Making Your Blog Articles Engaging

When you are writing content for your blog, you have probably put a lot of time into researching every aspect of your work. You have dedicated hours making the post interesting, intriguing and informative. You finally hit the publish button, hoping to get some interaction from the public. You wait patiently, but there are no comments; in fact, not one person has even found your article. This would be enough to make most writers give up and lose all motivation to write another article or blog.
Is the problem with the quality of your content, or is the audience for your subject matter too small? Actually, the problem might be very easy to rectify. You may actually be making more work for yourself with posting large articles, rather than making your work concise and to the point.
Research has shown that 79% of people who search the internet will scan an article, and not read it in its entirety. Website users search for information and they want that quickly. Writing blog posts is a completely opposite technique than writing a novel, where the reader sits back and dedicates hours to enjoying the content.
How can you engage with a potential visitor to your website? How can you make them stay and read your work?
Break down each of your posts into short, snappy bullet points. If your subject matter is complex, maybe you can write a few articles on the subject? Your reader will stay on your page for longer and keep returning if your articles are short and to the point with easily digestible information.
Make each of your paragraphs in the inverted pyramid style so the reader is not deterred by a mass of text. This makes your page extremely attractive and reader-friendly. Use plenty of line breaks between each point you are trying to make. Talk about each point in one short paragraph, which ideally should be no more than 4-5 sentences in length. Some paragraphs can even be shorter than this.
Another good technique is to use headings and then break down that heading into sub-headings. Then read through the content of the subheading to see if the reader would get the basic concept of your article just by reading a section of it. Is the content compelling? Would it entice the reader?
The use of bullet points is also very effective in drawing interest from the type of reader that likes to scan for information, because it gives them a break from reading normal text. Studies have also shown that blogs containing captions are the most read content on the web. Try using captions, again with just a few sentences in length with an engaging illustration. If you need the reader to focus on a particularly important part of your article, then use bold font to draw their attention to it. Your reader will be able to scan for the most important pieces of information quickly. Avoid highlighting large sections of the article; instead, emphasize key areas so the reader can quickly find them. Finally, you could number the key points you want to make; this is a highly effective way to keep the reader enthralled by your article. Try the different methods here and you should see a noticeable increase in your audience engagement.