Article Marketing Secrets: How to Write a Good Introduction That Holds Your Reader’s Interest
In my previous posts in the Article Marketing Secrets series we covered the keyword, and the importance of taking time to do research. We also considered what the goal of your article title should be and how to achieve that goal.
Today we’re moving on to the Article Body, but first we’ll focus on the Introduction. You may wonder why  that’s necessary since the introduction is a part of the body.
The main reason is: Now that you’ve grabbed your reader’s attention with your dynamic title you want to hold his or her attention! For convenience, I'll just use ‘her or she.' Here are three ways you can can write a good introduction that holds your reader's interest.
1.           Your introduction should lead the reader into the actual article and act as a transition point to take the reader from your article title to reading the article content.
2.           The introduction is the place to pre-sell your reader on the rest of the article. An effective way to do this is to ask a question? When you ask a question you arouse your reader's curiosity and get her involved. She either will have an immediate opinion, based on your question, or have no clue. In either case she is now more curious to read what your opinions are on the topic and decide if it agrees or disagrees with her beliefs.
3.           Your introduction should be short and to the point. It may be a summary of the overall article, or you may choose to state the points you will be covering in the article and expand on each point in the body of the article.
I hope that through these posts you have been following the Article Marketing Secrets to improve or enhance your article marketing skills. As I've been applying them and correcting where I made mistakes or omissions in the past, I've seen improved results in my article marketing strategy. They do make a difference in the results you can expect from your articles, and will definitely have an impact on your click-through-rate (CTR).
What comes next? In my next post we’ll discuss the Article Body itself. See you then, and in the meantime, please share your thoughts.
Excellent points! I like to summarize the article in the opening paragraph, perhaps making three or four points, then expand on those points in the body, then summarize again for the close. In other words tell them what you’re going to tell them; tell them; then tell them what you told them.
Works like a charm, and the writing is so much easier when you follow a plan.
Thanks for the great reminder!
1Hi Cindy, Thanks for stopping by and sharing your thoughts. I like the point you made that ‘the writing is so much easier when you follow a plan.’ The first course I did when I started my online business was an Article Marketing course and we were encouraged to use templates as they helped to make writing articles easier. I did that for a while then forgot about them but you just reminded us of the value of doing that – have a plan or use templates. Love the way you describe the steps!
2Another list of awesome tips, Yvonne!
The “intro” to an article or blog post is just as important (and hopefully, impactful) as a late-night talk show host’s monologue!
Have you ever seen David Letterman or Jay Leno come out on stage and “bomb”? Yep. It’s happened. They simply didn’t have a good enough introduction.
The same principle holds true for public speaking engagements and creating video presentations.
Darn that intro! It can be scary and it holds a lot of weight. 🙂
3The introduction can definitely make or break the rest of the delivery, Melanie; and if it happens to TV personalities who do this daily, how much more we, who are not necessarily professional writers (and we don’t need to be), have to be sure to work at it constantly! You made a good point about video presentations as well. They too need a good introduction or the viewer will just click off. Note to self as I have a goal of doing 2 videos this month 🙂
4I write blogs and have not considered putting an introduction, I just get to the point. Perhaps I need to rethink this.
5Loved your first video, Yvonne, and can’t wait to view the next two! You’re my (video) hero. 🙂
6Thank you for this amazing article. I really enjoyed reading it. Thank you for writing and sharing it with us. Keep up the good work!
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