If the opening of your blog post doesn’t entice your readers enough to keep their attention, it’s safe to say they won’t be reading the rest of the content contained in the post, even if it’s the best blog post ever written. As a general rule of thumb, each blog post you produce needs to meet very specific criteria if you want to keep your audience engaged and avoid the dreaded “bounce”.
Are you ready to use blogging to connect with your customers and provide them with useful information that will be shared? Pay attention to the following 4 ingredients that make up a successful blog post opening. All you have to do is remember the acronym AIDA, and you’ll be creating amazing blog intros in no time.
#1: The Key to a Great Blog Intro = Attention
The key to a great opening is writing a first line that grabs attention. Is there a question you know your audience desperately wants an answer to? Is there a piece of data that will wow your readers right from the opening line?
If you understand your audience well enough you’ll know what type of content will successfully keep their attention. Before you craft the opening line you have to ask yourself:
- What are my reader’s pain points?
- What do they hope to learn?
- What keeps them up at night?
If you can connect your blog post to one of your audience’s concerns you’ll be on your way to keeping them captivated for the entirety of your post.
Whatever you do, just make sure the first line gets their attention and leads your readers into the second line. If you can do that successfully you’ll have your audience coming back for more again and again.
#2: Capture Your Reader’s Interest
Once you’ve written an opening line that successfully capture’s a reader’s interest, the next step is to write a second line that explains:
- Why the content contained in your post will be valuable to the reader.
- How it can affect them in a positive way.
- Why they should take the time to read it.
There is nothing worse than a blog post that captures a reader’s interest in the opening line only to completely lose that same reader by line two or three. Getting a reader’s attention is important, but if you want to keep it you have to include content that will engage your readers on another level.
If you don’t know where to begin with this one, try listing out all of the reasons why a particular reader would follow your blog. Try to determine what initially captured their interest and what type of content will motivate them to keep supporting you.
- What is it that those readers hope to gain from consuming your content on a regular basis?
- What type of posts will keep them interested until the very end?
- If you were one of your readers (and you should be), what would interest you?
These are all questions that can help you when you’re trying to write a second line that addresses a reader’s interests.
#3: Invoke Desire
Once the reader reads one line that grabs their attention and another line that interests them, they have a desire to read the rest of your blog post.
To entice people to read your post, sketch a sunny destination in your blog opening. Tell them how your simple trick or easy formula will make them happier, healthier, or richer. Sketch a destination so wonderful that they crave reading your post. – Henneke Duistermaat
The desire phase goes hand-in-hand with the interest phase, but it should be noted that there is a significant difference between having a reader’s interest peaked and desiring to consume an entire piece of content from beginning to end. Anyone can have their curiosity peaked after a couple of lines, but if the rest of your opening can persuade a reader that they must read everything you’ve written, then you know you’re on the right track.
#4: Motivate Your Reader to Take Action
Last but not least, a great opening motivates a reader to take action. This section should be the final line of the opening, and in it you will tell the reader to continue reading if they want solutions to the problems you’ve discussed and the questions you’ve posed.
Remember that once a reader makes it this far, they need to have a reason to keep reading. This is not the time to circle around the point—on the contrary, you need to get to the point as quickly as possible. You need to be prepared to tell the reader the exact reasons why they need to consume the rest of your content.
If you list out the features and benefits in simple terms they will gladly read the rest of your blog post and take the action you desire. You will build a stronger relationship with each of your customers as you continue to do this with every blog post you publish.
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