1. Use title to grab attention: Make them see what you see. You may think that everyone sees things the way you do. But they don’t. Readers won’t pay attention until they perceive what you perceive. So make your position crystal clear. Use storytelling, personal experiences, or anything that will put the reader in the right position to understand your message.

   Use emotion. Emotion brings clarity to your messages while making them personal. Emotion also comes with the triple bonus of adding clarity, giving readers a reason to talk about you, and triggering action you may want — emotion is much better at that than logic is. Emotional messages get attention. Tell a meaningful and personal story. When you make your writing personal, you make it important. Personally interesting or perceptually meaningful information grabs attention and brings clarity.

2. Offer something - an idea, a new way, a point of view: Offer something to your readers - an idea, a new way of thinking, a new point of view, a new experiment to try… something they can take away from your blog. Keep users engaged. Behavioral economics experts have established that people are generally fond of the 4 letter F-Word - A preference for FREE seems to be a feature hardwired into humans brains. See [Dan Ariely’s experiment](http://danariely.com/2009/08/10/the-nuances-of-the-free-experiment/) “_Free kisses beat bargain truffles.”_ Give them something free so they keep coming back for more…eventually becoming a repeat subscriber.

3. Write content to align with reader scan preferences: People tend to scan web pages like in a pattern different from what they read in print. Eye tracking research indicates the dominant patterns people tend to deploy while reading computer screens. In general, people tend to read blog posts in an F pattern, beginning at the top going through the first few rows, then scan down, scan across a bit again, and then scan down to skim for any thing interesting. The intensity of attention gets weaker (or the ink gets fainter) as readers scan down the post. Keeping this human behavior in mind will help you write better blog posts.

4. Write in bite sized chunks using a structured framework whenever feasible: Write small sized chunks that fits above the fold or above the scroll. Avoid complex/theoretical writing or marketing hyperbole. Use colloquialism. Try limiting a blog post to 450 - 675 words with 2 to 3 sections per post. Limit each section to about 2 or 3 paragraphs each no more than 75 words.

5. Stick to a manageable schedule for posting: Sticking to a schedule that your readers can predit and that you can manage is very useful for your readers. It helps to provide a predictability to your readers on when they would expect to see new posts…lets say:

   • a new learning every Monday
   • a case study every Wednesday
   • a video story every Friday
   • a photograph every Saturday

What worked for you/didn’t work well in your blog? Chime in below with your comments.

via my friend @sterlizzi CEO of http://www.wearephotographers.com