Amanda Clark
Here’s a quick activity for you: Say you were scrolling through Google and saw each of the following blog titles listed. How many of these would you actually click on to read?
- The Basics of Actuarial Accounting
- 5 More Tips About Content Marketing
- How to Be Better at Business
- Working with Vintage Doorframes
Your mileage may vary, of course, but we’re going to go out on a limb and say that most of you probably wouldn’t click on any of those titles. Why? Because they’re boring. And nobody willingly chooses to read boring writing. If a blog headline tips you off to the fact that the content is likely to be dull, repetitive, or lacking in color, you’re simply not going to wish to read further.
Making Decisions
We all do this; as a reader, you make daily choices about which online articles you open and which ones you don’t. And if you do it, you should expect that your own readers will follow suit. To put it another way: If you don’t read boring content, then nobody else is going to read the boring content that you produce on your own blog.
This is the most basic and obvious of points, yet it’s one that many DIY content marketers and business bloggers take for granted. This is especially true among those business bloggers who are not necessarily writers, first and foremost. For the non-writer, it can be overwhelming just to try to get the necessary information onto the page, organized in a readable fashion. Adding color, humor, personal anecdotes, the things that make writing really interesting and varied—that’s all but forgotten, much of the time.
Keep Your Content from Boring
How can you make sure your written content doesn’t bore? This may seem fairly subjective, but there are a few specific actions you can take:
- Stop and take the time for honest appraisal. Do you think the content is boring? Would you read the blog post, based on its title? If you think it’s boring, then it is basically a guarantee that your readers will, too.
- Brainstorm four or five title ideas. Force your brain to think outside the box a bit, and go beyond the obvious. Evaluate your titles and decide which one is the most attention-grabbing.
- Make sure the tone of your content reflects the title/headline. You want to be interesting, but not misleading!
- Think about your buyer personas. What are the values that your buyers are looking for? What kinds of problems are they looking to solve? How do you make your content interesting specifically for them?
Remember that informative content is not enough. If people don’t read it, then it doesn’t do you a bit of good—and people aren’t going to read it if it seems boring!
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