How to Create Engaging Articles that Hook and Convert Readers

When you click on play to watch a new movie, the expectation is to find some exciting content inside. But what if you start watching and the scenes fail to deliver on this expectation? What do you do?

You close it immediately and watch something else, right?

This is the same way readers feel when they open a blog article and find the content boring.

Today’s readers know that there are tons of articles on the internet that can answer their questions. As such, they don’t have the time to sit and read through a boring one.

Once they open a blog article and find it drab, they just press the back button and check the next post.

Unfortunately, as a blogger or website owner, that doesn’t bode well for business. You probably created that post to gain traffic so that Google can pay you some AdSense money, or you have an affiliate product you’re trying to promote with it.

Which means you need people to finish reading it.

So, what can you do to your posts to make sure people open them and read until the end?

It’s very simple: include HOOKS at strategic locations in the content!

There are as many kinds of hooks as there are kinds of content. There are headline hooks, introduction hooks, body of text hooks, and so much more.

From the outside, a headline-hook is what will make someone click on your post. Once in, an introduction-hook is what will keep them reading. As they continue, relevant hooks within the body of the text are what will guide them through to the article’s end.

Hooks within the body of the text can come in the form of quizzes, polls, sliders, images, calculators, questions, mysteries, discoveries, or anything you think will whet reader’s appetite ahead of the next block of text.

 

If I’m to take a guess, I’d say the reason you’re here reading this article is that the title captivated you.

Imagine if I had used a headline like “How to create articles.” Do you think you would have clicked on the post? Maybe, maybe not!

But with the headline used here, the chances are high that readers will want to check the article out. After all, who doesn’t want to hook their readers? Who doesn’t want to convert them?

How to come up with catchy article headlines that hook readers

• Use Melanie Duncan’s 4U formula. The 4U formula instructs you to make your headline “useful, urgent, unique, and ultra-specific.” When you put these four elements together, you’ll come up with better headlines every time.

USEFUL

The first element of the 4U formula is “usefulness,” which means choosing a headline that appears “useful” to the target audience.

This is important because readers will only click on headlines that solve their problems.

Think about the articles you click on when you’re scrolling through Facebook or checking your emails in the morning. Likely the ones that pique your interest are the ones that offer something useful to YOU!

How can you make your headline appear useful to readers? All you have to do is address their biggest challenges!

Understanding what will be useful to your audience is part of understanding who they are and what they want. It meets them where they are, identifying a problem they may be experiencing or a solution they may be looking for.

For example, let’s say you run a business blog.

Some of the problems these readers might have are “how to pitch to clients/investors, how to convince customers, how to market new products,” and so on. These problems are what you want to make your headlines about.

For example:

• Win Investors Over With These 7 Tips

• How to Create Catchy PowerPoint Presentations That Convert

Look at some other examples of useful headlines:

• Create Professional Client Proposals in Minutes
• How to Clean Your Microfiber Sofa Without Water
  
• Measure Fractions of an Egg for Recipes with a Kitchen Scale
  
• How to Land Your Dream Job

Anybody who finds these headlines and has the problems highlighted within them will surely click on them.

URGENT

Once you’ve brainstormed headlines with the potential to appear useful to readers, the next thing is to include an element of urgency so that those readers can be compelled into clicking.

A great example of this comes from local news teasers on TV. They say things like, “This common household chemical kills thousands of children every year. Learn more at 11.”

Well, any self-respecting adult who has children in their life is going to want to know what that common household chemical is! It becomes urgent for them to tune in and find out—the same way it would be urgent for us to click and read.

You can also look at urgency from the angle of FOMO (fear of missing out). If you insert urgency into your headlines, readers will catch the impression that they might miss out on whatever is locked within that article. To prevent that from happening, they will click on the article.

Examples of Urgent Headlines:

• Avoid THIS Fashion Faux Pas (Worse Than Wearing White at a Wedding)
  
• This is How Homeowners Are Getting Refinancing in 2021
  
• There Are ONLY 3 Ways to Make a Woman Notice You
  
• Check Out These Latest Fashion Trends Before
• They Become Outdated
  
• Train Your Puppy to Potty Outside in 7 Days
  
• 7 Newly-Developed Tricks People Are Using to Repay Their Mortgage Right Now

Note: Of the four Us, urgency is the trickiest to use and the one that might not always be applicable to your topic. So if you’re going to leave one out, it should be this one.

UNIQUE

People like a novelty. Whenever you Google a topic, you get a selection of articles, blog posts, or websites on the same topic. What makes you choose one over the other? Chances are it’s the choice of words!

When people find rare, hooky, and uncommon words in headlines, they get drawn to them. Look at these two headline examples, and tell me which one you’d click if you found both in a search result.

• How to Ask Customers For Referrals Without Sounding Like a Slimeball
• 7 Ways to Get More Referrals

Of course, you’ll be drawn to the first topic because of the word “slimeball.” Obviously, nobody wants to be a slimeball in their business!

Anything you can do to make your headline unique will help it to stand out in an oversaturated digital world.

Examples of Unusual Headlines:

• Sea Bunnies? People Are Going Nuts for Cute Sea Slug
  
• 10 Beautiful Flowers that Kill in Horrifying Ways
  
• Well-Endowed Fleas Causing Headaches for UK Truck Drivers
  
• 10 Romantic Messages to Wow Your Significant Other
  
• 25 “Instagram Made Me Buy It” Products You Shouldn’t Sleep On

ULTRA-SPECIFIC

Ever wondered why you see so many headlines with numbers in them? It’s because numbers are one way to get ultra-specific.

• 7 Common Foods You Should Never Eat
• 15 Genius Ways to Impress Your Boss Without Even Trying
• 70 At-Home Date Night Ideas To Try Tonight!

This kind of headline is popular because it works. We as readers like the specificity of knowing exactly what we’re going to get. The best headlines also go beyond that to be even more specific. They’re not just foods you shouldn’t eat, but common foods. Not just date night ideas, but at-home date night ideas. (Notice the urgency in these as well.) Again, understanding what will appeal to your audience is about understanding your audience themselves.

Other Examples of Ultra-Specific Headlines:

• 78 New Tools for Online Professionals
  
• How to Easily Analyze the Social Activities of Your Competitors
  
• Your Definitive Guide to the Best Biscuits for Dunking in Tea
• Use the guide format/step-by-step headlines

Apart from Melanie’s suggestions, using the ‘guide’ format for your headlines is also a good idea. People need help with their problems, and that’s why they’re searching online. As such, when they see a post that promises to help them in a step-by-step format, they are often more likely to click on it than a regular ‘tips for’, ‘ways to’, or ‘how to’ format.

A good way to use the guide/step-by-step headline format is the Neil Patel approach:

“The (Adjective) Guide to (ultra-specific Topic)”

Be careful about how you phrase the contents of the blanks, though. Use unusual/unique words where you can and try to be ultra-specific.

For example, ‘A Complete Step-by-Step Guide to Launching an Affiliate Marketing Business.’

• Use words that appeal to readers’ curiosity

Another way to come up with headlines is to use words that appeal to readers’ curiosity— that is, words like ‘secrets,’ ‘little known,’ ‘mystery,’ ‘discovery,’ etc. These kinds of words offer insider information, which readers will feel are still unknown to the general public. Out of curiosity, they will want to find out before others do.

A title like “XYZ Little-Known Methods to Do (Blank)” focuses on the idea that if the methods in your post are little-known, readers will have an advantage over people who don’t know about them yet.

You can also pique readers’ curiosity with a headline like “XYZ Secrets of (Blank).” Everyone will want to know the secret. Who doesn’t want insider information?

• Use bizarre headlines

Sometimes, it makes sense to use bizarre headlines. When people see them, they’ll be curious to find out what is in the article. These kinds of headlines usually work best if you bust a myth.

A good example is ‘How to get rich without working or doing anything or something like Forbes’ bizarre headline that claims ‘Gold is better and more profitable than Bitcoin right now.’

General Headline Ideas

For the benefit of those who may be looking for headline templates to use when writing articles, here’s a figure highlighting some of the most engaging headlines used on Facebook.

I know you’re looking for headlines for blogs, but these can work too. Internet users have the tendency to behave in a similar fashion across multiple channels, meaning that, if they’re finding these titles catchy on Facebook, chances are they’ll find them catchy on your blog too.

Source

Use this as a reference when you’re crafting your own headlines.

While trying to create your click-worthy headline, it is important not to forget Google SEO, which is why CXL suggested that the highest-converting headlines are the ones with between 16 and 18 words.

Try to keep your headlines within this range for the best results.

Once your headline brings people in, it’s your intro that determines whether they stay to read the rest of the article or just click off.

Obviously, there are lots of ways to write an introduction. But the best, most recommended format is using the AIDA formula.

AIDA FORMULA FOR ARTICLE INTROS

As coined by the American businessman, E. St. Elmo Lewis, in 1898, AIDA stands for

• Attention
  
• Interest
  
• Desire
  
• Action

In the AIDA world, your article intro must be compromised of four hooky lines—one for each of the elements of AIDA.

A: Attention.

Grab the reader’s attention with an interesting fact, little-known secret, brand-new bit of information, story, captivating infographic, statistic, or startling statement about their problem.

In general, you can draw attention within the beginning of an article or any other form of content by:

• Asking a question the reader will find relatable.
• Citing an interesting statistic or piece of data that relates to the topic.
• Using a case study that proves your point.
• Making a bold statement like “I know you’ve been struggling to pay your rent.”
• Addressing the reader right away by using words like “You”. An example can be something like, “Let no one tell you otherwise, you’re a born champion.”

Another way to grab readers’ attention with your intro’s first line is via polls, quizzes, questions, personality tests, or amazing discoveries.

Say you’re creating an article about sports betting. You begin the article with the line:

“Are you tired of losing in sports betting? Take the quiz below to find out whether you’ll win your next bets.”

Irrespective of the reader’s mood, he or she will click that quiz to find out their fate.

Note: In case you’re wondering, it’s now very easy to add quizzes, polls, sliders, mystery questions, etc. into your articles. Tools like ex.co, involve.me, and riddle.com let you do that.

As an alternative to quizzes, you can launch your article with an attention-grabbing poll like:

“70% of people who eat cereals every day gain 10 pounds. Enter your favorite meal into the poll box below to find out how many pounds of weight you’re gaining.” This kind of poll-style intro works well for a weight loss article.

Other examples of articles where polls were used to grab attention:

This last image poll can work for an article about savings, debts, loans, investment, etc.

Of course, in order to use polls, quizzes, or questions as your intro, you’ll need to tailor them to suit the topic of your article.

I: Interest.

Here is where you let readers know that you understand their problem. When someone feels like you understand their situation, they’re more likely to listen to you.

To cultivate readers’ interest, you can do some of the following things:

• Add an exciting statistic about the topic that backs up your point and gives the reader food for thought. For an article about student loan debt, you could write: “The Wall Street Journal said some time ago that xx% of students who have student loan debt are struggling to keep up with life.” This tells the reader that they’re not alone and that you understand just how great their battle is.
• Source a graph or chart that has relevant data on the topic.
• Make bold statements about readers’ problems. For an article about sleep deficiency, you could say, “Not getting enough sleep is now a common problem in the world.”
• Use information, persuasion techniques, and as much proof as you can find to hold the reader’s attention.
• Tell a personal story relating to the topic.

With Interest, the idea is to let readers see that you understand their pain points and have a plausible solution for them.

For example, let’s say you’re writing an article about “how to increase sales online.”

Your interest line can be something like, “In my experience with business owners, I’ve come to realize that many are reluctant to invest heavily in SEO. According to Entrepreneur Magazine, SEO is one of the fastest ways to increase sales online. Luckily for business owners, though, it is not the only trick in the bag.”

A reader who’s been reluctant to spend on SEO will easily relate to this line and will want to find out what other methods exist to increase sales online. This will ultimately make him jump to line three of your post.

D: Desire.

Line three is where you build the reader’s desire for the solution your article aims to provide.

If Attention served to hook readers and Interest served to prepare their minds for your solution, then the third line should be about discussing this solution.

For example, if your article is about a product, this is the line where you talk directly about the product—not its features, but its benefits. Remember, it’s the benefits that will address readers’ problems, not the features.

But there are times when your article isn’t about a product. It could be an informative article like, “DIY tips for kitchen remodeling: How to paint kitchen cabinets.”

In this case, you don’t have a product to discuss. So, what do you do?

Show them proof of how someone has benefited from the tips in the article.

You can say things like, “In fact, a certain homeowner in Melbourne spent just $100 on kitchen DIY materials and now has his dream kitchen.”Of course, you’ll have to follow this up with picture proof. If you don’t have proof of anyone who has directly benefited from the points in the article, you can quote a fact from a reputable website like Forbes, saying something like, “According to Forbes, homeowners who follow online kitchen DIY tips always save themselves a thousand bucks.”

This line alone is enough to make any homeowner interested in learning about kitchen DIY tips because he too wants to save $1000.

A: Action.

This is the part that tells the reader what action to take next.

Should they continue reading the article? If so, writers use phrases like “Keep reading to find out,” “Let’s find out,” “Let’s get started,” etc.

Should they click through to another article page to learn more, or a product page to make a purchase? This is where writers use phrases like “Click here to learn more,” “Follow this link to find out about XXX,” etc.

As an example for our kitchen cabinet DIY tips, and Action line can come across like this:

“Keep reading to find out the simple 5-step process to get your kitchen looking like a million bucks.”

Sometimes, in order to enhance a reader’s experience and further hook them, you can incorporate items like tables of contents, a calculator, polls, quizzes, or personality tests.

For example, let’s say you have a personal injury law firm, and you’re writing an article about tips readers can use to get compensation if they’re ever involved in an accident.

When you’re done with Attention, Desire, and Interest, you can request an Action from them by saying, “Before continuing to our tips for claiming compensation, use the calculator below to find out how much money you’re likely to get from a car accident lawsuit.”

Obviously, anybody reading this kind of article will go through with that action. Inside the calculator, you may request readers’ email addresses, which is one way to build your email list.

But the real reason for asking readers to take this action is to get them engaged with the article. It’s like an interactive classroom where the teacher briefly stops to ask for the student’s opinion on something before continuing with the lecture.

Just this act of getting a reader to do something on the page will make them feel like there’s someone on the other end of the article, conversing with them.

Here is an example of an article where a calculator is incorporated with the Action line:

To create niche-specific calculators, polls, or quizzes for articles, you can use tools like ex.co, involve.me, or riddle.com.

After the introduction, the main body of the text follows.

I believe you already know how to write, organize, and neatly present the body of an article. If you don’t, I suggest you look up tips online. This is important because none of your attempts to hook readers will work if you provide flawed information in your article, or if your article arrangement doesn’t look pleasing to the eye.

That said, in order to hook readers within the main body of text, there are two tactics you’re going to use.

One is the power of your content, and the other is the power of external tools.

By the power of your content, we mean the details of your article, as well as its arrangement.

As for the power of external tools, we’ll show you how to take advantage of that in the next section of this post. But for now, we’re going to show you how to use your content to hook readers.

To hook readers with your article’s content, you need to present your solutions in a very interesting and orderly manner.

That is, every word you write and the way you arrange the words have to be tailored to spark something in the mind of the reader.

So, how do you do this?

1. Begin with the most important facts first

If you intend to keep readers hooked as they glide through the main body of text, then the best thing is to start each section of the main body with an attention-grabbing line—in this case, an important fact.

For example, let’s say you’re writing an article about the 7 ways to woo a lady. For each of the seven items, begin by stating facts that readers may find intriguing.

Don’t use drab words and boring intros. Instead, begin each item with lines that will get readers glued to their screens.

Still on the example above, let’s say one of the seven items you intend to discuss is “being genuine.” And then you begin like this:

“We live in a world where being genuine has become such a rare quality.” Honestly speaking, this line isn’t really going to hook many people.

How about this for a section intro: “Did you know some women can tell real emotion from fake just by staring into your eyes?”

The difference between the two lines is that one started off drab, and the other started with an intriguing fact.

2. Make your text thorough but succinct

The first few sentences need to answer questions like “who, what, where, when, why, and how.” Remember that most people will not read more than 250 words before they start to skim. Therefore, you need to give them all the information they need as quickly as possible.

Although it needs to be thorough, your content must still be presented succinctly if you want to engage readers. To make that happen, we suggest:

• Making use of subheadings. Subheadings help you to break a large block of text into smaller pieces, thereby making it easier for readers to consume. For each of your articles, always think of how you can break your thoughts and opinions into a set of subheadings.
• Using bullet points. Besides subheadings, bullet points are another tool that makes reading easier. Instead of big blocks of text, bullet points help you to break your thoughts and opinions into short, concise lines.

3. Making surprising statements across the sections.

Starting each section of your piece with a controversial or unexpected statement will encourage your audience to keep reading, as they anticipate seeing how you’ll prove your statement.

As you begin writing each section of your article, think of ways you can slip in a controversial line or a surprising statement that will captivate readers and make them give reactions like “Really?” “Is that so?” “I doubt that,” “How sure are you?” “For real?” etc.

4. Use the active tense

If you want to engage your readers, making your content short and concise is non-negotiable. Luckily, you can easily improve your content length by using less of the passive tense and more of the active tense. Writing in the active tense helps you to use fewer words. For example, “Ghana was beaten by Brazil in last year’s Olympics…” takes longer to read than “Brazil beat Ghana at the last Olympics…”

5. Use the power of storytelling

Source

The fact alone is not enough to reel readers in. You need something personal that readers can easily relate to.

That’s why we read books, watch movies, binge-watch television shows, and keep up with reality and celebrity news. We want to know what comes next in the story.

Telling a story will help you connect with your audience. It can also improve your credibility on a subject.

For example, let’s say you’re writing a marketing blog. If you tell a story that happened during your personal certification training, your audience will realize you’re qualified and knowledgeable on the topic.

They are more likely to read what you have to say as opposed to reading content produced by someone who has never worked as a marketer in their life.

6. Communicate what’s new or different

When presenting your thoughts and facts, ask yourself: are they new and different? If they are not, chances are that readers might have seen or read them elsewhere. When that is the case, you can bet they won’t find your article engaging, because you are simply telling them what they already know.

This is why it’s important to do thorough research before writing any article so that you can come up with new and interesting facts that will hook readers.

7. Use visuals

So far, we’ve only been talking about written content. But user engagement is more than that. In fact, visuals rank atop written content when it comes to readers’ engagement.

That’s why we say your content isn’t complete without some traces of visuals—pictures, infographics, memes, videos, etc.

For example, see the rate at which blog writers have been incorporating visuals with their content over the past four years.

Reference: Orbitmedia.com

8. Use quotes

Thi >This is a hook where you begin your article with a quotation. The quotation could be from a famous person, but it doesn’t have to be. You can quote anyone if it connects to what you’re writing about.

If you write a piece on the topic of education you could begin with: “Nelson Mandela said, ‘Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.’”

If you want to use a quotation for a hook, make sure you quote the words exactly. Choose quotations where the words are striking, powerful, and/or memorable.

If the quote you use is striking in itself, you don’t have to worry about anything else because the quote will do the attention-grabbing for you.

Here are some of the most important external tools of engagement for articles:

• Slider (or flip card interaction)
• Polls
• Quiz
• Personality tests
• Calculator
• Mystery discoveries

Note: As earlier stated, you can use services like involve.me, riddle.com, outgrow.com, and ex.co to create and include any of these tools of engagement in your articles.

So how do you use these tools to improve engagement in articles?

Just place the appropriate one in a strategic location within your article.

Slider (flip card)

Where you would normally place ordinary images like graphs, infographics, or pictures, you can instead use a slider engagement tool. Sometimes, you can even use this tool to reduce the length of text in your article, while also engaging readers along the way.

See an example:

This article writer could easily have defined “far-sightedness” in a block of text or placed an image showing the definition. But he wanted an interactive and engaging article, so he placed a flip-card instead. This way, readers have to tap/click on one image to reveal the definition of far-sightedness hidden in another image.

Source: Ex.co

He caught readers’ attention with his catchy call-to-action, and then engaged them as they read through his article.

This is a good way to eliminate boredom from article reading. Instead of just sitting and reading through a big block of text, readers are taken through an interactive and engaging experience.

Additionally, it increases “dwell time” for your website, which will count for so much in the search engine ranking algorithms.

Polls

A poll is sampling or collection of opinions on a subject. You can use polls to engage your readers.

Of course, you’ll have to think of the right polls to add to your articles. But if you get them right, polls can help readers feel like they’re involved in a process, and as such, they will be better motivated to read an article to the end.

Here’s an example of how an article writer used a poll in their content about home cleaning:

“How clean is your house? Well, that depends on your cleaning personality. To one person, a few piles are no big deal as long as the toilet is clean. To someone else, piles mean mess, and mess isn’t okay. Neither is wrong—we all have our own style of cleanliness… for example:

Source: Ex.co

Imagine that you’re the reader of this article; wouldn’t you participate in that poll? Of course, you would. This is obviously a good way to keep readers engaged throughout a post.

Next time you write an article, think of how you too can fit a poll inside.

Quiz

A quiz is simply a test of knowledge. From a reader’s point of view, quizzes are exciting, engaging, and challenging.

Imagine that you write a football-related article, and somewhere within the body of text you fit a quiz like:

“Think you know so much about Cristiano Ronaldo? What is his favorite meal?”

Source: Ex.co

1. Avocado and cheese
2. Water and Cereals
3. CR7 is a vegetarian
4. Sliced potatoes and scrambled eggs
5. Pasta and Noodles

I can bet you that almost all of your readers would participate in this quiz. Not because they know Cristiano’s favorite meal, but because they know that if they’re wrong, the system will correct them. And just like that, they would know their hero’s favorite food.

For you as the writer, this sort of content interaction is good for engagement.

Personality tests

Personality tests serve to help readers understand how their personality relates to the topic of discussion in an article.

For example, let’s say you’re writing an article about skincare routines. You can fit a personality test somewhere in the body of the article to question readers on their daily habits, like how often they bathe, their choice of body soaps and creams, etc.

To encourage readers to participate in this test, you can add that their response to the test can help you prescribe the right cream for them.

Do you get the point?

Calculator

We’ve already covered calculators in the AIDA part of this article.

The point of adding calculators to articles is so that readers can get a better idea of the prices of goods, services, or other items.

By slipping a calculator into an article, you can switch the attention of a reader away from boring text and onto something more exciting.

Imagine you’re writing an article about mortgaging, and you slip in a mortgage calculator to help readers judge various mortgage packages. Psychologically, these readers will be compelled to engage with the rest of the article because they’ll feel like they’re learning so much.

Mystery discoveries

Another engagement tool you can include in your article is the “mystery discovery tool,” or the popular “Did you know?” line.

The idea here is to reveal astonishing news or an intriguing discovery that readers probably haven’t heard before.

When you insert this kind of item into your article at strategic locations, readers will go “wow,” “wow,” and “wow” as they continue to glide through the post.

You can bet they won’t hit the back button until they get to the article’s end because they don’t know what new discovery you might have for them.

To enhance the results of this tool, you can even put it into a flip-card interaction.

Source: Ex.co

On a final note, engaging your readers is the most difficult thing as a writer. However, it is not impossible.

The fact that you managed to read this post until the end shows that I’ve been able to hook you. If you’d like to do the same with your audience, try all the tips and tricks we’ve listed in this guide, and you’ll be fine.