In Blogging For Business, Opening Lines Are Key

Like even the smallest of meals, blog posts taste best when preceded by an appetizer. Sure, in any SEO marketing blog, it’s the keyword phrases in the title that start the job of getting the blog found. But, once the online visitor has actually landed, it takes a great opener to fan the flicker of interest into a flame.  In fact, a big part of blog content writing, I’ve found, involves getting what I call the “pow opening line” right.

Openers come in different flavors and sizes.  To help my business owner and professional practitioner clients and their freelance blog content writers focus on their blog post openers, I’ve selected several favorite lines from different blog writers    I follow:

Anomaly – statement that, at first glance, doesn’t appear to fit.
“This bad economy is being good to me.” 

Kathleen Haley makes the reader want to find out her secret, doesn’t it? The line is nice and short, with part of its appeal being the me” – this promises to be a post with a very personal twist. According to Chris Baggott of Compendium Blogware, one of the four variables that make blogs more successful than traditional websites is that they are personal.
 

Bold assertion.
“The best diet plan for overall health may not cost a thing.”

That opener by Jennifer Warner, reporting on WebMD about a survey on diets, commands attention because readers typically expect to be told about products they can buy.

In-your-face statement.
“That 3,000 word blog post you spent hours researching, writing, editing, and polishing? Yeah, I’m going to need you to go ahead and delete that,” says Erik Deckers as the opener for a post cautioning blog content writers against trying to put everything they know into a single post.

Because it’s so nervy and direct, Decker’s opening statement is an attention grabber.

Stage-setting statement.
“Secret truths seem to make their way to the surface in unguarded moments, whether helped along by too much alcohol or too little sleep.”

This is an opening line from the More Than Right political commentary blog by “Mr. Curmudgeon” (Too long a sentence for “pow”, but the intellectual, sardonic tone is a good fit for its target audience). Reader’s curiosity piqued – WHAT secret truths?

Scare tactic.
“What if your company stood to lose one of its biggest sources of income because a customer had already decided your product wasn’t needed?”

Corporate speaking coach Jean Palmer Heck knows that fear is an effective tool to change attitudes. By using the opener to remind readers of dangers they already face, Indianapolis blog content writers can pave the way to offering solutions..

An appetizer, according to the Free Dictionary, is “a food or drink served before a meal to stimulate the appetite”. That’s exactly what the “pow opening statement” is designed to do for online visitors!