GrammarPhile Blog

5 Tips to Get and Keep Your Readers’ Attention

I have less than 8.25 seconds to convince you to keep reading. Less than 8.25 seconds before you click away. Less than 8.25 seconds before you…FOR THE LOVE OF PETE, COME BACK!

When it comes to our collective attention span, we’ve been beaten out by goldfish.

For all the writers out there, you feel my pain. In the age of endless distraction, writing about a boring topic seems worse than pointless. It’s like having someone hand you a coffin and saying, “Lie down in this and be lively.”

We get it. We’re a proofreading company, for gosh sake. Every time we talk about our work at a dinner party, we’re never invited back.

We know the stumbling blocks (or is it “crocks”), the most effective ways to make your readers roll their eyes, groan, and glaze over. But because we read and read and read, we also know the springboards—the approaches and tricks and strategies that make a huge difference in getting and keeping the attention of your goldfish…ahem…audience.

When you write about a niche or an industry on an ongoing basis, it’s inevitable that you’ll eventually find yourself in a situation where you’ll need to write about something that others have already covered ad nauseum. You’ll want to write about trending or worn-out topics to focus on search engine optimization (SEO), to demonstrate your thought leadership, and to continue to write about things your audiences care about. But you’ll also want to avoid simply regurgitating what everyone else is writing about, because that will only disengage your audience.

Here are some things you can do when writing about trending or worn out topics, to keep your writing more stimulating and your audiences engaged.

Have you ever been tasked with writing something that was so mundane you caught yourself drifting off to sleep while writing? Looming deadlines or not, boring topics can be difficult to write about and can be very tedious. Truly, how interesting can you really make a white paper on things like office supplies or manufacturing equipment?

Well, with the right mindset, you can make any topic interesting. That’s right—any topic. The real trick when writing about a seemingly boring topic is to look at the topic as an opportunity to let your mind wander, do some digging, and uncover something unique about something that is typically mundane.