Writing blog posts is a great way to get website traffic, sell products, and share your ideas. However, the actual writing part is not that simple.
Back in the day, blogs were pretty straightforward, with no bells or whistles. You’d put in some text, add a few comments here and there, include a link buried somewhere, and that was it.
Writing is difficult. You can read all the books and blogs globally, do your research and write a great article. And it’s still not easy to get people to read it.
Writing blog posts that have more impact
If you’ve been trying to get through to your readers, check out these tips.
1. Write in a conversational tone.
Your readers will relate to and engage more with your blog posts if you write in a conversational tone. It will make your written content more relatable and less stuffy. It also allows people to read your blog faster and connect with it more.
One way to do this is to take a voice memo and verbalize your thoughts aloud. Let the words come naturally, just like when you have a real-life conversation. Take the voice memo and use that to write your blog post. That way, it is written in a conversational tone because you’re speaking it aloud.
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2. Make your content more relatable.
Write about something that your audience easily relates to. Talk about things that interest them. People relate better when you use examples or tell stories. Make it personal by sharing real stories or connecting with the current trending topic on social media.
When you take the time to understand your audience and find out where they are coming from, you will write content they want to read. The context will help you write a blog post that connects to your audience. When your audience relates to your blog post, it increases your posts’ engagement, follows, and shares.
3. Add videos and images.
At this current time, it’s a known fact that online users engage more with content that has videos and images. Statistics show high levels of engagement in using videos and pictures. And the most common reason is that these media types give people context. They give people a window to see things beyond the words on the page.
Videos and images make your words come to life in a big way. They add energy and all the personality that’s often difficult to do with words. Unlike novels, blog posts don’t give you the luxury of gradually setting a scene and easing your readers to the core message. When writing blog posts, you want your readers to see the bigger picture and understand the core message instantly. And that is the power of using video and images.
4. Make it easy to read.
Make it easy to read if you want people to relate to and engage with your blog post. Instead of using huge words like colloquialisms, use words that are easier to understand and words that you use in a normal conversation.
You are not talking about high educational content, so you don’t need to use specific terms. Make your blog post short and sweet. Split up long sentences and break them into paragraphs.
Communication is a two-way street. If you’re using words that your audience can’t understand, you fail as a communicator.
5. Avoid editing as you write.
When writing, people tend to edit what they have written before going into the following sentence or paragraph. If you think this saves you time for editing later, it’s the other way around. Many times, it’s so much easier to write it first and then come back and edit it as a second pass.
Taking a break between writing and editing helps you get a fresh set of eyes to process what you’ve written. Once you’ve written it all out, it’s easier to have clarity on the big picture. It will be easy to pare it down and remove the pieces that are not key to communicating a message.
Writing blog posts can be challenging, especially if you’re not a professional writer. If you want to write better blogs but aren’t sure where to start, try some of the suggestions above and see how they work out. If they don’t help, remember that practice makes perfect. As long as you’re writing more than before, you’ll get better with time!