One of the most effective ways to build rapport with your blog readers is to adopt a more conversational tone in your blog posts. However, there is a lot more to being conversational outside of adopting a first person perspective, or directly addressing the readers. If these two examples sum up your idea on how to write a conversational blog post, here are 5 tips for making your blog posts more conversational.
1. Stop trying to write for everyone
This is a very important advice, even if you’re not trying to adopt a more conversational tone. The reason is if you keep trying to write as if you’re talking to a group of people, chances are you’re only going to churn out boring text that is so generic that it’s not going to catch anybody’s attention.
In order to adopt a more conversational bent, try to imagine the kind of reader that you really want to attract as your regular reader, and then write your post with that person in mind. The resulting blog post will cater to all the readers that fall into that demographic, or basically all the readers that you are interested in attracting. The rest won’t bother with your blog anyway.
2. Use shorter sentences
A conversational blog post reads like the writer is talking directly to you. And when you talk, you have to leave some room for breathing. You can capture this same feeling through text by using shorter sentences, which allow room for breathing. When in doubt, try reading your post aloud. If you find yourself stopping midsentence just to catch your breath, you need to rewrite.
3. Use an active voice
Instead of ‘I’m appreciated by my parents,’ use ‘My parents appreciate me.’ Using a passive voice makes your sentences run longer than necessary, which is not conducive to a conversational post. Additionally, passive voices makes everything read like an academic essay or a business report.
4. Use contractions
Instead of I am, write I’m. Instead of They will, write They’ll, instead of Should not, write Shouldn’t – and so on and so forth. Using contractions makes your sentences easier to read and engaging. They also prevent the text from being too formal. Just make sure you don’t fall into the common grammar mistakes that arise from contractions, such as mistaking Your with You’re.
5. Include questions addressed to the reader
Have you ever seen a person who talks all the time but doesn’t let you chime in? If it’s just a person droning on and on about something and then leaving, then it’s not much of a conversation, is it? So, you leave room in your text for the reader to chime in. Leave things hanging by asking questions and then let the reader come to the conclusion on his/her own mind. A conversational blog post isn’t about forcing statements down the reader’s throat. Instead, it provides information and lets the reader come to a conclusion whether he agrees with you or not.
Image credit: NOGRAN s.r.o. on flickr and reproduced under Creative Commons 2.0[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]https://writingtipsoasis.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/hv1.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Hiten Vyas is the Founder and Managing Editor of eBooks India. He is also a prolific eBook writer with over 25 titles to his name.[/author_info] [/author]