Brian Clark of CopyBlogger penned this awesome post and I felt I had to share it with our readers. A blog is a critical part of B2B lead generation, so it is a great way to engage prospective sales leads. Thanks Brian for letting us share it. We hope we documented it well enough to give you the credit you deserve.
http://www.copyblogger.com/5-simple-ways-to-open-your-blog-post-with-a-bang/
What’s the second most important part of your blog post after the title?
Master copywriter Eugene Schwartz often spent an entire week on the first 50 words of a sales piece — the headline and the opening paragraph.
Just imagine how disappointed you’d be after crafting a killer headline for your post, only to lose readers with an opening that failed to carry the momentum. A great headline mixed with a lame opening is like inviting someone into your house, only to slam the door in their face as they approach.
So, here are 5 ways to open your post that will capture the reader’s imagination and pull them deeper into your content.
1. Ask a Question
Opening your post with a question is a rhetorical device (hence, the “rhetorical question”) that creates curiosity and gets the reader thinking. Thinking equals active engagement with your writing, and that’s a very good thing.
2. Share an Anecdote or Quote
Anecdotes are quick stories that can make people laugh or immediately establish the main point of your post. A nice quote from a recognizable authority or famous person can also work wonders when holding attention in those crucial opening seconds.
3. Invoke the Mind’s Eye
Producing a mental image in a reader’s mind is one of the most powerful things you can ever do as a writer, so expressly engaging the imagination is a powerful opening technique. Activate the mind’s eye of the reader by using words like “imagine,” “picture this,” “do you remember when,” etc.
4. Use an Analogy, Metaphor or Simile
Analogies, metaphors and similes are some of the most powerful devices available when it comes to telling a story in a single sentence. This is a great way to capture a reader’s attention and also acts to provoke mental imagery that allows readers to tell a story to themselves.
5. Cite a Shocking Statistic
Starting off with an interesting factoid is also a great technique. People love being provided with interesting data, but only if it is unique, startling, or even shocking. The statistic should also be directly relevant to the point of your post as well.
Bonus Tip: The third most important part of your blog post is the closing. A great way to close is to tie back into your opening.
So, which of the 5 techniques did I NOT use in the opening to this post?
What do you think? We love comments and people who share.
Jeff Ogden is President of Find New Customers “Lead Generation Made Simple” Check out the online show every Friday at 11am ET, “Laugh and Learn with the Fearless Competitor.” Find New Customers is one of few lead generation companies in New York.
Find New Customers helps companies like yours (with 50 to 5,000 employees and complex products) implement lead generation programs to improve the way you find and acquire high quality sales leads using best practices in online lead generation. Quality leads matter. In fact, a recent study found that sales teams with fewer, high quality sales leads closed more than sales teams with more leads of dubious quality.
If you wish to do sales lead generation online, contact the B2B lead generationexperts at Find New Customers using the form below.
opted in, are only a fraction of your website’s visitors, this can be killer. Now you can see which companies are visiting your website and how many pages they’ve viewed. But what makes this helpful is the integration with Jigsaw, DemandBase and LinkedIn. Click any of those buttons to learn more about the contacts within that company you may be able to engage.