5 Simple Ways to Open Your
Blog Post With a Bang

What’s the second most important part of your blog post after the title?

Master copywriter Eugene Schwartz often spent an entire week on the first 50 words of a sales piece — the headline and the opening paragraph.

Just imagine how disappointed you’d be aftercrafting a killer headline for your post, only to lose readers with an opening that failed to carry the momentum. A great headline mixed with a lame opening is like inviting someone into your house, only to slam the door in their face as they approach.

So, here are 5 ways to open your post that will capture the reader’s imagination and pull them deeper into your content.

1. Ask a Question

Opening your post with a question is a rhetorical device (hence, the “rhetorical question”) that creates curiosity and gets the reader thinking. Thinking equals active engagement with your writing, and that’s a very good thing.

2. Share an Anecdote or Quote

Anecdotes are quick stories that can make people laugh or immediately establish the main point of your post. A nice quote from a recognizable authority or famous person can also work wonders when holding attention in those crucial opening seconds.

3. Invoke the Mind’s Eye

Producing a mental image in a reader’s mind is one of the most powerful things you can ever do as a writer, so expressly engaging the imagination is a powerful opening technique. Activate the mind’s eye of the reader by using words like “imagine,” “picture this,” “do you remember when,” etc.

4. Use an Analogy, Metaphor or Simile

Analogies, metaphors and similes are some of the most powerful devices available when it comes to telling a story in a single sentence. This is a great way to capture a reader’s attention and also acts to provoke mental imagery that allows readers to tell a story to themselves.

5. Cite a Shocking Statistic

Starting off with an interesting factoid is also a great technique. People love being provided with interesting data, but only if it is unique, startling, or even shocking. The statistic should also be directly relevant to the point of your post as well.

Bonus Tip: The third most important part of your blog post is the closing. A great way to close is to tie back into your opening.

So, which of the 5 techniques did I NOT use in the opening to this post?

How the Genesis Design Framework Makes
Your WordPress Site Way Better

If you’re building a website these days, you’re in luck.

WordPress has revolutionized the ease and power of what a website (or blog) can do and be. Now, with the emergence of theme frameworks, you can take WordPress even further.

As you’ll see in a moment, the Genesis Theme Framework for WordPress is much more than a mere WordPress theme. It’s an underlying framework of immaculate code that’s been built to achieve three important objectives.

Let’s take a look at each of these objectives,
and why they matter to what you’re doing online…

Click to continue…