Ambling alongside the technical elements of blogging for the semantic web we find human traits. We may not recognise them at first; but that's because we're looking the wrong way.
That's understandable. With SEO checklists, plagiarism detection and NLP to test, bloggers can overlook the humanity in their craft.
That oversight risks connecting their audience with the article's message. To avert that failure, we must remember the power of emotion, subconscious or cognitive, as we slap the digital ink onto our word processor.
Moreover, eliciting human reaction should drive our motivation to write in the first place.
Me and you and a blog that's pooh
Many bloggers miss their mark by tailoring the human elements of writing solely to their readership. That is, if they realise such traits exist at all.
Your readers deserve, nay, demand your singular focus when composing their article. That's fair enough. The benefits for them, your undying empathy and the solution to their life's catalogue of ills should bulge out the veins of your content's DNA.
While that's commendable, what many bloggers don't see is the flip side. Your copy is as much about you, the author, as it is your audience. You must make that distinction before you even dare hope to win over anything more than passive traffic.
You have a voice as unique in your copy as the one that commits your acoustic fingerprint to indelible audio. "You" must shine through in every sentence of your copy.
Readers are hungry; feed the beast
Take, for example, five blog posts cascading down someone's feed reader. Each post headline purports revelations about the same story.
From those five, 90% of readers will opt for the author whose tone they remember enjoying reading last time. The news is unlikely to differ. Through previous posts of the author's the reader has related to, an emotional connection pre-exists. It's this connection that drives the eventual click-through.
Of the remaining 10%, they'll visit a blog because:
- of curiosity;
- the killer headline;
- the domain is a (pre-judged) trustworthy source.
Even then, any established authority is relative to that domain's authors. This trust, in a fashion, has come from topical opinion expressed via the author's 'voice'.
So, whichever way you look to attract visitors to your content, you, the author, are pivotal in the reader's decision-making process.
The attached article relates 5 qualities top bloggers have in common. It has little to do with tech-savvy application of structured mark-up. There's even less about on-page format.
It is about attitude. First, towards getting the job done. Second, how copywriters address their subject and their target audience. Enjoy » http://ow.ly/KdSww
image: Peter Lloyd, unsplash
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