Generating interest in your readers

The whole purpose of writing and publishing content is that your readers must read it and benefit from it. If they don’t read it, there is no sense in publishing it.

In fact, the fundamental concept of content marketing rests on generating enough content that is interesting, useful and relevant, and then broadcasting that content using all the available channels.

Hence, you should always be worrying about generating interest among your readers.

There was a time when content was mostly written for search engines. Business owners thought that if they could generate enough targeted traffic, some traffic would convert and their business would grow.

It actually worked in some cases. But as more people stumbled upon this “great” idea, competition increased and within a span of a couple of years, everybody wanted a big part of the traffic pie.

Search engines became mainstream and finding the most relevant content for the keywords and search terms used by search engine users turned into one of the most advanced streams. Hundreds of thousands of programmers, analysts and mathematicians are constantly working on improving algorithms that help users find the most appropriate information they are looking for.

Hence, the search engine algorithms don’t want to find just any content. They want to find content that is “most appropriate” according to the searcher’s intent. If these search engines cannot achieve this, users will stop using them, because nobody wants to find spam.

There are two ways you get traffic to your website (or blog): via search engines and via social networking and social media websites (including social networking apps).

On social networking and social media websites, people are not going to share your links as a humanitarian gesture. They won’t even click your links if your titles are not enticing enough. Even if your titles are enticing, if you are not providing quality content, they will soon become wary of your timeline and may even stop paying attention to your updates. Worse, they may even warn the others against going to your website.

Search engine specialists have incorporated this human validation factor even into search engine ranking algorithms. The algorithms can figure out if your content can generate interest or not and then accordingly, we shuffle your current rankings.

The Google ranking algorithm takes into consideration all the social signals like how many people have liked your updates and how many have shared them.

Google can also figure out how much time people spend on your website after finding your link on search results. If within 5-6 seconds people come back to Google from your website and carry on with the same search, Google assumes that they didn’t find what they were looking for, for the search term that they had used, and consequently, reduce your rankings. This is called bounce rate.

This goes on and your rankings keep going down with every new visitor spending little time on the link he or she has found and then coming back and continuing with the same search.

The more bounce rate you have, the worse become your rankings.

On the other hand, if people find relevant content and then positively react to your content, your current rankings begin to improve.

Suppose someone finds your link on the first page, but on position #8. He clicks the link, spent some time reading your blog post or webpage, explores other portions of your website and then doesn’t continue with the same search on Google.

When more people do this, Google assumes that they are able to find what they’re looking for, for the search term they are using. After a while, your position becomes #7, and the more people follow the same pattern, the higher you begin to rank.

So, you see, both on social networking websites and search engines, it is very important that you are able to generate interest in your readers with your content writing.

Listed below are 10 ways you can generate interest in your readers.

1. Identify your reader

You can write something interesting and meaningful if you know for whom you are writing. Take for example this blog post. I’m trying to explain how to generate interest among your readers with your content writing. This is something that you want to learn. Hence, I’m focusing on this topic.

Although above I have touched upon the topic of generating traffic from search engines and social networking websites, that too is in the context of generating interest among your readers and why it is important.

2. Write a compelling title

In most of the cases, your title is the first thing people are going to notice. They will come across your title on social networking websites. Your title will appear as a hyperlink when the search engines crawl and index your content and then show it on search results pages. No matter how great and relevant your blog post or web page is, if your title fails to attract people to your web page or blog post, it is of no use.

3. Organize your thoughts in advance before writing

This is one of the most important things to do before you start writing. You have chosen the topic/title, you know who is your reader, and now you need to make sure that you deliver. This requires planning and research. Make sure that your content justifies your title. Deliver what you have promised through your title.

Usually when we are writing, we lose track of what we wanted to say initially. But if you can create a mind map, if you can create an outline of what you want to write, you won’t lose track and you will stick to the subject and cover all the topics that you had planned to cover.

4. Keep it short and simple

This can be a self-contradicting advice. Better search engine rankings require you to write longer blog posts, even more than 2000-3000 words. On the other hand, very long blog posts and web pages, unless they are packed with highly useful information that is desperately needed, can end up boring your readers.

My personal advice is, follow your instinct. Keep it interesting. Keep it conversational. Provide all the information you think your readers will find useful. Don’t worry about the number of words. Focus on the relevance. Even if you want to write very long blog posts and web pages, you will on your own write lengthy pieces once you have got enough to say.

5. Cater to emotions

Have you noticed how good advertising focuses more on emotions and less on the greatness of the product or service? Experienced copywriter’s claim that every purchase is based on an emotional decision, not a logical decision, although, we like to think that we are making a logical decision.

You can apply this approach to every piece of writing. Make an emotional connection with your readers. Let it be known to them that you understand what they are missing and you are making an effort to provide it.

6. Research and provide statistics

53 clients have benefited from my content writing services so far this year is far better than many clients have benefited from my content writing services so far this year.

What I mean to say is, use numbers and statistics whenever possible. Do the needed research. Back up your claims with authoritative sources unless you yourself are an authoritative source. It gives people confidence if you mention statistics and numbers.

For example, if I tell you that if one of your links ranks at the top #1 position on Google, it gets 30% of all the clicks on the search results page provided you are ranking for the right keywords, I can point to this trusted source for the information. Now that we are talking about the ranking position and related CTR, this link also says that the third position #3 gets you 10% of clicks and if your link features on 9th or 10th position to get 2% links.

7. Use storytelling to generate interest among your readers

Don’t we all love stories? This is because we can relate to the characters. In every protagonist and even in an antagonist, somewhere we can see ourselves or someone we know and hence, we are able to pay more attention to what is being written.

Hence, instead of telling you how great my content writing and copywriting services are, I will be more effective if I tell you about Joe who was having problems with his search engine rankings and conversion rate. Due to that, he was going through lots of professional and personal problems. Then he came across my website and read about how search engine rankings and conversion rate can be improved with quality content writing and copywriting. He contacted me and I wrote for his website…

You get my point.

8. Organize your text in a readable format

Make it easier for your readers to pay attention to what you’re saying by writing shorter paragraphs and shorter sentences.

You must have noticed these days that many writers prefer to write just a single sentence in a paragraph. There are rarely two sentences in a paragraph. Sometimes I do that, sometimes I don’t. It depends on my flow.

People read a lot on their mobile phones. It is easier for them if you express your thoughts clearly, and in short spurts.

Organize your text under various headings and subheadings to highlight important portions. This way, if someone quickly wants to browse through what you have written and get the gist of your message, he or she can do so by simply skimming through headings and subheadings.

Use bullet points to organize main points. Though, I have seen that text in bullet points looks a bit stuffy on mobile phones, so take your own call.

9. Make use of images

Images are a good way to keep your readers interested in your writing. They cause a break and help the brain to quickly reboot and refocus on the text. Looking at an image also relaxes your brain because a lot of information is already present in the image and your brain does not have to spend its resources on interpreting, the way it has to do when reading text.

10. Write in an active voice

“You are doing this,” and “I am doing that” is a lot better than “this is being done” and “that is being done”. I’m not averse to using passive voice, but avoid it as much as you can. I have noticed that whenever I make an effort to use active voice, I use shorter, crisper sentences. It also makes your readers think that you are talking to them instead of simply indulging in a monologue.

Use these golden rules as per your need, just to correct as per the need of your reader and you sure have a winning piece.