Today I wanted to share some tips on how you can make your content more compelling, whether it’s written, video or audio content. I’m mixing things up and testing out my new camera to create some video content for the blog.
For those of you interested in the production aspects of this video . . . I’m happy with the visual aspects of the video considering it was shot with only the light of a window beside me (and the light changed over the 10 minutes of the video). I need to pick up a microphone as this audio is straight from the camera and will in future consider some extra lighting. The camera is a Sony A7iii and the lens I’m using is a 35mm f/1.4 (camera details at https://kit.com/darrenrowse/sony-gear) The camera is producing some great results. I’ve been posting some of them over on my Instagram account at https://www.instagram.com/darrenrowse/
11 Ways to Create More Compelling Content for Your Blog
1. Make it Useful
Unless your content is useful to people and it’s going to change their life in some way, there’s probably no point in publishing it. You don’t have to change your readers’ lives in a big way with every single post, but you need to be useful in some way: make your readers chuckle if they’re feeling sad; inform them of something they didn’t know before; update them on the latest news; give them a sense of belonging… If something is useful, it’s going to hold their attention for a longer period of time. One way to be useful is to solve reader problems – here’s how to do that.
2. Share Your Opinion
I get very frustrated when I hear content that is just technical specifications or facts. I want to hear your opinion of how something might change my life in some way. For more on this, listen to my podcast episode on How to Write an Opinion Post to Draw People in to Your Blog.
3. Cut Out The Fluff
Don’t talk about things that aren’t essential to your message, get to the heart of the matter, to your main points straight away.
4. Visualise Your Reader
If you have someone in mind as you are delivering your content – be that video or the written word – you’re going to deliver in a much more personal way and for a specific type of person. And if that person gets on the other end of your content, they’re going to sense that and feel that you know who they are and that you are writing for them. That’s compelling. There’s nothing like having a reader avatar in mind for helping you visualise your reader – here’s How to Create a Reader Avatar for Your Blog.
5. Make Your Posts Scannable
Don’t overwhelm your readers with a dense block of text that is hard to read. If you’re writing content use headlines, bullet points and different formatting to draw your reader’s eye to different elements of your content and assist their understanding of your article. Most people do a quick scan of an article before they decide whether they are going to read it. Grab their attention, make them curious and let them see that there’s a benefit to reading your content. Here’s 18 Ways to Create Scannable Content for Your Blog.
6. Work (and re-work) Your Headlines
Like scannable articles, people look at your headline and make a snap judgement of whether that content is going to be relevant and interesting to them or not. Compelling content starts with the headline. Ask yourself is the headline intriguing, is it presenting a benefit and reason for reading the article? A good tool for this is Coschedule’s Headline Analyzer which gives your headline and score and suggestions to help make it more compelling. Here’s another article that gives you some specific headline tips.
7. Write With Passion
If there’s no passion in you for the way you write and present your content, your writers will pick up on this and they will not feel any passion for your content either.
8. Give Your Readers Something to do Next
You don’t just want your content to be interesting. You want your content to COMPEL your readers to DO something. Part of that is giving them something to do next – give them some homework, something for them to go away and do or apply to their lives or tell someone else about. This will extend your content beyond the moment in which it is consumed and it will live in on the readers you compel.
9. Include Stories
You can’t do this with every piece of content but in the right context storytelling can really lift your content. People remember stories because they hit the heart and resonate with your readers. If you need some help with storytelling, here’s 14 Types of Stories You Can Tell on Your Blog.
10. Give Your Posts Visual Appeal
This obviously applies to video or text, rather than audio content. But anything you can do to appeal visually to your readers will make your content more eye-catching, intriguing and memorable. Images, charts and formatting for written content. Video content can benefit from interesting backdrops or scenery as well as your own appealing presentation. Here’s some Tools for Creating Great Visual Content for Your Blog.
11. Practice Creating Compelling Content
Compelling content doesn’t just happen, it takes years of learning and practicing the art and craft of creating content. Every time you create content you are adding to your own experience and growing your great content creation muscles.
This post was orginally published on April 11, 2018 and updated June 16, 2022.
What is some compelling content you’ve created lately? Share in the comments below!
