How your introduction paragraph should look like?

So, here is the deal. You have fifteen seconds to grab your reader’s attention.

If you are successful, you can win a potential client or valuable subscriber to your blog;

If you are unsuccessful, your reader joins the pool of other 55% of readers who just navigate to another source for the information.

This looks scary. Writing a great introduction means grabbing attention and trying to overcome this daunting statistic. The opening paragraph is your chance to make a great impression.

The primary goal of the introductory paragraph is to pique the interest of your reader through some tried tactics. Your introduction should tell the reader that you have something of their interest and they have come to the right place for answers. Here are some tactics that can help you accomplish that:

Ask a Question?

Here, if you know something about human behavior you are in a good position. You can leverage some common human behavior principles for your advantage. Like, it’s in human nature to look for answers, posing a question that pique curiosity is one way to start.

Engage with an anecdotes

Engage the reader with an anecdote that gives hints about what the reader is going to read in the article, she will more likely to continue reading.

For example,

In this poem, the protagonist is freezing slowly in the Arctic. He recollects the memories of his life and tells the whole story to the readers, but sees flashes of his life before he dies.

Share something personal

Like storytelling, sharing something personal pique a reader’s interest, either he will relate to the story or find it unique to continue reading.

For example,

“ From $ 2,000 to $100,000 per month: My life story as a real estate investor. “

I write to fill the page, preferably with nothing.

This ambition was in me before I could write. I grew up in a family of refugees speaking Russian, a language that, as my teachers and classmates took pains to remind me, did not belong to me.

— Roman Muradov, Art as a second language.

In my later years, I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I have worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.

~Ray Bradbury

Take time craft and carefully edit your introduction. It can mean the difference between a reader navigating away to greener digital pastures or staying on the page to read what you’ve written, share, and engage.