Attention is difficult to gain these days, but it is easy to gauge it. One look at the analytics of your webpage will show you the bounce rates and how long your site visitor spent on a particular page.
These analytics are truly a blessing, as you not only get to see which topics buzz with the audience, but also their demographics. This gives you a fair understanding of which blog post you should write next and how you can customize it for your target audience in a particular location.
Once you have a stellar blog post title, next comes the matter of writing it. It totally depends on the topic of your blog or the kind of blog you are writing to ascertain the length of the same. Long posts are excellent for giving a detailed overview while short posts are perfect for covering a topic through bullet points and small descriptions.
Most of the blog posts I come across nowadays are 1 minute or 2 minute long, which is perfect as it gives you a clear understanding of the idea being stated, in few words. And, then there are some long posts that are 4 - 5 minutes long (or more). These are the ones which you feel like going on reading, as the subject demands more and more detail to engage audience.
It is important to list the points you are going to talk about in the blog right at the beginning. This will stop you from swaying from the topic and giving focused attention to each point you are planning to write about.
When it comes to writing the post, here are some ways in which you can make sure that you keep your readers hooked:
White Space
White space is extremely important when it comes to content writing. A lot of words clumped together can make it confusing for the reader, which in turn could make them quit reading the piece. We don't want that.
However, if you are using white space in your blog (blank spaces) then it gives a refreshing feeling to the reader's eyes and brain. They don't feel overwhelmed by the amount of text. Each white space is like a breather between bites of information being fed into our brains.
How much white space you want to introduce into your buzz/post is purely up to you. You could try and make your paragraphs shorter, add subheadings and bullet points to the text, or even add some quotes in between that will shift the alignment briefly for a line or two.
Conversational tone
Using a conversational tone helps you connect with your audience at a different level altogether. To approach this, always think that your audience is sitting right in front of you and use the same words in the post you would use to talk to them, face-to-face.
It is said, even your smile can be heard at the other end of the telephone. If this is true, then weaving your words as such to create a near face-to-face communication shouldn't be difficult. Remembering the importance of "you" and "your" will get you there. See what I did there? :-)
Ask your audience questions, even if rhetoric, it should make them think. Just as a real conversation would.
Engaging and getting response
The reason we write blog posts, books, articles, etc, is to get our views across to people. To know about their thoughts and engage with them. When it comes to content marketing, engagement is extremely important to convert leads into customers.
So how to engage effectively? I recently read a post by John White, Columnist, Inc Magazine, titled "Here Are The Exact Words To Use On Social Media To Get More Customers".
In the post, John talks about how to get customers to engage. He used three methods with examples to show how you can:
inspire your customers to learn more about your offerings,
have them share your content to make it more Google-friendly, and
have them actively engage with the post by introducing open-ended questions.
I agree with each and every point that John mentions in his buzz and if you give it a read, you too will have a bag-full of great and engaging CTA techniques.
Thankfully, on beBee, you can find a great amount of buzz-engagement going on. It encourages members (bees) to write more, helps us know exactly what content to share, and cater to our audience with relevant write-ups.
So, to sum up, add some white space, converse with your audience, and keep them engaged with your words and witty CTAs, create relevant content they look forward to and benefit from and voila, you have a great buzz in your hands!