“Tell us about yourself.”

Every single one of us would have encountered this question at least once in our life. Either for a job interview or college admissions.

You have more or less 8 seconds to deliver an answer that proves your worth, aka your elevator pitch.

Your blog Introduction is your blog’s elevator pitch.

Are you intrigued? Give us 5 minutes of your time. We promise you will walk out ready to ace your introduction with ten actionable steps.

1) One Line Openers 

Scroll up. See what we did? We used short, digestible, one-line openers.

The advantage? You did not lose your attention span. You wanted to know what is next.

Your curiosity got the better of you, and before you know it, you are deep into the article.

Breaking up sentences helps you convey more information to your audience without overwhelming them. Hence we avoid a textbook approach. It is no secret we all hate reading our textbooks.

2) Weird Them Out

Yep, you heard me right. Let me put it in perspective for you.

A – “There are a lot of fliers, posters advertising many different things. But do they all convince you to buy them? No. We will help you stand out from the crowd and build a unique campaign.”

B – “Dumb. Stupid. Irrelevant. That is how we describe most marketing campaigns. Trash is what they are. You do not want to bore your audience to tears, do you? Then listen to what we have to say!”

Which one had the most impact? Is it B? Yeah, We thought so. 

Honestly, no one expects such opening statements. And when you do see them, you think it is weird. You want to read the whole article. I rest my case.

3) Do Not Repeat Yourself.

We all have a friend like this. Their monotone, repetitive monologue grates on your nerves, but you do not want to hurt their feelings by telling them.

Well, Your audience is not that kind. You post repetitive points in your introduction, tand they will switch websites within a heartbeat.

Write concise, to the point, catchy introductions, and you should be good to go. Oh, Do not forget to pack a punch in your intros. It keeps things interesting.

4) Write in the Second Person.

Spewing out facts is not going to have the desired impact. Your blog should be like a two-way conversation between you and your audience.

How to achieve that? Use words like “you” Humanize them. Do not address your audience as if they are one in a million. Address their problems, make it personal!

5) Add Emotional Marketing Value (EMV)

Did you know that the English language has approximately 20% EMV words? 

What is EMV? They are a bunch of words that you commonly throw around in your day-to-day life that, when placed in an introduction evokes emotion in the reader. No biggie!

What emotion do you require out of your audience? FOMO? Ecstasy? Shock? Figure that out first.

Once the desired emotion is finalized, incorporate EMV words and make them experience that emotion.

Easy-peasy!

6) Headline Analysis

“Okay genius, I wrote a heading and introduction that sounds empathetic to me. How do I know it conveys the same feelings to my audience?”

That is what you thought, right? Do not worry. We got you! 

CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer to the rescue!

Just copy, paste your headline and introduction separately into this tool, et voila, you get a detailed analysis of the EMV value of your text. Furthermore, It pinpoints the emotion that your text conveys.

What is more? All this is for free! Yep, you heard us right. Set up a free account, et voila, your problems are sorted out.

7) Keep Editing

The first impression is the best impression, but a first copy is not necessarily your best copy.

Your first copy might sound lame on your first cup of coffee. Do not worry. This is nothing a caffeinated, motivated, and diligent writer like you cannot fix.

On the upper side, after four rounds of edit, you might have outdone yourself. So do not shy away from producing your best work.

8) Achieve The Perfect Word Balance 

CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer says that you need 20-30% common, 10-20% uncommon, 10-15% emotional, and one power word for a perfect Headline and Introduction.

Common and uncommon words are as the name suggests. They add substance to your introduction.

Emotional words induce positive or negative emotions in the reader.

Power words are the icing on the cake, and add the oomph factor to your introduction.

9) Say A Story

Every other blog we come across, we see people being too sales-y. We understand the need to market your blog, but the conventional persuasions are not working anymore.

The reason? Consumers these days are more intelligent and vigilant. They can spot a salesperson from miles away and immediately feel repelled.

The solution? Bring their emotions into play. One thing that never changes is the emotional bonding people have towards a brand that leads to loyalty.

What better way to reel their emotions than a good old story? Not everyone likes to be sold to, but everyone appreciates a good story. 

10) Compounding Effect

Experiencing writer’s block more often? Tonnes of caffeine not helping? What do you do to overcome this?

Let me guess your thought stream after you read the above lines. Either you have an answer for the questions I posed, or you are wondering how anyone overcomes this.

What will be your probable next step? If you are type 1, you will read more to find if we wrote the same thing as you thought. If you are type 2, you would want to read more to find answers.

Either way, you read the whole blog! 

Posing consecutive questions is referred to as the compounding effect, where we build your curiosity and make sure you read what we have to say.

To sum up…

For an interesting introduction, you do not have to employ all these strategies. You can find the perfect mix and match of all these strategies and create an introduction that hooks your readers.