As a product of the 80s, I have grown up in a world where if I want to know something, it’s never too hard to find the answer. We’ve all seen an increase in the give-it-to-me-now attitude and with responsibilities and information springing up all around us, none of us have time to twiddle our thumbs any more.
Information has to be easy to find. It has to be concise, while being comprehensive enough to be of use.
As content creators, there is a lot that you can do to make your information more accessible to your internet audience. As you go through these tips, you’ll see how they’ll likely apply to how you hunt for information online.
General writing tips
Keep your Foot on the Gas
Creativity is the key to staying relevant, interesting and fresh online. In order to be creative, you need to spew all your thoughts down without subjecting them to editing. Write your entire article without stopping. Then go back and edit it afterwards.
Start in the Middle
Write the main part of your post first. Your post may not take the form that you initially thought, so you want to leave the introduction and conclusion until the main part of your post is set. This way your introduction grabs your readers’ attention and the post actually matches your introduction.
Do it Everywhere!
As creative beings, we come up with ideas in the strangest of places. When you get an idea, write it down there and then. If you don’t, you’ll forget it and miss out on a potentially awesome post.
Most of us have smartphones now. You may even be using one of the official WordPress apps. If not, you probably have access to a pen and paper. Or a napkin. Or papyrus.
The title
10 Steps to Super Awesome, Attention-Grabbing Post Titles
Okay, so I don’t have 10 steps, but there’s a few good ways of crafting a winning title:
- Put a number in there. I don’t know why, but people prefer ’5 tips to success’ over ‘Tips to success’.
- Use exaggerative adjectives. ’10 killer tips’ beats ’10 fairly good tips’.
- Capitalize everything but your stop words. Stop words are words like and, as, for, to me etc. e.g. ’10 Killer Tips to Improve your Writing’.
Check your Keywords
This isn’t an SEO tutorial, but you need to consider who you’re aiming for with the post and have the right words in your title to make sure that both human and search engines find you.
Writing style
Have Confidence in Yourself
Don’t be cocky to the point of being arrogant, but have confidence in yourself. Know that you write great content and have confidence in your opinion and knowledge. This applies to when you’re promoting your content too!
Humor and the Personal Touch
Don’t be afraid to have a laugh. You’re not writing a textbook – you’re writing short articles and your personal touch will help set your writing style apart as something that is fun and enjoyable to read.
Formatting like a pro
Wandering Eyes
Us internet people are great at scanning and finding important information. However, you can help out your readers by highlighting the most important parts of your post. Think underline, italics and bold.
Ease up on the Punctuation
This is really hard for me because I loathe what I see as the bastardization of the English language, but there are ways you can avoid over-complicating your punctuation without sacrificing good writing practices. For example, use a bulleted list instead of writing one in a sentence using colons and semi-colons.
Since We’re Talking About Lists…
Lists are excellent. They draw attention and display your crucial information in an easy-to-digest fashion. Whether bulleted or numbered, they’ll draw focus to the crown jewels of your post.
Shawty
We’ve all grown up with ‘bigger is better’, but in the internet generation, that’s not really the case any more (great news boys!). Your reader’s attention is fleeting at best. So keep sentences and paragraphs short. The shorter the better. Got it?
Headings
Break your post up into general sections and use semantic markup (that’s h2, h3 and h4 tags to you and me) to give your readers an idea of what’s in your post so they can find what matters to them.
Images
It’s amazing what a little color can do for you. Aim to have at least one image in every post, whether it’s decorative, instructional or to grab attention.
The Final 4-point Inspection
Read It Yourself
Don’t ever publish something that you haven’t read and re-read. It also helps to plan ahead so that you have time to come back to an article a few days later with a fresh mind before it gets published.
Reality Check
It’s fine to be opinionated, but are you driving your point home with arrogance? Also be conscious of how realistic your claims are. It might be tempting to tell someone they can earn millions by blogging, but it stinks of sensationalism and is a real turn-off. Be confident, even optimistic, but always be realistic.
Fact Check
There’s little that screams “I don’t know what I’m doing” more than incorrect facts. If you start out an article telling me that the internet was started by Mark Zuckerberg in 1995, I’ve already moved on.
The Rules of Engagement
Your readers are your lifeline. Even if you’re not writing to make money, you’re writing so that what you write will be read. So engage your readers in conversation. Initiate conversations with those who share your article. Respond to comments. And invite feedback and questions on what you’ve written (which I’m hoping you’ll realize is an invitation to do just that right now).
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Twitter: dragonblogger
Good article Dave, Titles are key for attracting attention both on social media promotion and on Google search results. I always actually find out what “keyword I want to target” then develop the article and often Title is sometimes last thing I create for an article. Kind of like how most authors write a story or novel prior to creating a title for it.
I completely agree with formatting, if your post is under 400 words you probably can do with just a little text formatting like underline, italic and a few bullets, but if your articles are over 800 words then you need to add a thumbnail or some sort of images to jerk your eyes to the article and keep it attracted.
Justin Germino recently posted..Are You an Askable Blogger
Twitter: daclements
Justin, you’re absolutely right about writing the title last. In the same way that you can’t write the opening paragraph first, you need to know what the post is really about before formulating a title.
I think one of the biggest formatting needs, regardless of post length, is short paragraphs and sentences. A huge block of text is just too daunting to the internet’s scatterbrain readers. It needs to be split apart for easy skimming.
Thanks for your comment and sharing
Dave Clements recently posted..Move Your WordPress Site To A New Domain Seamlessly
Twitter: ronniedare
Dave, thanks for the nice share here in the blogengage community. I like your tip or topic about killer headlines or post titles. Titles do have the biggest influence in terms of readability of a certain article. I mean, they are the first one being looked at by readers and by then, they will decide if they will read the whole article or not.
Ron Leyba recently posted..After Christmas Sales 2010
Twitter: daclements
Ron,
Thanks so much for your comment. I’m not sure I agree that the titles are the most important aspect for creating a legible article. Certainly they’re going to help get your readers to your article in the first place, but if you have an amazing title, with a monotonous block of text for an article, I’m not sure the title will save you. If I had to choose a single most important aspect, for me it would be the Shawty point.
Appreciate you taking the time to put together a thoughtful comment. Happy Christmas!
Dave Clements recently posted..How To Show Featured Images in your WordPress Posts
Twitter: suzyqqzz2007
Great, great points. Your post displayed all of the points you made. Bravo! Twofer.
Susan French
Susan French recently posted..It’s Not About The Socks on the Floor Continued- part 2 of 3
Twitter: daclements
Hehe thanks. I actually realised after this was published that I didn’t include an image, which is something I do as standard on my own blog. I guess I was more worried about the guest posting aspect, but yeah I think I hit all the other points. Thanks for the comment!
Dave Clements recently posted..Unique Templates for Different Categories and Authors in WordPress
Twitter: weblogbetter
Hi Dave,
No really, it’s my smart phone’s voice recorder that saves me from a wreck when I’m driving – I don’t know what that’s when all the great ideas want to hit me – precisely when I can’t write. 
But these are some great writing tips, especially the title tips – I don’t get it about numbers either, but whenever I want a post to skyrocket, I just throw a number in the title and bam! Tons of page views.
You’re so right about those fleeting ideas – I make sure to carry my role of papyrus everywhere
Thanks for sharing all 17 of the great tips.
Kiesha recently posted..How to Persist When you’re Ready to Quit Please Vote
Twitter: daclements
Hey Kiesha,
Thanks for your input. My iPhone has definitely been my saviour for organising my life. I tried several tactics, including a diary and a planner, but they just weren’t for me. Between Evernote and WordPress for iPhone, I make sure to never miss an idea. I also use a GTD (Get Things Done) app that helps me to write on a regular basis.
Do you have your own little tip to add to the pile?
Thanks again!
Dave Clements recently posted..Create Your Own Fast Social Sharing Buttons For WordPress
Twitter: AlisonMSmith
Dave, good stuff, nicely outlined. OK, you gotta change the “us internet people” to “we,” ’cause it’s making my ears burn, but very good information.
Alison Moore Smith recently posted..Top 10 Gifts for New Bloggers
Twitter: daclements
Hehe, well now that you mention it Alison, it does sound a little funny when I put it that way. I suppose that by default, everyone reading this article comes under that category, so ‘we’ would have been plenty sufficient.
Thanks for your comment, advice and praise – all very much appreciated!
Dave Clements recently posted..How to Create- Format and Fine-Tune a Post in WordPress
Great article Dave,
I got all creative and copy savvy with a
“pretend” letter to Santa unfortunately it didn’t translate to any new visitors or sales, so I went back to a simple title Great Gift Ideas for Classic Movie Lovers. Sometimes it’s very hard to marry content and a sales pitch too but I.m so glad your site helps us avoid pitfalls
Twitter: daclements
Hey Mike. So the letter was part of a sales campaign of sorts? Don’t get discouraged – from what I understand, you’re relatively new to this arena and it will be quiet for a while, but keep writing as if you’re talking to thousands and the thousands will come.
Thanks for your encouragement mate. Means a lot. Happy Christmas to you!
Dave Clements recently posted..Exclude Admins From Google Analytics on WordPress
Twitter: kikolani
So true about the fact check. While some readers may move on, others will call you out, and harsly depending on how wrong your “fact” is. Images are also especially helpful – I’ve noticed that some posts seem much longer and authoritative when, in fact, the text content is short but the images are well placed and useful.
Kristi recently posted..8 Ways to Get Your Blog Ready for the Big Time
Twitter: daclements
Hi Kristi,
Thanks for your input. I’d have to agree about what the images add to your post. Aside from adding a little interest and colour, they certainly add some authority (unless your image selection is poor).
P.S. Nice to have you comment on my post. I’ve been reading your blog for quite some time now and really enjoy your content.
Dave Clements recently posted..How to Create a Sitemap for WordPress
Twitter: blogstashdotcom
Great tips Dave.
I have been struggling with writing as English isn’t my mother tongue and I never took any formal classes to learn to read and write. I just learned it by trial and error since I moved to US 8 years ago.
I went back to all my past posts 3 times now and each time I had to correct a few things. The first time , i was really embarrassed, though with each visit it became less embarrassing. So, The good thing is that the more you write, the better you get.
Anyway, I found that leaving my “ready to publish” article over night and coming back to it the next day, helps to create much better articles as it enables you to have a fresh look at your writing almost from a readers point of view.
Thanks.
satrap recently posted..an Easy Way to Make Money Online With Google Trends and CPA Offers
Twitter: daclements
Hi there,
I wouldn’t have known unless you told me that English is not your first language. You speak very well.
For people such as yourself, waiting for a few days and having a fresh look at your post is massively beneficial, so that you can see how well it reads. I think most people would be amazed by how many revisions they would make of they just read over their articles before publishing.
Thanks for the comment!
Dave Clements recently posted..How to Create a Sitemap for WordPress