Articles by Glenn Stok
This article reviews how to keep your readers interested. The best strategy is to write articles that solve problems and share personal trials and tribulations. And the key is to stay focused on the subject of your article with relevance to expectations.
It's crucial to apply your strengths where they are most helpful. So keep these two points in mind while writing:
Let's review all the crucial points in detail so you'll know how to give your readers what they want and keep them interested.
People want instant gratification, especially when seeking information on the Internet. They don’t want to spend much time reading through a lengthy article.
That’s why it’s best to keep things short and straightforward. Readers will appreciate that and might remember you as the author to read other material you write.
Authors who add fluff to increase reading time are not only doing the reader an injustice but also hurting their own revenue. That’s because most readers will never get through the content anyway under those conditions. Remember, they want instant gratification.
In some cases, you might find yourself going off at a tangent. Remember that you need to stay focused for the reader to be able to follow your logic. However, the tangent could be useful for another article.
Losing our way is common while writing. The reason is that we have many thoughts going on in our heads simultaneously. I catch those unplanned tangents when I proofread, and then I split out any unrelated sections and save them in a “snippets file.” I often find useful content in my saved snippets when writing other articles, which relates better with the new article I might be writing months later.
It’s important to remember what your primary intent is as you write. If the reader detects they are not getting the information they expected from the title, they will quickly lose interest and leave without reading any further.
Your title is a promise that you will fulfill. Do your readers a favor by keeping that promise. It doesn’t do any good when you go off on a tangent. That will only confuse readers and leave them feeling like they wasted their time reading your article.
Always ask yourself, “What’s the point?” That is an easy way to know that you are staying on the subject and adding value to your content.
If you suddenly introduce something that does not provide value to the reader, lose it or save it for another article where it might be more fitting.
It could be possible that the material you went off-topic with might be useful for another article where you focus on that issue.
As I proofread, I sometimes discover that I said something that may not be clear to the reader. In that case, I include an explanation before the complicated part.
In addition, I often switch paragraphs around to make the logic more orderly. That situation only becomes clear while proofreading. The main goal is always to let it become educational for my readers.
When I look over my existing content and analyze my Google Analytics reports, I see that the best-performing articles have always been those that provide value by showing how to solve problems and helping people understand their own issues by sharing personal trials and tribulations.
We all have examples in our lives where we have resolved issues for ourselves or a friend. For example, you might have had problems that needed attention, complex situations that you learned to change for the better, or maybe merely fixing something that’s broken and knowing what to do about it.
These past experiences can be goldmines for writing articles that people will be searching for to learn from your examples. You can make good use of your prior accomplishments by sharing them as examples in your writing. People are searching for help with those things online, so give it to them.
Google gives you hints when you start typing any query. Those hints are based on what other people have been searching on Google.
Once you discover that your topic is of interest, go a step further and check out the competition. It’s valuable to read the articles other authors have written on the same subject. Then, ask yourself if you can do better.
Do you know something that was missing in the competitor’s content? If that’s so, you might very well be successful in getting a higher ranking once you publish.
However, if you discover that what you wanted to write has already been thoroughly covered by others, why would you waste your time competing? Sure, it may be frustrating, but time is money. So stay focused on earning money.
You might be wasting time writing about something merely because you want to share your thoughts. Instead, it’s best to write about an issue people are interested in learning.
For people to find your article, write what people need. That might require some research to see what else is out there and what people are asking.
Remember these points:
