Guest blog post by Andrianes Pinantoan. Andrianes is a staff writer for Open Colleges, an Australian education provider of TAFE courses.

Did you know that one new blog is created every second?

In the old days of journalism, there were few channels: newspapers, magazines and  local newsletters. But when the internet hit the world in the 1990s,  everyone and their grandmas started producing content for the world to read.

The emergence of online blogs is a boon in many ways, but it did being with it one major drawback: information overload. Coupled with an increasingly time-poor population, it’s no wonder that your blog is largely ignored – even if your content is undoubtedly engaging and useful.

So how do you break through the clutter and get your posts read? By paying attention to five triggers.

1. Format

The appearance of your blog plays a critical role in getting people to read your posts. If your blog is overloaded with extensive lists of links, readers will be overwhelmed, and will most likely click off of your page.

Instead, keep your blog layout simple and your writing, simpler still. Keep your sentences and paragraphs short. And feel free to use lists and blockquotes. All these things makes your post less intimidating.

Remember, today’s blog readers have limited time, and they want to read blogs as quickly as possible. By making your blogger friendly to skimmers, you actually increase the chances that your content gets read.

2. Design

You see a lot of blogs these days with confusing designs and images. Images are great when you use it correctly, but more often than not, bloggers use images just for the sake of using them.

What they didn’t know, of course, is that images draw attention. And if it is drawing attention away from your message, then you can be sure that people will click right off your site after glancing it.

This is why images need to be relevant to your post, because when it’s relevant, the image is drawing attention FOR the post, not away from it.

3. Social Proof

Social media is a great marketing tool for those who want to get their blog posts read. If you have a decent following – and I’m talking just a couple of hundred – you can use that as social proof.

Social proof is a great trigger. If someone lands on your blog and see 700 people “like” you on Facebook, you can be sure they’ll at least to check out what you wrote.

4. Original Ideas

Many blogs simply regurgitate others’ content. If you want your blog to be read, make sure you have one of two things: an original idea.

This is not as difficult as you think it is. Your personal experience, for example, is always original. Or, you can combine two seemingly unrelated topics to make your point – like “What Batman Can Teach You About Great Copywriting.”

5. The Slippery Slope

A great headline can capture reader’s attention. Once you’ve crafted a great headline, however, it’s crucial to keep the reader on a slippery slope down to your last words.

To do this, your post shouldn’t be a chronological description of what happened. You need to start with the most attention grabbing facts first. And once you have their attention, you can then start to dig deeper with examples, etc.

Those are my five triggers to get your blog posts read: format, design, social proof, original ideas and the slippery slope. Did I miss crucial triggers? What are you experiences with these?

Like this post? Subscribe by email!

Enter your email address: