Why some things we write get more responses?
Useful questioning starter words
In English composition writing, teachers usually asked pupils to use 5Ws and 1H to write their stories. This technique can be used in our article to have the thought provoking effect.
Any questions that start with ‘where’, ‘when’, ‘who’, ‘why’, ‘what’ and ‘how’ usually get better responses.
Starters like would and should actually limit the responses to ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ which are considered as close ended questions.
Examples for comparison:-
How do you think we can solve the problem? (Open ended)
Should we do it this way? (Close ended)
Use of Persuasive Words
Gregory Ciotti did a research and concluded some top persuasive words in English. Below are just my thoughts about the words.
Free: Whenever you see the word ‘free’, you would naturally have an interest in it regardless of what it is. When you see the word ‘free steem’, you probably will take a look to find out more.
Because: This word does provide a reason for why you are claiming a certain issue. It gives readers your point of view and how you support it. Lousy reasons may result in negative outcome but having good concrete evidence will be a good selling point of your claim.
You: Whenever the use of ‘you’, I feel that you are getting the readers to be involved in your article and they tend to imagine themselves in the situation.
Instantly: Words like quickly, speedily etc are triggers that cause the mid-brain activity. This naturally creates the speed of an incident or event.
Avoid adjectives that hinders mental images
We are so used to using adjectives taught by our teachers and it would be hard to change.
Imagine if I say ‘John pokes a pencil into his nose.’ The image appears a lot faster than ‘John pokes a pencil recklessly into his nose.’ The adjective instead of helping, it slows down the brain to create the immediate image. I feel that the impact reduces. To keep a reader engage in our article, we should have a good trail that has one leads to another to create a great mental image of what we are trying to describe.
Write out your imagine picture of what you are trying to express of views or issues and reread to see whether it paints the mental image easily when you are in the position of a reader.
Keeping words simple and direct without fanciful adjectives will paint an image more immediately if you have a point to emphasize.
Ratio of 3 to 1 for constructive conversation
Andrew Newberg’s research shows that negative statements have a very adverse effect to our brain. By make three positive comments for every negative statement made and for every negative point give 3 positive points as a counter is a relatively good benchmark resulting a great opportunity for a more constructive conversation with a better conclusion. In simple, make it a ratio of 3 to 1 as a simple guide.
Disclaimer: I do not claim to an expert in persuasive words. This post is created based on other article reading including my own personal view in it. I am not responsible for any consequences as a result of this article. You will need to do further research on your own.
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This is great, thank you for all the great tips!
Makes me wonder, if I have been making any of these mistakes in my past posts?
Regardless, I will be sure to employ these techniques in my future content.
Thanks for the supportive comment. Most of these ideas came from different researchers. I basically included my reflection about these research in this post. I am glad that you find it useful.
yeah... need catchy words and titles... and meat in the article's body and an explosive conclusion
Yes. Catchy title attracts people to start reading. This was in my other articles. Thanks for always supporting my posts.
Great information, really made me go back to look at some of the titles to my blog posts. Will try some of the tips to see if the results make much of a difference. Seems to me until you gain a following or us bots most post go unseen but we'll see.
Hope that it helps. This post is mainly focusing on the way content is being formulated. I have written things about title of post before in my other article. Thanks for visiting my post again!