Would Christine Read This?

Published on 24 May 2012 at 3:20 pm.
Filed under Informative,Social Media,writing.

Many people on the internet love cats. Posting a picture of a cat will get someone’s attention.

My friend, Christine, recently pointed out that most small business owners are not techies and I need a hook to get them to read this blog. So how did I hope to do this?

If you’re coming to this page from a social media website such as Facebook or Google+ you saw this cute cat picture along with the post description. You might have even clicked the image without looking at what the text said. Your name might be Christine and you were curious and the headline made you click. Regardless, I got your attention.

Make your audience want to read your post

Identify and write for your audience. Lead them on by giving them tips on [blank]. Tell them what they want to know.  Be direct. Our audience would be people who are internet savvy, but not necessarily techies. Our posts on things like mobile web design and  SEO display our knowledge of the field to small business owners looking for a web development company in Rochester, NY. We do those posts to build trust for our audience.

Do research on your audience to know what related topics they like. One thing you can say about Internet users in general is that it loves cats. That is the reasoning behind the lead picture in this blog post. Feel free to turn this cat into a lolcat. Can she has outside times now? :-p

Find the right tone

Finding the right tone for your audience is hard. Use a simple tone that is easy to understand. If you don’t know how to tell you can use a readability calculator that uses the  Flesch–Kincaid readability test to do it for you. The higher the score the easier it is to read. Microsoft Word can test it for you. The score for this article is 80.3. That makes it easily understood by an 11-13 year old. Non-techies can follow along with this post.

Final Tip

My final tip I have is to engage your audience. Ask them about their experience with the topic. Make them do something. Not only do you give them a reason to read your post but you give them a reason to return. So, how do you connect with your audience?

This post was originally published as Would Christine Read This? for The BrandBuilder Company.