Let’s admit, it doesn’t take much effort to pull in a crowd when you are writing interesting topics like make money online, blogging tips, online business, social media marketing and entertainment. The topic itself will almost automatically draw readers to your website. So there’s little wonder why there are so many websites dedicated to these topics.
But what if you have a website or are passionate about those err… more boring stuff? At least topics considered boring from the general public point of view. Topics like accounting, economics, law & legal matters and medical related. Those that the general public would not, under normal circumstances, give it much thought until they needed information on it.
Does this really mean that these boring topics are of little importance? Of course not. In fact, boring topics are sometimes more important than those more entertaining topics.
Why Write Boring Topics?
Why do some people write about boring topics? Well, there are many reasons and here are just some of them:
(1) to share their experiences and knowledge with others.
(2) as a technical guide to using certain products.
(3) to establish authority on a subject.
(4) highlight common mistakes or myths about the chosen topic.
However, the most common challenge of such writers is how to make a boring subject exciting. I do not deny that it will take a little more effort to turn a boring topic into a more engaging post. But that doesn’t mean that it’s impossible. Here are some suggestions on how to spice up your boring posts.
Choose A Topic Carefully
Even boring topics have interesting ideas to share. Do some searches on the search engines. You can make use of Google’s AdWords Keyword Tool to find what internet users are looking for. You can also use Digg and StumbleUpon, or write about real stories. You might just be surprised to find out what internet users consider interesting…
Understand Your Readers
Like a public speaker and a team building facilitator, you need to understand your readers. Who are those who seek these information? Are they professionals who are familiar with the topic or are they laymen who wish to learn more about the topic in hand?
Being able to understand your readers’ background will inevitably determine the way you draft your post and your style of writing. It will affect also your usage of jargons as well as the intonation of your posts in order to effectively convey your message or ideas.
Have A Conversation
Write as if you were speaking to your readers and not as if you were writing a thesis! Your conversational tone will help your readers feel that they are participating in an active conversation with you instead of boring monotonous reading.
Another rule is to make it as easy as possible for your readers to read. Avoid complicated and long sentences. If you need to put forward a lot of information, break it down to smaller bite-size portions. You can achieve this by inserting simple word processing tools eg bullets and numberings.
And keep your sentences and paragraphs short.
And precise.
Long sentences can lose your readers.
Lengthy paragraphs are boring.
Keep it simple and short.
Engage Your Readers
How? By being enthusiastic. Show that you are truly passionate about the topic. When you do so, you are giving the impression that you are approachable. Remember your favorite elementary school teacher? What was (s)he like? Nothing is worse than a bored writer or one who writes because he has to.
Preempt your readers’ questions and answer them in the same article. You are then demonstrating that you care about them and that the post is not just about you.
Inject Humor Please
What is more engaging than to include humor into your posts? It transforms a serious topic into an enlightening one. And your readers tend to remember the information (and your website) better. You can always take home some tips from public speeches by some prominent speakers eg Steve Job and Conan O’Brien’s commencement speeches. The best part is that it would be more fun for you to write too.
However, please be sensitive when cracking a joke. There are a few taboo subjects that you would be better off not touch. Your friends or community may approve of them but bear in mind that your posts would be read by people all over the world. Do use your judgment wisely.
Add Visuals
In order to make your topic less boring, insert visuals, be it images, charts or infographics. Keep in mind that it’s always good to have visuals to help readers understand a complicated topic (and also not-so-complicated ones too) than just texts.
There are lots of visual-creating applications today that help creating visuals much simpler than years ago, so make use of them. Like they say, a picture speaks a thousand words.
If your passion is into those so-categorized boring stuff, don’t fret about your website’s traffic. Just know that your topic is of great importance to many who seek such information. Probably more so than those interesting topics. Remember to be yourself and do your researches well. When your readers are able to benefit from your posts, they will automatically bookmark and refer your website. Persevere and you will eventually gain the comments, likes and tweets your posts deserved.
Image Credit : Supraaffiliate
Author Bio : Jasmine is a full time blogger who is passionate in WordPress, web design and web hosting. You can reach her on 100Webhosting.com where she shares tips and tricks on web hosting, domain name, SEO, social media and E-commerce. If you need a good web hosting plan, she highly recommends HostGator. Check out her website.
Yeah, Boring Topics should always have attractive pictures. Infographics are something that always make a post interesting..
Well explained points Amit. 🙂
Thumbs Up !!! 🙂
Infographics are definitely great in explaining boring topics graphically. I would like to create some infographics for my website too, in the web hosting niche, but creating such infographics will need special talent.
This is something I’ve been looking around for a while now. Great post mate! Absolute value to share it with my readers..
Two cents from my side: If you want to write engaging content even for boring topics, make sure to press ‘triggers’ on your readers. Make them happy, angry or feel like crazy. Best tip is ‘add your own voice’ to these type of posts. Add a killer title that makes them scary, and end your post with a perfect call to action.
Definitely agree with you, Rahul. But make sure you don’t overdo, otherwise it might spread like wild fire and backfire! Haha…
Nice tips it will help many of us who all are interested in such topics…
Interesting post Amit,
I want to say that nothing is boring. Every topic has it’s own passionate people who wants to write about that topic, but as you said all topics has interesting ideas. If the authors has the ability to convince the people than they can engage their readers with boring topics.
I have seen a blog on “Accounting” topic which is earning more than $5000 a month.
Hi Amit
you have shared some interesting points, it is important to know your readers and write as if you are talking to them, so that they feel more included in the article. images, videos, infographic, humar can all make your topic less boring
Bryan
Good points, Bryan. Make your posts easy to read with short paragraphs, sub-headings, and bullet points where suitable. Also, include images and videos.
Good points Jasmine! What’s in my mind is that we should share something real based on our personal experience, for example my latest post about “How I Really Make Money Blogging”, this topic has been replicated on the internet for thousands times, but I wrote it based on my own experience and it still attracts people to read. As long as we have some solid proof, it’s not a big deal to write some repeated and boring topic.
Very useful post Jasmine, it’s true that many people write boring topics to establish themselves s an authority. Many people don’t realize that, but you for sure are on the way to become even better authority. 🙂
thanks for sharing
Great post Jasmine!
It’s definitely important to make what you’re writing about as interesting as possible. As well as the great points that you suggest, the way you structure your posts can help. Things like breaking up your post into shorter paragraphs, clear headings & sub-headings, using images, using video, etc. can all help to engage readers.
Great points here. I especially think injecting some humor is important. Work can be so boring at times, so anything to lighten the mood goes a long way.
Thanks for liking the post, Matt. Haha, you are definitely right there about injecting some humor! Reading blogs should be as exciting and as fun as possible! 🙂
Hey Amit!!
Great concept and infact it is true. Some writing a post on the boring topic is difficult. So reading this post would help a lot. I think the content should be written in an easy language for the readers to understand it.
Aditi, thanks for dropping your comment. It would be a nightmare if you use difficult language on a boring topic… the result would be disastrous! Haha…
Now this post is not boring at all. Thanks Amit for sharing this for all these great ideas. 🙂 Keep up the good work!
Arsie, thank you so much for liking my post. Yes, sure, we will continue to bring you exciting and interesting posts! Come back often. 🙂
You write so well, no doubt about that. I already knew what you were going to say but it was fun reading the post, keep writing stuff like that.
I am happy to see your kind words, Devinder. We will continue to write more good posts, hopefully. Thanks for dropping by.
Great post Jasmine. Writing a blog post about a topic which you are not interested in, is really a hard task. To write a better post, we must always be passionate towards what we are about to write. However, these tips should also get articles written up by me, even I feel it’s boring.
Hey Amit
I agree with your infographic point mostly people didn’t like spare time on Lengthy texts and infographic is only one good way to convey your message in better way because mostly people give more importance to pictorial things as compare to texts.
Amit, definitely agree with the Humor part! It plays a vital role in any article. I’m not saying that the article should be 20% filled up with humor…but atleast 5% …? Agree??
PS – Check out my giveaway! I’m giving away 5 Blog Engage accounts! Cheers
Raaj, agree completely. I love to smile and even ROTFL when I read your blog, haha!
Your blogengage giveaway looks great!
Hi guys, yes add humour to your posts, very important, and again, if a topic is boring adding visuals can make any post look interesting. I once added loads of images to a post I wrote that might be dull as dishwater but because most articles and posts online are just writing with maybe one image and that is it, my post looked pretty damn good in comparison. in fact it looked down right awesome Probably didn’t read as exciting as it looked but it did look it lol. 🙂
Andi
One way to write great guest post is to write like your life depends on it. Write like you have never write before and put out your best. Do research before writing and also be unique in your writing.
Awesome points you have here pal.
Humor, yes, that helps truly. Injecting them into the post will help make writing a pleasure. 🙂