One of the hardest things to do with a blog is make it an irresistible blog. Irresistible blogs are the types of blogs that people can browse through for a long period of time. We all have our favorite blogs that we browse through for many minutes at a time. You want people to be browsing through your blog for many minutes as well.
Including links to your older blog posts is a great strategy to lower your blog’s bounce rate. Including these links does help out, but your blog needs to be the type of blog that your targeted readers would want to visit countless times.
You want people to be visiting your blog for many months, and eventually many years to come. You want your blog to be so memorable that people come back for more. Here are the five elements that go into making your blog irresistible.
#1: Have eye-popping pictures.
Pictures have the ability to attract people to a blog post and identify what the blog post is about. Some people will unintentionally skip the headline and go straight into reading the blog post content. That is why I include pictures in my blog posts. If I write a blog post about Twitter, I make sure I include the Twitter logo. That way, if someone reads past the headline but sees the picture, the reader knows the article is about Twitter.
One of the big concerns with using pictures in your blog posts is that many people use images that they do not have permission to use. That is why it is important to create your own pictures that you do have permission to use.
Creating a picture is not as hard as many people think. You do not have to learn graphic design to create your own pictures. Instead, you can use an online tool such as Canva to create your own pictures. Canva has a variety of functions such as creating a picture for your blog posts, Twitter header, Facebook background, and other functions as well. The best part is that the pictures Canva allows you to generate can be eye-popping.
#2: Have good headlines.
Although some readers skip the headline, the people who are staying on your blog for a long time are reading through those headlines. Headlines allow your visitors to know what exactly your blog post will be about.
However, you do not want a simple headline that tells people what they are going to read. I could have called this blog post “5 Blogging Tips,” but “The 5 Elements Of An Irresistible Blog” is a more specific title with the pull-word “irrestible.”
There are many pull-words in a headline that fill people with a strong desire to read your content. Depending on the niche you are in, those pull-words will vary. In order for you to identify the pull-words of your niche, look at other blog post headlines in your niche. Then, ask yourself if the headline is attracting your attention and which words are pulling you in. Afterwards, experiment with your blog and see which pull-words, when used, grab the most attention.
The better your headlines are, the more clicks those headlines are going to get. One of the best strategies to making sure everyone reads your headline is by editing the picture and including the blog post’s headline in the picture. Canva allows you to do this.
#3: Make it easy for people to navigate through your blog.
It is mandatory as a blogger to make your blog easy to navigate. There are many blogs on the web related to yours, and if your visitor feels confused with your blog’s navigation, that visitor will not stick around for a while. When someone visits your blog, that person is choosing you over the countless other blogs out there. Make each visitor feel welcome.
Having good navigation means making it easy for people to access the pages on your blog and blog posts based on certain categories. If you write long blog posts, only include short summaries of those blog posts that require a click to see the whole blog post. Regardless of how well you write, there are going to be some topics that particular readers won’t care about.
Some of this blog’s readers are only concerned with the content about blogging. That means, scrolling through a bunch of 1,000 word blog posts about social media won’t be their cup of tea. Shortening these blog posts will only result in these people scrolling through 50-100 words of other content until they find the content they are actually looking for.
Making it easy for people to find what they are looking for and then delivering on the value will ensure that these people stick around for a long period of time.
#4: Have the right colors.
The colors you use for your blog have a big impact on how well it does. Color psychology is one of the most underrated areas of marketing, but it is a great way to make a blog look more attractive.
Women do not like gray, orange, and brown. They like blue, purple, and green. Men don’t like purple, orange, and brown. Men like blue, green, and black. From this data, you should make sure your blog post includes blue and green colors so both gender groups like the colors on your blog. Here is a detailed blog post on KISSmetrics that goes into color psychology.
#5: Include good social proof.
We have a natural tendency to come back to something that is popular. That means if you have good social proof and can show yourself as a popular expert in your niche, people will come back more often. All of the social media experts are quick to show their credentials and social proof.
The social media experts with hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers make sure people can easily see the Twitter follow button with the exact number of followers. I display it on my blog’s sidebar, and the Twitter button happens to be larger than the rest of them.
In Conclusion
By combining these elements together, you will have an irresistible blog that grabs attention and makes visitors stick around for a long time. Getting people to stick around for a longer period of time boosts your chances of getting subscribers and sales.
In addition, Google loves it when people stay on your blog for a long period of time. That means your blogs will gradually get more search engine traffic. Not only does making your blog irresistible result in people staying on it longer, but it also results in more traffic in the long-term.
What were your thoughts on the list? Do you have any additional tips for creating an irresistible blog? Please share your thoughts and advice below.
Hadn’t thought about linking back to my older posts. Great idea! Good to learn about the pyschology of color, too. Thank you!
My pleasure Jill. Linking back to your older blog posts will give your visitors more to read through, and color psychology is a big component towards getting someone to perform the desired action on your blog (subscribe, buy a product, etc).
Thanks for a nice post, Marc. I like how you included your headline in the image at the top of the blog so I could see what you were talking about as well as read about it!
Thank you Kathryn. I recently started to include the headlines in the image because people know what the blog post is about even if they skip the title. In addition, if the picture gets shared on Pinterest or another social network, people know exactly what the blog post is going to be about.