In the sea of craptastic content that are published online every single day, you need to come up with a technique that enables you to grab your audiences’ attention. Of course, there’s no way you’ll be able to do that if you’re publishing the same dry, boring, mediocre, or lifeless content that everyone is doing.
You need something that will punch them in the face. Something that’s so amazing that they’ll want to save your article for future reference — helping you increase your website traffic. Allow me to share with you five tips that you can use to create an attention-sucking content that will increase your website’s traffic.
Make Your First Sentence Count
Grab em’ by the collar and scream at their faces “Look at me!” — that’s how attention-grabbing your first sentence should be.
If your first lines aren’t that catchy, then good luck to your articles competing with over 3.1 million articles that are published daily. Given how noisy the internet has become, your readers are bound to take their website traffic elsewhere if they aren’t captivated by your first lines. A couple winning strategies: Start with a statistic or open in the middle of a story.
Ask Them to Bookmark Your Article
A call-to-action can spell the difference between your users clicking away after reading your article, or them sharing and bookmarking it. If you don’t tell your audience what to do after reading your content, the chances are good that they’ll simply click away — even if your article is well researched and provides tons of value.
To increase the chances of your audience sharing your article or bookmarking it for their future website traffic, I urge you to add an effective call-to-action in your post. Your audience won’t have to wonder what to do next: They have only to follow your instructions.
Tell a Relatable Story
Have you ever found yourself saying something like “I can relate to that” while reading an article all because the writer described a scenario similar to one you went through in the past?
The logic behind this strategy is simple: When you tell a story that your audience can relate to — since they’ve experienced something quite similar in the past — it entices them to read further because they’ll become curious about how everything will unfold for your character. Subconsciously, they will want to relate to that person and look forward to a resolution. Of course, they’ll never figure out the answer to their questions unless they read your article to the very end.
Talk About Their Frustrations
This strategy is so effective that seasoned sales copywriters will almost always include this element when writing their sales copies.
Imagine your website getting hacked, and you being oblivious about the next steps that you should take to retrieve it. As you click on an article that you found on Facebook, the article’s first line greets you with, “My website was hacked!” The succeeding lines will then say, “I can’t sleep. I feel helpless about what the hacker can do to my site, and I’m losing bajillions of sales!” How would you feel (or react) as someone who’s facing the same exact problem and frustrations?
You’d be hooked, right?
You will want to read the next lines to see how the writer managed to solve their frustrations since you are getting emotional from being reminded of yours as well.
Share Your Weaknesses
This tip isn’t for the faint of heart: You can suffer some backlash when using this strategy. However, if you do this right, not only will your readers want to read your articles, they’re even going to subscribe to your news feeds so they can send you more website traffic. That’s how much of a double-edged sword this strategy is.
The strategy’s core is transparency. If you’re like me, then you love people who are transparent. When you’re talking to someone who isn’t hiding anything, you’d feel safe with the person, you’d know that you aren’t going to be scammed or tricked, and most of all, you can relate to the person should they share the same weakness that you’re struggling with as well.
The last bit is important. Because when your readers start to realize that you’re just like them — or at least, you’re struggling with the same things that they are struggling with — they’ll realize that you are their advocate. They’ll see you as one of them and not some business owner who is only interested in getting them to open their wallets.
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