Cailin Riley Books

I looked back at when I wrote my first blog post on this site and got a zap of shock: I wrote my first post in September of 2022!

2022 seems like ages ago. I hadn’t met my husband yet and was still getting used to living and working in a new state. I also couldn’t have begun to imagine where my career would take me, and how my first book would eventually lead me to publishing THREE.

To kind of celebrate my start in the blogging world, I thought I’d give a short crash course on writing engaging blog posts. My hope is that these five tips will be helpful for all writers, but especially beginners. While there isn’t a hard-set way to successfully engage an audience, I’ve had plenty of time to try different tactics and here is what has worked well for me:

Pick a central theme or purpose for the post and stick to it.

All writing is better when it focuses on a central topic. Make sure each post hinges on one thought or message and that all supporting content aligns with that message.

Consider sharing content in easily digestible ways like short paragraphs with headers, or lists and bullet points.

I have found that many people digest information easier when it is broken down into smaller pieces. That’s why, for many of my posts, you’ll notice that I use bullet points, lists or headers to separate ideas. You can also play with breaking up content by including GIFS or images in between paragraphs.

Lead with the important stuff.

We all have short attention spans these days, so if you want to keep your audience interested, don’t bury the lede. This means leading each post with the most important information; tell your readers up front what they will learn from reading the post.

Ask questions to try to engage your readers.

I like to think of my blog posts as conversation starters. Even though a lot of my posts are meant to be educational in nature, I want to hear from my readers. That’s why I try to end many of my posts with questions to entice readers to leave comments and engage. It shows you want them to be a part of the conversation!

Research what your readers want to see.

People read what interests them. If you haven’t been blogging for long, check out other bloggers’ posts to see what topics seem to gather the most engagement. If you’ve been blogging for awhile, you can look at your analytics to see which of your posts have been popular. You can also draw in more eyes by titling your posts in ways that match how people search online. For example, if you write a post about books by Colleen Hoover, you might tile your post, “A Guide to Colleen Hoover’s Best Books.”