How 4 Types of Writers Help You Craft Incredible Blog Post Introductions

Every time you begin to write something, youre David armed with a slingshot against a fleet of tiny Goliaths.The chirps from your readers phone, another like on their Instagram post, a salacious news story Each click, push, or swipe is waiting, poised to destroy the hook you so skillfully set with the headline of your piece.The sad reality is, readers (myself included) wont take long to find out if your content has value to them.

So if you know youre providing quality content, but its not getting read, theres a good chance your introductions need some work.Fortunately, with a lot of practice and a little guidance from the experts, youll be on your way to writing content that gets read.To give you some methods to practice, Ill run through the tactics that a few professional journalists, bloggers, researchers, and business writers use to tackle the all-important task of writing an introduction.

Copybloggers 5 Ways to Start a Blog PostBrian Clark of Copyblogger outlines 5 simple ways to start a blog post:Ask a QuestionShare an Anecdote or QuoteProduce an Image in the Readers MindUse an Analogy, Metaphor, or SimileCite a Shocking StatisticWith methods #1, #3 and #4, youre actively engaging your reader.For example, in method #1, youre making the reader think. With #3, again, youre creating something in your readers mind.

The reader is an active participant. #4 is a little different in that youre causing your reader to make a connection between two thoughts that they hadnt previously connected. Still, in all three methods, your reader plays a role in your story immediately.

The other methods might not engage in such a direct way, but they work because they draw out curiosity or emotion from the reader. Blogging Wizards 6 Steps to a Captivating IntroWhere Copyblogger cites 5 ways to start a blog post, the Blogging Wizard gives you 6 steps.Here they are:Address Readers from Sentence OneStart by Describing an EmotionIdentify Readers ProblemPlay off Their Hopes/DreamsPromise Something the Reader WantsTransition by Hinting at How to Solve their ProblemCan you tell that I tried to imitate this formula in the intro to this post?

I highly recommend checking out the full article and Alicia Radess clear explanation (along with examples) of each step. As formulaic as it may seem at first glance, theres considerable room for creativity with this 6-step approach. By the way, notice how both Rades and Clark describe very reader-focused tactics?

Thats because a good introduction is personal.And to be personal, you have to know your reader well enough to see things from their perspective.The best way to do that is to ask yourself questions like these:What is the reader feeling?

What does this reader want? What is his/her problem?The answers to these questions provide the fodder you need to put these expert bloggers advice into action.

Writing a Lead with NPR and the New York TimesHannah Bloch of NPR writes, The journalism leads main job is to make the reader want to stay and spend some precious time with whatever youve written.Seems pretty relevant to writing blogs, right?Here are the 6 types of journalistic leads, according to NPR:Straight News Lead: the classic who, what, where, why and how introduction.

Anecdotal Lead: just like the type of intro Copyblogger mentioned; start with a story. Scene-setting Lead: read Blochs article for an example.First-person Lead: to be used sparingly, according to Bloch.

Observational Lead: an observation about the story and its broader context. Zinger Lead: this kind of lead should make your reader spit out the coffee hes drinking and then keep reading.The New York Times had one to add, called the delayed lede.

This type of lede is an introduction in which a person is introduced before his or her relevance is revealed. Heres an example, again from the NYT:As a young girl growing up on the South Side of Chicago, Mae C. Jemison watched telecasts of the Gemini and Apollo spaceflights and knew that that was her destiny.

No matter that all the astronauts were male and white and that she was female and black. She simply knew she would be a space traveler.You may notice familiarity between NPRs 6 types of journalistic leads and the 5 ways to start a blog that Copyblogger pointed out.

Heres Copybloggers methods again:Ask a QuestionShare an Anecdote or QuoteProduce an Image in the Readers MindUse an Analogy, Metaphor, or SimileCite a Shocking StatisticScene-setting leads produce mental images. A zinger lead could be a shocking statistic. And both bloggers and journalists start their pieces with an anecdote.

Plus, if you take any one of NPRs lead approaches, you can easily apply Blogging Wizards 6 steps to it and it becomes a journaloggers dream intro. The Research Writer Textbook ApproachYou can always work with readers inclined to say, I dont agree. What you cant survive are readers who shrug and say, I dont care.

Throughout my research for this post, no quote was more salient than this one. And it came from a reference book on research called, The Craft of Research.According to authors Wayne Booth, Gregory Colomb, and Joseph Williams, the common structure of an introduction shares 3 elements.

1. Contextualizing BackgroundOne reason you provide context is to establish common ground, or a shared understanding between reader and writer about the general issue the writer will address. 2.

Stating the ProblemThe other reason and I would argue the more important reason is to establish a stable context that you can then destabilize with the problem. The example the authors use is the opening to Little Red Riding Hood.Silly as it seems, the structure of stable context destabilized by problem statement is clear:(Stable Context Starts) One sunny morning, Little Red Riding Hood was skipping happily through the forest on her way to Grandmothers house, (Destabilizing Problem Starts) when suddenly Hungry Wolf jumped out from behind a tree, frightening her very much.

3. Responding to the ProblemIn your response to the problem, you give either the short version of your solution, or a promise to give it throughout the rest of your piece.The Research Approach: A Specialized ToolWhile the bloggers and journalists above gave us a few approaches that work in a variety of scenarios, the research writers method is for a very specific type of writing.

Still, this is a big idea. As content writers, we often have to write posts that tell people theyre wrong or missing information about something. The research writers approach helps you do this in a way thats interesting and not pretentious.

The Art of the Executive SummaryUse a story.Thats how consultant Thomas Heath explains his technique for writing executive summaries on proposals (in other words: an introduction). His clear definition of the three parts of a story is powerful:All stories have three basic parts: a situation that interests the audience, a challenge to that situation, and an answer to that challenge.

So, according to Heath, to write a story in your intro, all you have to do is:Say something positive thats true and sparks interest.Describe a challenge to the situation.Present your answer to the challenge.

Thats it. Dead simple. And its pretty much the same as the Research Writer Textbook Approach except Heath applies it to writing executive summaries.

Wise Words from George LoisIf youre the kind of creative person who gets your best work produced justifying and selling your work is what separates the sometimes good creative thinker from the consistently great one.George Lois revolutionized advertising, and he doesnt mind telling everybody.And even though he didnt write blog posts, his thoughts are equally true when applied to writing content today.

Because when you write a blog post, you are selling something to your reader in exchange for his or her continued attention. And the market for attention at least when it comes to content is fiercely competitive.Theres not just one Goliath, theres a hundred of them.

And they have more writers, more money, and more reach than you.So when you load up that slingshot, pull back hard, take a deep breath, and let it fly. Then do it again for the next 1000 words.