 Article Writing & Marketing Insights |
How To Write Compelling Content
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Most dictionaries say that “COMPEL” or “COMPELLING” means to be a driving force, persuasiveness, or forcefulness of an argument.
Let’s dissect that word further in an attempt to understand what it truly means to write COMPELLING content:
- V2 Vocab says that the synonyms include: “convincing, forceful, driving, dominant, commanding, imposing, interesting, & exciting”
- Bartleby says that it means to be “Urgently requiring attention” and “Driving forceful: compelling ambition and egotism”
- AskOxford says that it’s an adjective that describes “powerful evoking attention or admiration”
- Dictionary.com says that it means “to secure or bring about by force” or “Archaic. to drive together; unite by force; herd.”
- Encarta World English Dictionary says that it means “holding attention: attracting strong interest and attention” or “making somebody do something: necessitating action or belief”
My top 6 quick tips to help you write compelling article content:
- Get to the point, be brief and be unique. Leave all sales & marketing hype language out of your articles.
- Be interesting, don’t ramble and do provoke thought or insight backed with reasons why your ideas work.
- Write your article to be visually appealing for easy eye text scanning.
- Include generous use of sub-titles/sub-heads, bullets, numbered lists, and an occasional block quote.
- Create an easy to understand article title so that your reader knows upfront what your benefit promise is… then be sure to deliver in the article body the answer to the promise you just made.
- Know your audience and ideal reader’s demographics, psychographics, and what they worry about or obsess over. If you don’t know, poll them.
 Posted by Christopher M. Knight on July 10, 2007 at 12:13 pm | Views 1,032 | |
11 Comments »
Christopher M. Knight writes:A dash of pepper or salt never hurt anything… but lately I’ve seen a lot of full hype articles where they promise the moon and back in the article title and fail to deliver any eggs or bacon in the article body.
Our readers are HUNGRY!
:-)
Lance Winslow writes:I believe that an Internet Article writer often walks a fine line between keeping the Internet “Clicker” crowd happy and delivering on the promise. Most articles here attempt to get the reader to do something;
Click on Link
Buy Something
Think About Something
Change the Reader’s Opinion
Vote for or against an initiative or person
Without a compelling reason to do something, one has to wonder why write the article in the first place. Even those who do not market anything, really are marketing in a way; Marketing their information, ideas, concepts for instance.
A little hunger can be good, but starvation sucks.
Christina Sponias writes:I adored your article! Especially when you said: “Write your article to be visually appealing for easy eye text scanning”. Most people read the way you described. If we want to capture their interest we have to be easy to follow and say everything in only a few words.
The essential very objectively first of all, and then we can develop the subject until a certain point.
I agree also with what you said about not trying to sell anything in the article body.
I personally only buy something from someone if I feel I can trust this person.
We have to give a lot first of all in order to deserve the reader’s confidence and only then expect to sell him something.
Edward Weiss writes:In order to attain true article creaminess, one must forego the chewy chunks of hype filled degradation.
Christopher M. Knight writes:Right, unless they melt in your mouth like a Krispe Kreme donut hot off the conveyor belt.
—-
The real issue is that not everyone gets this clue:
You GIVE in the Article Body;
You TAKE in the Resource Box.
-Amen.
Christina Sponias writes: Dina at Wordfeeder.com writes:I agree, we all recognize when we’re being “hyped” and yet how to be persuasive without getting all hypey on people?
I’m completely intrigued and I think this is going to be a topic for my article collection in the near future. Maybe a blog post… thanks for the inspiration, all!
Kun Song writes:Chris, I have another tip to add to your six. In order for an article to be compelling, it has to challenge the readers’ existing beliefs or invoke new ones. Instead of elaborating through lengthy arguments, isn’t it much better to ask questions?
Rhetorical questions can easily direct readers towards your argument. Example, “If you truely support environmental-friendliness, will you still stubbornly think that the Live Earth Concert is the best solution for carbon emission?”
Open-ended questions will invite readers to open their hearts. If you can anticipate their thoughts and plan your articles accordingly, your content will struck a cord in them.
Would you agree with me? ^^
Christina Sponias writes: Lance Winslow writes:RSS feed for comments on this post.
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If we “…leave all sales & marketing hype language out of your articles” as you suggest, the article may not be as compelling as it could be.
I agree that too much hype is distracting but a little dash of it can go a long way.