Could your intros use some improvement?
“Did you know that I like to have sex on roller coasters? Yes, there’s nothing that does it for me more than wondering if my partner will puke at the point of, um, no return. Okay I’m fibbing. I can’t even imagine how difficult big dipper hanky panky would be, but I got you listening, didn’t I?”
After reading “How to Write Irresistible Blog Intros” by Andrea Wren from Butterflyist.com, I couldn’t top the above intro’s attention grabbing abilities. It did get me listening. As any good writer knows, a strong hook is crucial to acquiring a committed reader. However, as Andrea also points out, the hook does need to be relevant to the topic at hand or the reader will realize it was a trick and move on to another story. Since Andrea’s post was about writing irresistible blog intros, she was given a pass.
So how can we – (you, the reader and potential writer, and I, the ever-evolving blogger) – improve our blog intros? Andrea offers the following suggestions as ideas for good hooks: humor, serious quotes, curious or unusual facts, questions, things that test the reader’s beliefs, controversy, and/or juicy revelations. She offers the following example for using more than one of these techniques at one time:
“In a new report, small businesses say they cannot afford to employ women of child-bearing age who may require maternity pay-outs. Should financially struggling SMEs be entitled to refuse to recruit women in certain age groups?”
3 Tips for Better Blog Intros
I’ve taken the 3 tips for writing better blog intros provided by Andrea and laid them out more succinctly below, but please take a moment to visit her post for more information (link provided at the end of this post):
- Set the scene: Define expectations and hook the reader without giving away all information in the first paragraph.
- Cut the waffle: Make sure all your writing is with purpose; in other words – “Don’t say anything that doesn’t need saying.”
- Keep your audience enraptured: Don’t stop with learning how to write great blog intros alone – learn how to create compelling posts.
ProBlogger.com is an excellent resource for learning how to be an A+ blogger whether your goal is to create a resume piece, make money, produce content for your business, or simply network with other bloggers. What resources do you use to improve your blogging?
