Let me introduce you to introductions. Introductions are first impressions. You get to make them once.
Your blog post introduction must have a hook. Here are six good hooks to use in your blog post introductions.
1. Start with an interesting fact.
“Niagara Falls has traveled 7 miles upstream in the past 12,000
years. Let’s hope you’re growing your web traffic at a faster rate.”
Start with a fact that is
interesting, because not all facts are. Facts that are uninteresting are facts that:
- Are overused and often repeated.
- Too common in your niche.
- Related perfectly to your topic in an unsurprising way.
Pick facts that have nothing obviously to do with your topic (Niagara
Falls and website traffic?), or are perfectly in line with your topic
and thesis, but are so shocking as to be gasp-worthy. Unrelated facts
make the reader think “how is this bozo going to tie that into the topic
at hand?” while shocking facts make the reader think “that CANNOT be
true, can it?!”
Either way, it’s a hook.
2. The end of the story first.
There are two ways to tell the end of the story first and have a successful hook.
Find a way to tell the end of the story without giving away the surprise.
“The 20,000 customer registered in our system, and the team let
out a victorious yell. We’d hit our goal, thanks to the red button.”
How does the story end? Because that’s a perfect place to start.
In this example, the introduction tells the reader what happened, but
it doesn’t do so in a way that ruins the surprise. There’s a lot of
action, both by the final customer and the team. There’s the suggestion
of a competition and success (a goal was met). And there’s a cryptic
suggestion that a red button did something amazing. Plus, 20,000. That’s
impressive for anyone wanting lots of customers.
This would be a less effective version of the introduction for that post:
“After five months of intense A/B testing in which we tested
different CTA button colors, we finally hit 20,000 customers. Red was
the winning color.”
Yawn.
There is jargon. There are unexplained acronyms. An inanimate button
has become the winner instead of the people (customers and the team).
What little action there is, is passive. And you spilled the beans on
what the post was about: A/B testing colors.
Give a heads-up summation without giving away the surprise.
This method gives your reader some respect by saying “hey, this is
what I’m going to talk about with you today. If this is interesting,
stick around.”
Derek Halpern
tends to get right to the point with his blog posts, and often
introduces them by telling readers what they can expect if they keep
reading.
Adding “a quick request” is a fine bit of intrigue for the reader.
“What in the world could Halpern want from me?” the reader thinks, and
keeps on reading.
Knowing what’s coming and how things will end is helpful for readers.
It gives them an idea of whether or not they should take the time and
what expectations to have. The danger for you, the writer, is if you
have an unexciting topic and give your readers a heads-up to that.
“Today I am going to talk about the value proposition of going
paperless at your office, and ultimately prove that you will want to buy
a small scanner and ban the paper.”
Meh. That’s not an introduction to remember for all eternity.
Halpern’s version has a bit more intrigue and zip, though,
admittedly, some readers will appreciate the above example. It has its
place, but isn’t the greatest hook.
3. Use an anecdote.
“I once wrote a newspaper story that killed a man.”
That’s the
actual blog post introduction I wrote on a post
for this blog. It’s a one-sentence anecdote. That’s an extremely short
anecdote; most anecdotes are longer, like those you find in
this post about social proof in which several anecdotes are used.
Anecdotes are wee bitty stories that put a larger idea or thesis in a
different context. Speakers know that starting with a story instead of a
philosophical or fact-filled lecture is a sure-fire way to get people’s
attention. It’s the same for your readers.
What makes a good anecdote?
Something that happened to you, in your life.
This makes you the expert on how to apply the story and what it
means. I would rather hear an anecdote about your trials and failures
rather than the tired anecdote of how many times Edison tried to invent
the lightbulb.
Something either funny or poignant.
Make ‘em laugh or make ‘em cry (or somewhere close). At the very
least, end at a different level than where you started. You start at
ground zero with your reader. Your anecdote can’t end there. It’s no
hook if it does.
Something related to your thesis.
Don’t be that speaker that tells a random joke or story and then
segues with an “but I digress” and launches into Yawnville. Your
anecdote should illustrate your thesis in a new way, or start leading
the reader’s thought patterns towards where you want to take them with
your thesis.
A quote can work.
Quotations can work, and sometimes make a fine opening. But people
quickly get in the habit of using the words of others to boost their
own, so watch out for overuse of this technique. And avoid quotations
that are overused for your niche. Steve Jobs had some good things to
say, but after a while, those excellent words lose their power because
they are overused. Find new quotations from surprising sources.
And
avoid quotations that are overused for your niche. Steve Jobs had some
good things to say, but after a while, those excellent words lose their
power because they are overused. – @JulieNeidlinger
4. Ask a (worthwhile) question.
Yes, there are stupid questions, and a good share of them are rhetorical.
In their best use, asking a question is a fine way to force the
reader to identify with the problem you are about to solve. Questions
can be powerful.
But some questions are a waste of time.
Go easy with rhetorical questions.
“What are we going to do about your low-performing blog?”
Rhetorical questions cannot be answered by the reader.
They are asked not to prompt thinking or discover knowledge, but to make a point.
They are often dramatic. They can be insulting.
“Have you stopped beating your dog yet?” is a classic example. The
question assumes someone is being cruel to an animal. It can’t really be
answered. Or “
How do you solve a problem like Maria?“, which assumes first that Maria is a problem.
It’s similar to what I see being used a lot in lead generation and
calls-to-action where one button says “Yes, I want more traffic. Take my
email!” while the other button says “No, I want to see my website die a
painful slow death.” Rhetorical questions set up the reader in a
similar, psychological way. The reader has to accept the underlying
assumption in order to answer. It can work, but if you make an offensive
or insulting assumption, your reader leaves.
Use rhetorical questions carefully.
Don’t ask questions intended to limit the answer.
Pet peeve alert: I despise when people speak in questions so they can
pre-empt any difficult or real questions and give softball answers.
Here’s how it works (and I’m sure you’ll recognize the technique):
“Do I love web traffic? Yes. Did I mean to send my disgruntled blog readers a skunk in the mail? Of course not.”
By asking the questions you, the writer, want to answer instead of
providing the answers the reader wants, you can create the appearance of
forthright and complete discussion without actually doing so. Plus, you
slip into passive voice of sorts, where you don’t own the action and
behavior. How does that work in an introduction?
“Do I love web traffic? Yes. Do I know the secret to building it? You bet.”
Ok, we get it. But what a waste of your reader’s time.
“My love of web traffic is bested only by my ability to build it.”
Kind of a silly example, but you get the idea: be direct, not passive.
Don’t ask obvious questions.
Every time I find myself tapping out an introduction that starts with
“do you want more traffic on your blog?” I’m sure somewhere a
philosopher dies. What I’m trying to do is tell the reader “yes, this is
the post you were looking for” but what I’m really telling the reader
is “I don’t know how to write.”
“
Do you want more traffic on your blog?”
Really? That’s your Bob Woodward?
“
98 percent of blog owners want more traffic. Yeah, we don’t understand that remaining two percent, either.”
You can identify with your reader without asking them obvious questions that they skim over.
5. Go for the cliffhangers.
Robert Bruce (who is someone else entirely than
Robert the Bruce) is a writer and a tease.
Once in a while — but not too often, mind you — he sends out an email
of Unusually Short Stories. He also posts them on his web site. He is
all sparseness and tortuous brevity, his unusually short stories
impeccable. They hook, and leave you hanging off the cliff.
Take a page from Bruce’s book: these are the introductory paragraphs
that get readers hooked. I know, because I’ve sat and stared at them
willing the next sentence to appear (which will not happen).
I’m a firm believer mimicking and dissecting the successful work of
others as a form of practice. Artists often paint from the masters to
learn about color, light, and technique (I’ve done it). While at a
writers’ conference a few months ago, best-selling author James Hall
told of a class he taught his graduate students (which included Dennis
Lehane) where they were instructed to find a novel they loved and write
their own novel based on the structure of it. He later turned this class
into a book called
Hit Lit: Cracking The Code Of The 20th Century’s Biggest Best Sellers.
So let’s look at Bruce’s example. What makes it work? It’s only two sentences, and I’m dying to read the next paragraph.
The setup tells us there is a competition known only to us (we have
exclusive knowledge). There is a setting, both in place and time. And we
know the startling end result. The cliffhanger isn’t what happened
next, but
what happened in between. How do you get from intriguing point A to hilarious and startling point Z?
So. A cliffhanger can be either “what happens next” or “what happened in between.” Let’s say your headline was:
How We Went From Zero To 10,000 Customers In Just One Year.
Here’s an example of a “what happened in between” cliffhanger:
“We started with three team members and a plant in the window.
One year later, we were taking sledgehammers to the office walls.”
The rest of the post talks about how you grew your customer base, and
how it meant your team grew, too, and you had to expand your office
space. (Or how things went poorly and you demolished the office in a fit
of rage, but let’s hope not.)
6. Gentle confrontation can be a friend.
“You were getting 100 new sign-ups a week, and thought your email
conversion rate was as good as it could get. But you were wrong, and
I’ll tell you why.”
Confrontation is sure to get a reader’s attention. Of course, not all
confrontation is created equal. There is insulting and trollish
confrontation (always wrong), and there is gentle confrontation. A
gentle confrontation takes a soft swipe at
a controversy,
or pokes a long-held belief of the reader in a way that encourages them
to read on and reconsider. What happens when you do that?
- The reader feels indignant and keeps reading if only to prepare to
prove you wrong. Or the reader is intrigued and keeps reading to see if
it’s true.
- The reader skips to the end and leaves a ranting comment never
having read your post, meaning you have to gently say “but I said that
later in my post.”
So in the case of the first reaction, gentle confrontation
can be a friend. In the case of the second reaction…less so.
Either way, introductions that are confrontational can often lead to active comment sections.
