Your introductions are not that great. Sorry to be rude, but you could be getting ten times the readers if you only wrote better opening paragraphs. If you’re wondering how this is possible, consider the opening to this post. How did I grab your attention?

Your blog could have the most informative content on the internet with a design that blows others out of the water and still not get a lot of readers. The reason for this is that your introductions just aren’t sucking readers into your content. You need to get them hooked on your posts, right from the start. To do this, you’ll need to pull a few tricks out of your sleeve.

Five Sure-Fire Introduction Formulas

The Hypothetical Situation

Imagine this: you come across a blog post that assumes you have $5,000 to spend on a start-up website, and asks if you think you’d blow it on the wrong things. Sounds like you’re interested in your budgeting now, huh?

The hypothetical situation is great for drawing attention from specific types of readers. It takes some imagination to put yourself in the shoes of readers, but once you’re there, they’ll follow you wherever you take them.

The “no offense” Introduction

This is where you start your blog post with an “honest truth.” The same technique is used in the intro paragraph above. Explain to your readers (kindly) what they’re doing wrong, and why. Then proceed to the solution. This should be used with some light humor.

The Overwhelming Factoid

The overwhelming factoid technique involves digging up a seemingly startling fact, such as “50% of twitter users are spam bots!” or “40% of Blogsessive readers are actually non-bloggers.”

When using the overwhelming factoid, it’s best to use either percentages or a seemingly large number, such as “Google makes 1.2million selling T-shirts!” Since Google makes billions, this really isn’t that startling. Still, it brings in some readers.

The Startling Rhetorical Question

You like making money, right? Well if you take advantage of the Startling Rhetorical Question, you’ll be making lots of it from visitors who desperately answer “yes!” to your question. Try starting a blog post with a question about your readers’ desired outcome. Would they like to gain 200% more traffic? Of course they would.

The Personal Admission

I have to be honest – these tips really work. The Personal Admission will have readers interested in your content because they connect with you. Personal admissions range from “to be honest – I don’t think this works” to “to tell you the truth – this changed my life.” A personal endorsement is the most powerful form of marketing, and you can use your own authority to your advantage when crafting great posts.

Introductions can often be overlooked by even the best blogger. However, writing a great introduction can just about double your reader engagement. These techniques can even be combined and mismatched in the body of the post to keep your reader’s attention. Sounds awesome, right?