ve accumulated to tell you what the need is.

Go beyond blogging

While blogging may be one of the best ways to get out great and fresh content, it shouldn’t be your only avenue. One way to increase the life of a topic is to repurpose it for different channels.

Try repurposing your blog into a video or infographic. Everybody learns in different ways so putting the same information out in different formats will increase your views and likes. Also visual content, such as a video, often performs better than text-based content and can easily be shared on social media.

Write a catchy title

You want your visitors to read your blog post or watch your video so you must come up with a catchy title. This will entice them to read the entire post or watch the entire video. Remember, the title may be clever but it has to be a good representation of the content that will be read or viewed.

Used your keywords in the title too to boost your SEO (search engine optimization) so you rank higher in online searches.

Experiencing Writer’s Block?

Are you having trouble coming up with ideas and topics for your next blog? Experiencing writer’s block is a very common experience. Sometimes all you need is a nudge to your imagination to get you started again.

HubSpot has a cool tool that can help inspire you. Do you have any overarching theme or keywords that you want to include in your blog posts? HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator can auto-generate five potential topics for your next blog post. All you do is enter three keywords and click ‘Give Me Blog Topics.’

If you’re not feeling the suggestions you receive you can always click ‘Try Again’ and you’ll receive five more topics.

The best part is this tool is free! Give it a try the next time you have writer’s block.

5 Tips for Creating Interesting Content

Have you ever written a blog and wondered if anyone's even going to read it? A 2013 study by Chartbeat found that most readers are only getting about 60% of the way through a piece of content. 

So what’s happening with the other 40% of the stuff you wrote? Not much! Your readers have short attention spans. Your content has to keep them reading all the way to the end of the article.

You may be thinking that the industry you work in isn’t “sexy” and can be boring. There are some tricks to make content from any market sector interesting….content that will keep your readers engaged. Here are five tips that you can use to make your blogs and article interesting to your readers:

1) Be helpful.

If what you are writing about is helpful to your readers, they won’t find it boring. Focus your writing on education your readers and they will read your article in its entirety.  

2) Write like you speak.

Write naturally and let your personality come through. Do not use acronyms or business speak that could confuse your readers. Make your article easy to read and understand.

3) Let your sense of humor show.

Part of writing naturally can be allowing a humorous tone to show in some of your articles. By keeping the tone of your article lighthearted, you will keep your audience's attention.

4) Keep it short.

If your industry isn't very interesting, your readers will quite often not bother to finish your article. Keep your article brief. Remember, many of your readers are using their mobile devices to read your article. A good reading experience on a mobile device and hook a reader to want to read more from your company. Also, the less time it takes to read your article, the less likely you are to experience reader drop-off.

5) Give your readers eyes a rest.

Don’t overwhelm your readers with a lot of text. Break up your text into small paragraphs and include bullet points to condense information. White space in your article allows your readers’ eyes to rest.

Include a visual, such as a photo or video that tells your story. People are attracted to pictures.

Are there any tips you’d like to share that have made you been successful in your blogging?

How to Tell Great Stories

You need to tell a compelling story – about yourself, your business or your customers.

Telling a good story is everything. Why do we tell stories? We tell stories to capture people's attention. A good story stops whatever that person is doing and forces them to listen to what you have to say.

A story about yourself, your business or how you helped a customer is what you want to write about. Just don’t make it a hard sell.  People like to buy, but don't like getting sold to.

How do you write that compelling story? Start by getting your reader to relate to you. You can do this with an experience you or your customer had. And keep your story positive.

You want your reader to stay interested and wanting more information about your or your products.