5 Ways to Get People to Click (and Read) Content

After working in marketing for a little while, you start to think differently. The other night I was scrolling through my Facebook feed and saw an interesting article. Pause. Interesting article. What made it interesting? I had to stop and think about it, because I am my own audience, and if I know what interests my own brain, I can understand what interests my audience.

So what did I notice first?

I noticed the image and the title.

Scroll. Scroll. Scr - Oh, cool image. Interesting title. Then I started reading the description. (You know, the little preview below the title). If those three things aren't eye-catching, well-written and to the point, I'm not going to give that ever coveted "click." 

Everything looks great! Click.

I continued through the article, shamelessly skimming, reading headers and... a little phrase stuck out:

Left all by itself, with a convenient option to Tweet! It's as if the author validated their own brilliance by suggesting that this one sentence would stand alone quite well on your Twitter feed. Hah! That's great marketing.

But I never would've read that phrase without the sweet headers.

They helped me through the content, letting me know what was going on in each paragraph. I'm not likely toread an entire paragraph unless it's of specific interest to me, and if I don't know what it's about at a glance, it goes unread.

Here's an interesting question, though.

What was the last thing I read?

I read they very last header, of course. We all want the chance to write a profound last sentence, and that's a worthy goal. But, you may consider tying that into your final header. Odds are, that's what will be read. However, if you do a fantastical job with that header, the idea is that they'll also read your short closing paragraph. Wouldn't that be great?