The first lesson journalists learn is how to structure their articles so that the most important information is prioritized and becomes less important as the article progresses. Pick up any newspaper and you will find that the first few sentences often contain the most important elements of an event.
This is not only to create impact, but also to make it easier for the editor to bring out some unnecessary information when they need to make room. Since the last sentence is the least important, it won't have much impact if it is removed. Below I will talk specifically about how to make the content attractive.
1. Title
In my opinion, the title is the most important element of a blog post. First, it affects the content you are going to talk about, and more importantly, it attracts people to read your article. The job of the title is to get people to read the first sentence of your article, especially when readers see your article in Google Reader, the title directly determines whether readers will click on your article. Next, I will introduce a few tips on how to use the title to attract readers, so that the content can go viral.
1: Don’t tell me what you know
For example, if your title is “Why is exercise good for you?” or “How to increase your subscribers?”, I probably won’t read it because I don’t expect much from the title, and it’s basically something I know. If you want readers to read on, you need to make them feel like they’ll get something valuable by spending their time reading this article, or something they didn’t know.
2: Challenge some people's common sense
One of my most popular articles is titled "Smoking is good for you." The average person thinks smoking is bad, so the title of this article makes readers want to read it because the title of this article has the exact opposite information to what the readers know. So when designing a title, you can take a completely opposite perspective.
For example, "Running is harmful to the body", "People no longer read blogs", etc., then I will choose to read it. People like to read new information, but they also hate wrong information. So challenging common sense will often attract attention to your content.
3: Mystical Viewpoint
In online marketing, this is very common. For example, the title of an article often contains "keys", "secrets" and "crucial aspects", which will work well. For example, the title of one of my articles is "the Secret to Growing Your Blog Twice as Fast with Half the Effort". The reason why it works well is that readers will feel that if they don't read this article, they will miss out on information they don't know. A year ago, I had to write an article about how to increase feed subscribers. This is very common. The title of my article was designed to be "How to Increase RSS Subscribers (One Method You Probably Don't Know About)".
4. Question-type title
Question titles are more likely to attract readers if they are relevant and engaging. They also encourage readers to comment on your article because the question makes them think.
Discussions start with questions, so this is a great way to spark discussion, especially when you’re making a bold comment on a hot topic. For example, here’s an article: Are blog comments a good traffic strategy?
In fact, the creation of titles often requires reference to magazine covers and books. In addition, you can also discuss with other bloggers so that you can design better titles. Keeping the above points in mind will hopefully help you capture the attention of your readers and make your content go viral.
II. Introduction
If the title’s job is to get readers to read the introduction, then the introduction’s job is to get readers to read the entire article more deeply. I think if the introduction is attractive enough, readers are likely to read your entire article carefully instead of simply skimming or completely ignoring the entire article. I will put a lot of effort into the introduction, and here are a few points to share:
1. List interesting points
I think the introduction must first be attractive to most people. The information in the introduction must first be valuable so that the reader can remember the key points and read through. So if the introduction is attractive and relevant, then people will naturally continue to read.
2: Set up suspense/sweetness for the following articles
Good directors often keep the suspense throughout the whole play, and readers will not get the conclusion until the end of the play. So when writing the introduction, you have to make readers believe that what you are going to provide is what they want to know, and you will keep your promise to reveal the mystery, but you will only unfold the mystery step by step.
3. Ask questions
Questions are useful in titles, but they are also useful in introductions. I personally don't use questions in titles very often, but I use them more often in introductions. This way, you can not only ask a question, but also put a little information in it to hook the reader. Of course, the question must be intriguing, but you must also tell the reader that you will tell them the answer. The usual format is: question + answer at the end of the article.
4. Take advantage of the opposite psychology
This will only work if you use it well, so I suggest you don't use it often. I usually use it on the most important articles. I will tell them, "This article is very long, you may not need to read it. For those who still want to read it, I would say that less than 1% of people can persist in reading it." I believe that many people will do the opposite when they see this sentence. However, this technique will only work if you use it very smartly. So be careful!
3. Content body (middle part)
The body of the content is to provide readers with the core points, or knowledge that others do not know. For example, my article "How I received 900,000 visitors to Google in 30 days" gives the facts in the title of the article, and the body of the content introduces how I did it.
I mentioned before that the main body of the article must be consistent with the highlights given in the title and introduction. If your title is exaggerated and the introduction is brilliant, but your main body of the article cannot keep up with these points, then readers will be very unhappy and may even stop reading your article. So if the title says that you can give away secrets, make sure you can really provide readers with content that they don’t know.
1: Personal experience: One of the best ways is to talk about your own experience. The basic point is to share your successes and failures. I often come up with some conclusions after a long period of thinking.
2: Provide evidence or examples: For a newcomer, evidence and examples are important guarantees for gaining credibility, so there should be enough evidence when arguing in the article.
- Prioritize the most important points
- Keep the information concise and clear: When providing a lot of information, at least keep it to one topic
IV. Summary
I consider the abstract to be the least important part of the entire paper, since the hardest part (catching the reader’s eye and keeping them reading) has already been solved in the title, introduction, and body.
So if you choose to tell others what you are going to say in the abstract, you basically waste 80% of the text. So the main functions of the abstract are as follows:
1: Give a strong conclusion;
2: Provoke discussion: Ask questions to stimulate discussion;
- Summarize the entire article
5. Readability
The first point of readability is to ensure that the entire article has a certain format and structure.
1: Clearly list the 123 points, just like I did in this article, points 1/2 and 3 are must.
2: The article is divided into different sections, using subheadings. H2/H3 will play a role in the article, and readers will read it in sections and summarize it at the end.
3: Keep your sentences short and memorable
4: Insert pictures into the article and separate the text
This article discusses the basic requirements to be met when processing content, especially for those impatient readers, only by doing this can it arouse their thinking.
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