Bloggin Ads

Your blog topic’s headline is the first thing that your visitor sees – so it better be captivating enough to catch their attention. The objective here is to pique their curiosity enough to take a further look into it. Like everything else its easier said then done because the law of averages works against you here - less than 2 percent of the visitors that see your headline will actually read the rest of the blog topic. So quite simply put if you want to increase your odds of beating the averages, you need a better headline. One way to get great ideas for blog topics is to get yourself into the habit of checking out the popular pop culture magazines and also what’s making it into the front pages of Digg, Delicious and other popular social media networks.

Ask any successfully sales person what’s the most important part of their sales materials, and they will invariably tell you that it’s their first opening paragraph – that’s the part they spent the most time refining until they get it right. A successful Real Estate Agent once told me that a house with tremendous curb appeal is only matched by an awe-aspiring foyer. It’s no different when you write the first paragraph of your blog topic – it has to at least maintain the level of interest and momentum when the visitor first read your killer headline and decided to read the rest of your blog topic. Here are some simple ways to open your blog topic with a bang.

What is it that your blog topic going to do for your readers ? Should they care enough to read your blog post ? An ultimate litmus test when comes to choosing your blog topic is to apply it to this question “who cares?”. After you’ve gotten them to read the rest of your blog, the next logical thing to do is to call them to action. If your root goal is to get more comments, then ask for a feedback; if it’s getting more subscribers to your newsletter then ask for it – this is usually done in conjunction with a free gift; if it’s an affiliate product that you are trying to sell, then get them to buy it; if it’s backlinks that you are after then ask for it; if it’s stumbles that you want then ask for it or whatever your root goal is for writing this blog topic.

9. Sharpen your writing skills - write daily and write as often as you can. Nothing is truer than this statement that “Practice Makes Perfect” – I’m a living testament to this. As a child, I used to be very bad at Math but my father forced me to do math exercises everyday until I scored perfectly in all my tests. I applied this technique to all my science subjects and were able to replicate the same success. It the same with writing, you need to write EVERYDAY to let it sink into you and become one with it. Don’t give yourself any excuses – you write when you don’t have time; you write when you’re tired; you write when you are on holiday; you write when you’re in a lousy mood; you write when you’re running empty with ideas. It’s all about commitment and showing up even though you are not up to it. I don’t mean to spend an inordinate amount of time doing it, but 20 minutes of writing a day should be sufficient to cultivate a good habit of writing.

11. Publish only good original work. The worst thing you can do to your blog topic is to rehash somebody else’s content and call it your own. If credit is due, dispense with it liberally and quite often the favor is returned. Before publishing your post, make it a habit to polish the blog post until the message shines through. You would not want to hack at mercilessly until it’s too far from its original form to make any sense or too pristine to be of any use.

15. Use Videos to illustrate a point that requires some imagination or instructions. If a picture tells a thousand words, how many words would a video convey ? Some blog post are covered in it’s entirety in video, hence it’s name vlog. Vlogging is very popular among bloggers because it has the advantage of being easy for the bloggers – just put a camera in front and talk. It’s also well received by blog audience because there’s nothing to read but just easy listening. As such, Darren Rowse weekly vlog is still very popular in the blogosphere to this day. Many others have tried as well, but the more exceptionally successful ones that have used vlogging to their advantage are iJustine, Grace Cheng. John Chow to name a few.

22. Write during your golden hour. At the first glance, this seems contradictory to a previous point I made about writing even when you are not really up to it. What I was referring to previously was writing for the purpose of practicing, however when you are writing or rewriting for a live post, you would want to do it in your finest golden hour or most productive hour. Everybody’s golden hour is differently, mine is about midnight while others may be in the morning.