How to Write a Compelling Blog Post That Your Audience Will Be Glued to Right to the End — Chris Garrett

How do you write a compelling blog post? Writing compelling content requires being able to recognize a compelling blog post when you see one.

Are your readers falling asleep at their devices? Do they click “back” to their search before they get past your introductions?

What does it take to craft an article that is so engaging and worthwhile that people will share it, and your readers will feel compelled to take action on your suggestions?

There are some things you can do that will take a so-so piece of text and make it much more likely to be consumed, but there is one major factor above the rest.

How to Lose Your Blog Post Audience Before You Start

My daughter would read anything and everything if it was about Harry Styles, but take the exact same content and switch out Harry for another performer and she would not touch it. Why is that?

• Why is it that a sports fan will call a Star Trek fan a nerd for wearing full Klingon make-up but it is quite fine for them to paint their own face (and chest, and belly) in their team colors?

• Have you ever noticed the more Television channels and streaming apps that you have access to, the more frustrating it can be to find something interesting to watch?

• You know that one guy at a party, the one that corners you between the avocado dip and potato tots while he drones on for hours about his prize collection of extraordinary vintage Albanian telephone mast photographs? What is his mistake?

It’s all about targeting your audience with something appealing that they have not seen before.

1. What works for one audience will be a complete turn-off for another.
2. If they think they have seen what you are offering already they will not give it another second.

The telegraph pole picture collector would likely go down a storm at his local club. I can just picture him holding court while his peers gaze admiringly at his collection of rare experimental designs.

Parachute one of us into the same meeting and we would be unconscious, drooling wrecks within minutes.

When we connect a topic that an audience is looking for with a unique approach, then we have an idea with the potential to do big things.

Writing So Readers Want to Return to Your Blog

I’m often asked, “Why do you think nobody is reading my blog?” or even sadder, “Why are people no longer reading my blog?”

I answer with the following:

Rather than trying to create a whole blog, and make it a success, instead try to put your energy into one compelling article at a time.

If you can consistently produce content your audience is hungry for and rewards them when they read it, then you will create a whole blog that people want to read.

Where to Start Creating Compelling Content

When you are planning your blog content, you need to start with who it is for!

Always start with your target audience. Draw up a pen portrait for each of your key readers, the people you want to attract and keep.

Before sitting down to write your next piece of content, figure out …

• What your reader’s goals are and how you can help with that
• What they need to know to fully satisfy the above.
• What do they generally like to read and what puts them off?
• How will they like this information presented so that it is truly useful to them?

While some of my most shared articles over the years have been hammered out in a moment of inspiration (or passion, when it comes to rants), preparing your content with research will give it a much better chance of achieving your strategic objectives.

What else will ensure your blog post is a success? There are three ingredients I believe make a massive difference …

3 Essential Ingredients of the Best Headlines, Hooks, and Articles

If you want your blog content to be truly compelling, make sure it has all three of these ingredients:

1. Specific – You are speaking to an identifiable reader, who has a specific need, and you are addressing that need. In the case of this article, I am talking to bloggers who want a greater impact from their blog posts than they are currently getting.
2. Intriguing – If your audience has been around their topic at all they will often see the same information repeated. Repetition isn’t necessarily a bad thing if the advice is real and true, but it does mean you need to build in some curiosity and remarkability to your content. How are you going to stand out to make them take notice?
3. Rewarding – What is the payoff for spending time with you? Speak to a problem your reader wants to solve or a goal they want to achieve. It’s one thing for your headline and introduction to make a promise, it is quite another for the reader to get to the end unsatisfied.

Just these three ingredients? Well there is no “just” about it, they are not always easy to implement!

There is one other ingredient you might be expecting. What about that?

Emotional Content and Compelling Stories

You will notice an element I seemingly missed in the previous list of essential ingredients. I didn’t miss it so much as I disagree that it is “essential”.

Don’t get me wrong, emotion is powerful.

Using emotion can be extremely engaging and persuasive. But not everyone can deploy emotion effectively.

In one of my keynotes a long time ago, I spoke to an audience of 90{1652eb1ffa4184925f6a63a9c04ea6b421acb7a78117241e7d4325cdca8339fa} mums about the traumatic events around the birth of my daughter and the huge changes it brought about in all three of our lives. Things that still echo a couple of decades later.

As I told this story, the first time I had shared the whole thing in public, the audience definitely took notice. I and a few audience members were dabbing tears. Lots of them came up to me afterwards and there were lots of rib-squeezing hugs.

Evidently, I had reached the majority of my audience …

Did they fully embrace and understand the message I was trying to deliver, though?

I am not too sure about that.

You could argue that when I say we should get into the heads of your reader and see what they are frustrated about, hoping to achieve, or yearning to get away from, that we are speaking to emotion.

And we are.

When writers talk about using emotion, however, they don’t mean at that level of empathy.

They are instead hoping to ensure the reader has emotions “well up”, we “twist the knife” to make the reader really feel.

That can backfire or it can work incredibly effectively. It’s just not a rookie move.

Emotion aside, regardless of if you decide to go that route or not, structure and how you express your ideas onto the page will determine how much traction it gets.

Tips for Creating Compelling Blog Posts

Generally, while being more informal than regular articles, compelling blog posts will have important elements in common with any good writing.

• Write in a clear and concise style. Your audience doesn’t have time to read long, rambling blog posts. Use short sentences, trim, and sacrifice.
• Get to the point quickly and make sure your writing is easy to understand. Explain the jargon, don’t use fancy-schmancy words when regular ones will do.
• Stay on target, and avoid unnecessary tangents and diversions even if you think they’re funny or useful.
• Use strong visuals. Images, videos, and infographics can help break up your text and make your blog post more visually appealing. They can also help to illustrate your points and make your blog post more engaging.
• Personalize your content. Don’t just write about yourself, your products, or your services. Write about the challenges your target audience is facing and how your solution can help them. This will make your blog post more relatable and relevant to your readers.
• Be consistent. The key to success with blogging is to be consistent. I don’t mean to try to publish new blog posts on a regular basis, though if you can that is good. I mean build an expectation in your reader that when you publish something new it is going to be rewarding rather than a waste of their time.

All this is worth nothing if your reader immediately bounces before they dig into your content, so we need to hold their attention right from the beginning …

Write a Magnetic Introduction

Most of the time when I am writing a “how-to” or education blog post I will simply ask rhetorical questions that I imagine my reader has in the moment.

• How do they feel about their current situation and how will it feel when you help them change it?
• What are they seeing and sensing at the moment? What are they looking for or seeking out?
• If the person was there right in front of you, what would they say?

If you have ever gone to public speaking training, they will often suggest using a quote or a joke. As well as being ice-breakers, which relax your audience and help warm them to you, a quote from a famous person can add some borrowed authority.

Quotes and jokes are also “pattern interrupts”, they are less anticipated so make your reader perk up a little bit. Another pattern interrupt is to use a word picture, to get them to vividly imagine a scenario. Get it right and it is highly effective. There is a good reason that hypnotists use this approach!

For articles that have a bigger idea, you might want to use engaging storytelling. Anecdotes can deliver a lot of information in a compact way while drawing the reader further in. We are hard-wired to respond to stories, and crafting a narrative with connective tissue from your anecdote to your point can help really get through any mental barriers of cynicism.

The important thing to remember is the headline brings your reader to the article, your introduction gets them to actually read it.

How do you get them to read right to the end, though? Lots of writers are able to get their readers to start reading, but not all have readers who get all the way to the end, and for content with a purpose, that is the whole point!

10-Step Checklist for Constructing a Compelling Post

These are all important ideas but it’s pretty big-picture, still. Let’s take my own advice and review a detailed list of specific steps.

Use this checklist to ensure you have done everything you need to and in the correct order.

• Pick an engaging topic. Every niche has beginners, intermediate, and advanced community members. What level of sophistication are you addressing? For your article to be compelling you need to find a subject that your audience really cares about, or can be brought to care about.
• Give the post a relevant but compelling headline. Your headline is the first thing people will see, so make sure it’s attention-grabbing and relevant to your target audience. While the title should include the search terms you are aiming for, it should also be clear and concise, and give a good overview of what your blog post is actually about. You can and should change your headline later if you come up with a better one but a headline at this point tells you a lot, not least what you have to deliver as a conclusion or punchline.
• Consider testing the idea on social media. Got a few competing ideas and you’re not sure which to run with? Sometimes I have had a good reaction to my post ideas by tweeting a message and seeing how my community responds.
• Break down the idea into an outline. What do you need to say in order to satisfy the promise that your headline makes? What will need to be explained or covered to get your reader to their destination?
• Helpfully organize your blog post’s content. People are busy and distracted so you will want to prevent having a huge wall of text. Break up that text with subheadings, bullet points, and images to make it easier for readers to scan and understand. Subheadings will also help your blog post rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). Since we now have a modern content editor in WordPress, the best block-based themes very much enhance this, allowing for vibrant article formatting.
• Encourage reading by implementing flow. I have noticed a lot of writers seem to be writing in a disjointed way and I wonder if it is a symptom of so much automated or tool-created content. Rather than having a narrative and connected ideas, many articles seem to be a collection of mini-articles with not much to bind them. Have your reader slip and slide from each paragraph and section to the next rather than climb down your article like a ladder.
• Use your keywords throughout your blog post. It is an old SEO tactic to sprinkle the search phrase through your text, but did you know it still helps but in a different way than before? When you’re writing your blog post, be sure to use your target keywords throughout the copy not just because that makes your article relevant to the search but also because the reader needs reassurance that they are in the right place. This will help people who are searching for information on those keywords find your blog post and keep them once they are there. Your article needs to match what they are looking for in terms of wording and match their intent.
• Inter-link. Both readers and search engines need you to link your posts together so they can follow a topic and know what else you have to offer. Make it easy for both by linking to your good stuff where relevant.
• Edit your blog post before publishing. Write and then edit. Don’t try to do both at once. After you’ve finished writing your blog post, be sure to optimize it for spelling, grammar, readability, and for search engines.
• Promote your blog post. Once your blog post is published, be sure to promote it on social media, email marketing, and other channels. This will help you get more people to read your blog post and learn more about your business but just as important, you will get feedback. No engagement is, unfortunately, also feedback!

Now your blog post is published and has been given an initial push, do people understand and appreciate your post or do they have questions that should be answered within it?

Optimizing Your Blog Posts Over Time

When you have posted some articles, hopefully really compelling articles, you need to be constantly observing and optimizing.

Publishing compelling articles is not a “one-and-done” activity. One of the things we regularly produce for our clients at BizBudding is a report on their “Content Decay”.

Regularly audit your own site and content.

Keep abreast of:

• Which articles generate the most responses?
• Are there specific categories that attract the most readers?
• Out of your topics that generate the most traffic, which convert the best into actions?
• What sort of content has attracted the most links from other websites?
• In your articles, are there facts, ideas, questions, or elements that you missed?
• Did any topics that you hoped would do well bomb instead?
• Could old articles be brought up to date or expanded upon?
• Are some of your own articles competing with each other in search? Should they be combined or rewritten?

Please note, what you thought was a dud post could well have been a problem in how you delivered it so do try to keep ideas and implementation separate in your mind.

Long-term readers, especially if you follow my posts on other blogs, will occasionally see me cover subjects I have already written about. Repetition in itself can be useful, but also sometimes you have to approach an idea from a few angles before you can get your point across to who needs to hear it.

Ready to Post? Compelling Content Conclusion

Hopefully, at this point I have shown you not just how to write a compelling blog post, but also why some blog posts will succeed and some fail.

It comes down to three things:

1. Start with your audience research.
2. Write about topics they want and need
3. Deliver the content in a way that engages them

If I could sum it up in one line it would be this:

Give your community what they want, and they will reward you with what you want in return.

Did you find this helpful? Could I have made it easier to understand or more useful to your situation? Let me know via email or social media and I will make sure I come back and make it better or write a follow-up.