make sure that your content is not boring?

Let me be honest with you.

If your content is boring, it doesn’t really exist – seriously!

Your readers are bombarded with dozens of emails, hundreds of blog posts, and thousands of Tweets every day. By creating boring content, you’re only helping them ignore you faster.

According to Hubspot, more than 50% of your website visitors spend less than 15 seconds actively reading content.

So you don’t have much time to make an impression on your readers.

Even if your content is insanely useful, you need to deliver it in a simplified manner that helps your readers consume it easily.


Not sure how to do that? Here are a few tips to help you.

1. Start Your Blog with a Clear Purpose

Even before you start writing a blog post, you need to ask yourself if your blog has a clear objective and purpose.

Without a clear objective, your content will always lack authority and engagement. In simple words, your blog needs to focus on a single niche or several closely related niches.

You can’t write about car accessories, weight loss techniques and retirement planning packages on the same blog.

When you’re starting a new blog, identify a niche, go deep, select a sub-niche and create focused content that solves problems.

Do this every time you’re writing a new blog post. Ask yourself if it’s addressing a specific problem and offering any specific solutions.

Creating focused content will help you establish yourself as a niche expert. And readers always take experts seriously.

They’re hard to ignore.

2. Find Proven Content Ideas for Guaranteed Success

You can’t create engaging content without coming up with blog post ideas that your audience really wants to read.

But why struggle to come up with new and interesting blogging ideas when you can simply copy tried and tested topics?

I’m not asking you to steal content from other websites.

But you can study successful content to get a clear idea of what your audience needs.


There are a few ways you can do that.

• BuzzSumo: Search for your main topic keywords on BuzzSumo to find out other blog posts on the same topic that have performed well on social media. You can give a different twist to these already proven ideas and add more value to the topic.                                                                                                                                                                                       
• Quora: You can find thousands of discussion threads on Quora that can help you identify some great blogging ideas.                                                                                                                                                         
• Twitter: Search for your topic and see the content that people are already sharing. Look for conversations on Twitter and see if there are any questions that people are asking.

By creating content on proven topics, and adding more value to them, you can completely eradicate the risk of being ignored by your readers.

3. Understand Your Audience With Web Analytics and Social Insights

There’s no better place to understand the interests and preferences of your audience than social media. Not only should you engage actively with your audience on different social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, but also closely study their interactions with you.

Monitor the kind of content they’re sharing, the status updates they like and the content they engage with.

This will give you a clear understanding of the kind of content you need to create to keep them engaged and interested.

To approach this in a simplified, yet extremely advanced, way, you can use web analytics and social insights tools like Cyfe.

While it’s a lot more than just a social media management tool, Cyfe can give you extremely valuable data on your audience preferences from different marketing channels like SEO, SEM, social media, email marketing and direct web traffic.

It will give you a clear picture of your best performing content, the people engaging with it and will help you optimize it across multiple platforms so that you can take maximum advantage.

4. Structure Your Content for Maximum Engagement

The structure of your content is one of the most crucial aspects of reader engagement. Using a simplified and user friendly content structure can significantly boost the readership and conversion rates of your content.

If you want to create content that your readers just cannot resist, you need to keep the following points in mind.

• Write in a conversational tone: You can’t write in a third person voice and expect people to engage with your content. Blogging is different from conventional article writing. You need to write like you talk. Frequently use words like “You”, “Me” and “I”.                                                                                                                                                                             
• Use short paragraphs: Your paragraphs shouldn’t be longer than 2-3 lines. Make it easy for your readers to skim through your content.                                                                                                                           
• Use short sentences: You don’t need to say everything in one breath. Break down longer sentences into 2-3 shorter statements and make it easier for your readers to consume your content.                                                                                                                                                   
• Use sub-headings frequently: Use relevant and action oriented sub-headings throughout your content. This makes it easier for your readers to skim.                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
• Cut the jargon: Don’t use complex vocabulary and unnecessary jargon in your posts. Write clearly in a conversational tone using everyday words.

I strongly recommend developing your own formatting guidelines when you start a new blog, and following them religiously in every blog post you write.

5. Use Authentic Data References to Back Your Arguments

There are millions of people writing articles and blog posts on different topics. Because of this, author credibility has become a major issue for readers.

You can really stand out from the crowd by adding solid research and data references throughout your blog posts. Instead of making claims and writing opinion based blog posts, back your arguments with researched facts.

Your credibility as an author has a direct impact on your content. The more credible you are, the more seriously people will take your advice.

6. Use Visual Content to Make Your Content Digestible

Text is obviously the most popular form of content. But things are changing pretty quickly. With smartphones and social media, visual content has become much more important.

In fact, according to Hubspot, people remember only 20% of what they read. In comparison, they can recall almost 80% of what they see. 

You can use this to your advantage by including more visual content in your blog posts. This will not only help readers consume your content more effectively, but also make it more colorful.

You can also convert the numbers and dry data in your posts to colorful and interactive infographics. You can either hire a professional designer to create infographics, or use a free infographic tool like Visme. It has ready to use templates and drag & drop options that can be used to create eye catching infographics very quickly.

Wrapping Up

Creating enjoyable and engaging content doesn’t require you to do anything out of the ordinary. To avoid being boring, you just need to structure your content in a reader friendly manner. Write with the benefit of your readers in mind, and try making your content as simple and attractive to read as possible.

How do you make sure that your content is not boring? I’d love to hear your thoughts.