There are billions of websites online today.
To say there’s a lot of competition on the internet is an understatement.
Here’s how you can write content that grabs attention when there are so many other distractions that can occupy your customer’s time:
Keep ‘Em Guessing
Early on in my writing career, I took a course from Jon Morrow who’s a highly revered pro blogger and owner of Smart Blogger.
The two most valuable lessons I learned from the course is how to write engaging headlines and how to use subheads to draw attention to your writing.
There are very few new ideas.
Instead, all of us are putting our unique perspective on ideas, services, and products that attract our target customers. When writing content, your headline should qualify your reader and highlight a pressing problem to entice a click.
You can grab a free Cheat Sheet for Writing Blog Posts That Go Viral here which is something I constantly used in the beginning to fine-tune my headlines.
After landing on your content, the audience scans before reading to see if it applies to them. This is where the importance of compelling subheads come in.
If subheads breaking up the text are vanilla or give away all the information about the point you’re making, there’s no reason for people to continue reading and to engage with the content.
Write subheads that relate to your point, but are slightly ambiguous to keep your readers attention.
Back It All Up
Your thoughts, ideas, and perspectives don’t materialize out of thin air.
You became a writer, service provider, or product creator because of life experiences and lessons learned.
People want to know how you’ve arrived at this point.
What have you studied? Where did you go to school? Who inspires you?
Business owners and bloggers that I bookmark all share real-life examples to back up their content. They also provide sources of information for theories discussed.
The extra step of genuinely explaining topics rather than glossing over basic ideas makes a difference.
It may take you considerably longer to write this content, but it can pay off.
Meet People Where They Are
Methods used by people to digest information are always changing.
If you’re having trouble getting attention, you may benefit from surveying your audience to see the method they prefer.
You can even look to yourself as an example.
Where do you check out content the most? What’s the app you open first on your phone?
Do you spend your time browsing YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram more than other websites or blogs?
I found that most of the people in my audience prefer to read blog posts over listening to audio or watching video.
But there’s also a considerable number of people who hardly if ever look at blogs or websites at all.
Instead of clicking on links, they prefer to read or watch content in it’s entirety on a social media platform.
A solution for this is to simply use social media as a place to microblog. Ash from The Middle Finger Project does this beautifully.
Medium is another content platform that has grown in popularity. You can cross-promote content from your own site to Medium to give your work greater exposure.
The point here is, you can write great stuff, but it can fall flat if it’s not wrapped with a pretty bow and put right in front of your target audience.
Write Content That Makes Competition a Non-Issue
The fact that the internet has so many people competing for the eyes of customers can be disheartening.
Fortunately, you don’t need to be an internet celebrity to be a successful business owner.
You just need to create engaging content that people can find. A small loyal following can keep your bills paid and business flourishing.
