1. The headline
Short! Direct! To the point! The headline is often the first (and too often the only) thing the recipient notices about your blog article. Therefore, it must attract attention and interest.
The headline should address the question or problem of the recipient. And it should do so in a few, understandable words.
Need a creative boost? Here are a few ideas for attention-grabbing titles:
- Top 10…
- How to…
- The secret of …
- How to …
- How to achieve …
- In 5 steps to …
- 10 reasons for …
- An easy way to …
- 5 Tips to …
- Why you should …
- On Test: …
- The truth about …
2. The introduction
Many writers make the mistake of paying too little attention to the introduction. Yet the introduction is largely responsible for whether a recipient reads the article or not. It must therefore exert a certain pull and arouse curiosity.
Writing a captivating introduction is not that easy. Small stories, surprising statistics, quotes, and proverbs are well suited.
3. The main part
You have about seven minutes to get the most important information across. Why is that? On average, people read about 200-250 words a minute. With an attention span of about seven minutes, that makes 1400-1750 words, which is an optimal text length.
On average, pages with more content are ranked higher in search engines than those with less content. Here, the optimal length corresponds to a word count of up to 2450 words.
Of course, content can also be much shorter or longer. Ultimately, the intention of the user decides.
4. Paragraphs, subheadings, bulleted lists, and lists.
Endless text deserts discourage and tire the recipient. Therefore, make sure that no paragraph is longer than 4-5 lines and that each line breaks after a maximum of 70 to 90 characters. Use subheadings and visual elements (see point 4) to enable easy orientation. Lists, bulleted lists, examples, and quote boxes also help to structure your article and make it easier to scan the content.
5. Visual elements
You have finished writing your blog post (blog article), but it looks kind of boring? Just lighten it up. With images, infographics, or videos, not only the quality of the content is enhanced, but you also provide variety while reading.
6. The conclusion
In addition to a good introduction, it is very important to find a rounded conclusion in which you summarize the content again and bring the core message to the point. To get more engagement, you can end your blog article with a question or prompt.
7. Call-to-action (CTA)
To keep visitors on the blog for as long as possible or to convert them, calls-to-actions are essential. However, the offer must be attractive and relevant. No one will not order some immediately when researching fertilizers. So make sure you have soft conversions. Sometimes the newsletter or a checklist for downloads is the better offer.
8. Author box (optional)
In many cases, it can be useful to introduce the authors of the article. However, an author’s box should not disturb the reading flow too much and distract from the invitation to read the article.