Sizzling Summer Content Writing Tips

High ThermometerSummer is here and it’s not the time for cool, mediocre content on your blogs or website.  Send your content and website hits soaring with these successful tips to keep your rankings and indexing climbing to the top of the charts.

#1 Consider what sells you on eBay — A good description of a product as well as the imagery selected creates the motivation to buy the item, right? So it’s no different with your product or service description.  Want to heat up the return on your investment of time, money and effort expended on building your business, brand or blog?  You have to engage and inform in such a way that ignites the audience to take action.

#2 Yes, Sweat the Small Stuff — I don’t like saying the “devil’s in the details” but the small, sweat drops of critical points are what’s going to take the success of your content sky-high!  Remember, in the online world, all your competitors are just a few clicks away.  Give them more than just a simple photo and bland product dimensions; engage them visually and then close the deal.

#3 Hot Headlines & Following the News in Your Niche — News is a great source to turn up the heat on your content . You’d be surprised where great ideas can be formulated when derived from the media’s ‘hot topics’ and headlines promoted on Yahoo, CNN and various websites as well as TV. This technique can effectively increase the exposure of your content and be just what you need to jump-start your creative juices and typing fingers.  For example, while on my LinkedIn page, I saw an article about choosing the red vs. the blue pill in ‘Happiness Is Not the Most Important Thing at Work.’  It made me consider a future blog topic about the power of engaging headlines and questioning your audience within your content to fully-engage them.

#4 Test the waters with a Blog Aggregator  – A what?  You read it correctly – a blog aggregator.  It’s a website that keeps track of blog posts and where bloggers go for idea sharing with other bloggers in your niche.  This is a great way to be inspired, share ideas and even professionally debate a topic.  I recently wrote an article on Triberr, one of the prominent blog aggregators today. Not only were people engaged, but one of the founders of the company commented on my blog to address some of the points I made.  Engagement accomplished!

#5 Window Shopping & People Watching – Most of us are out & about more than usual during the summer months.  Whether at the beach, tanning poolside or BBQing in the backyard–watching others can give way to some pretty cool topics for blogging. Window shopping and long walks about town can also be the catalyst for thoughts on a product or service, from or for your own business.  Also, by watching how someone reacts to various stimuli can strike the right match to turn up creative thought within you.

I hope this ignited some inspiration in you with some great insights to consider when writing and posting your content.   I’d love to hear what other piping hot tips you have to share with me!

Headlines and Imagery – William Levy & the Queen of England?

See even the title causes a little stir & I’ve got a hunch that I’ve succeeded at the initial point of this blog.  Since everyone these days has a blog about something or another, in order for your blog to get real traffic, you need to create some really compelling headlines and content. And that’s what allows your blog to flourish and your analytic report to make you smile-creating eye-catching headlines and “you’ve got my full attention” content.  You know how people say you only get 10 seconds to make a first impression?  Well you get even less to entice a reader with your headlines according to my research.  Users often leave web pages in 10–20 seconds if there’s not compelling content to read and that’s some real pressure if you’re a blogger.  I have also read that the average page visit lasts a little less than a minute. “As users rush through Web pages, they have time to read only a quarter of the text on the pages they actually visit (let alone all those they don’t).”  Whew-tough crowd to please!

Aside from pleasing the reader, we want eye pleasing analytics capturing the success (or lack of) with our blogs.  But how do we know that we’ve achieved our goals and keep those analytical reports looking like mountain tops instead of valleys?

~ Content may be king but headlines are indeed the crown.  The bottom of the leading line is that if
your blog title/headline is unnoticeable, it gets passed over in a few short seconds and no one reads further.  DOA before the first paragraph. But, if you’ve got something that’s contemporary, media talked about, news worthy headline, you can hook even the quickest page glancer. Here’s a good example: Dare I say WILLIAM LEVY…I can almost bet that someone who knows who he is has raised an eyebrow, let out a sigh and with anticipation,  is clicking to see what I might say about him or hoping to see a picture of him.  Ladies, your wish is my command…

On the flip side, someone who doesn’t know who he is, might Google him because the curiosity bug has nibbled and you’re wondering why I’m blogging about him.  The point is that I’ve struck a chord and since we are curious creatures by nature, a tantalizing headline is all we need to capture ones attention before getting our content hooks in them.  What’s even better from a business standpoint is that if you continue to put out “headlining” blogs, you develop a faithful following.  Increased traffic = increased business. Increased business = $$$.

~ Is your image worth 1,000 words so your blog doesn’t have to be?  Say you go to the Yahoo homepage and see an image of the Queen of England and she has on an African Head wrap? 2 things would probably occur:
(1) you do a double take, shake your head in disbelief and click on another page
OR what’s more likely is that…
(2) you do a double take, become amused and want to read what supports that picture.  And even though I don’t have an image to represent this theory you can almost SEE my point.  Images play as much a significant role in the content of blogs as do the words written.  They bring color and vitality to the black & white copy that lies on the page and enhances the experience your content brings to the reader.  That’s what blogging is all about-enhancing the quality of the readers experience in order to gain a faithful following.  That’s what measures the success of your blog and puts you in the “air up there” on the analytics peak.

And if you chuckled at the title of this blog or you’re still looking at William Levy,
the goal has been achieved…lol.