12 Tips For Writing Engaging Content For Readers

After
reading your posts, your audience
should feel like hanging around to
ask questions, agree, disagree and
see what else you’ve got to say.
After all, we’re talking potential
long term relationships here. Try
our 12 Tips For Writing Engaging
Content For Readers and you’re
halfway towards bagging that
customer.
1. Pose Engaging Questions
At the end of a post, pose a brain-
stimulating question. Make them
ponder, make them wonder and
churn those grey cells to figure out
what you want. The idea is to put
your site and business fully into
your reader’s head so that they
come back for more. One of the best
ways to achieve this is by
stimulating their thought process.
2. Put Out An Ethical Conundrum
Do you feel celebrities are doing
good by adopting children from poor
African countries? Should those
children be taken away from their
families just because they can have
a better quality of life in the US?
That’s an ethical conundrum right
there. Put something like that out
there in your post and motivate your
readers to comment and argue
amongst themselves.
3. Get Them To Offer Tips To Solve
Something
It could be a problem that you’re
facing, or something your customer
is facing. It doesn’t matter. Write a
post about it and open the door to
your readers to contribute 5 unique
tips each to combat the issue. In fact,
make it a contest; publicly credit the
reader with the best tips on your
blog so that everyone can see.
4. Open The Door To Sharing
Share a personal problem you’ve
experienced in a post and explain
how you handled it. Then ask your
readers to share how they would
handle a similar situation. If you can
get them to submit their thoughts in
about 400 words or so, that’s a blog
post you can use. With just one
move, you manage to engage your
readers plus get blog posts out of it.
5. Share Half A Story And Ask For
Projected Outcomes
This is a spin-off from the old
college game of spin the tale. Write a
post detailing a problematic business
or personal situation without
detailing the final outcome. Ask
your readers to contribute ideas for
possible outcomes. You can suggest
some ideas from your side to
motivate them along.
6. Start With An Engaging Opener
Your post opening should engage
the reader from the word go.
Remember, your readers can get all
kinds of facts online. They don’t
want another fact-spewing post.
They want something that’ll ignite
their curiosity, motivate their
thought process and get them
engaged. Make your opener funny,
insightful, poky, witty and
outrageous if need be.
7. Make The Content Graphically
Vivid
Paint a picture with your words, and
draw people into the scene you’re
painting. You don’t need to have
Pulitzer-worthy authoring skills to
do this. Just write in your speaking
voice, as though you’re chatting up
to your mates at the bar. Throw
some adjectives and invectives in
(watch out – no profanity!). Throw
in some cultural flavor that reflects
your background.
8. Use The Active Voice
Long, droning passive voice
sentences are okay for legal docs
and long procedural guides. When it
comes to your blog post, keep the
voice active. Your reader must be
able to relate to the information
you’re presenting in a live sense.
The purpose will be totally defeated
if your blog reads like old prose.
9. Use The First And Second
Grammatical Person
It’s your blog; you’re talking to your
readers – what’s with the third
person? No more ‘they’ and ‘them’
and stuff. Write directly to your
audience using first and second
person only. This makes your reader
feel closer to you and creates a
virtual bond of familiarity.
10. Be Direct
Use active verbs instead of inactive
verbs to deliver a direct, immediate
and energetic impact. Instead of, “I
was thinking how to address your
issue”, write, “I am thinking about
how to address your issue”. The
difference is the directness of the
tone and also the direct action mode.
11. Play With Words
There are many ways of writing
what you want to say and it’s in your
hands. For example, instead of
saying, “I cannot put up with their
holier than thou attitude anymore”,
say “If I put up with their holier-
than-thou attitude anymore, I’ll just
call me a cow and be done with it”. I
am sure you can come up with
something funnier and more
engaging.
12. Provide A Conclusion
Let’s face it; no one has tons of time
to read every line of every post.
Encapsulate the essence of your
article in a short conclusion to help
out these busy people. Your
conclusion should ideally tie up your
points together and provide a short
glimpse of what the article is all
about.

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