How to Write for Boring Niches – 7 Refreshing Ideas

This is a guest post from Nabeel Butt of Search Engine Lead. Nabeel is an experienced blogger and SEO guru, and will show us some great tips and tricks to turn boring content into Cinderella! 

Did you ever hear this:

My niche is mind-numbingly boring and has no room for creative and attention-grabbing content!

This is an issue I find many writers out there complaining about.

In fact most of them walk out right away when they are asked to write attention grabbing and reader-oriented content on products which are not really the sexiest to sell.

Whatever niche you are working in, you need to create interesting and fun-to-read content in order to keep the readers engrossed – until the very end of post.

And if your writing is indeed extraordinary,  your readers will unquestionably share it on social media for others to enjoy.

So, whether you want to create content in banking and finance, insurance, mortgages or any other boring industry, you will have to use some specific methods in order to make it exciting for your target audience.

Want to know what they are?

Let’s get started!

1. Create a Knockout Headline

The best way to captivate your readers straight away is to think of a unique and catchy headline for your post.

Potential readers will not bother to give a second glance to a conventional title. However, a mind-blowing or catchy headline will grab their attention and perhaps – make your post spread like wildfire.

By using Portent’s Title generator tool you can get multiple unique and engaging headlines for your content.

Think of some words that prospective readers are aware of,  but make them as broad as possible.

Here is an interesting case study on How a Headline Made the Difference Between 100 and 5000 Visits.

Apart from this, Buzzfeed can teach us a thing or to about creating great headlines. Have a look at their feed and you are surely going to fall in love their word selection in post titles.

2. Start Off With a Joke

Cracking a joke that really resonates with your readers definitely requires a good sense of humor.

Starting off with a joke will undoubtedly entice your audience to read more.

Don’t forget to relate the joke to your blog, as making an irrelevant joke may turn your readers away, or at best lose their attention.

If you do not have a good sense of humor, ask one of your pals to help you out with choosing a joke. What are friends for, right?

3. Make Use of Graphics

Yes! Never incarcerate a post to text only. This will send your post into a death spiral.

Make creative use of graphics and images every so often.

This will keep your readers interested by breaking up huge chunks of text and making things more visually appealing.

Add memes, GIFs and Infographics in your post – like this one (of course, make sure they are relevant) :

My first reaction to Google’s Penguin Update

Check out this website to find memes related to SEO. Or, just check out “memes” on Google. There are plenty out there.

If you want to create interesting memes to use within your content, you should checkout the following sites :

• http://memegenerator.net/
• http://www.memecreator.org/

4. Be Precise and play with reader’s mind

Gone are the days when people love reading huge novels and long articles.

In today’s hectic era, having someone even read one sentence of your making is one hell of a task.

Use hypnotic words within your content to influence your reader. Some examples of the most powerful words are:

• You
• Imagine
• Because

Jon Morrow is also a guy you want to watch when it comes to writing powerful blog posts. I recommend checking out his post on power words for some more ideas.

Once you start to improve your writing, you will find your readers will start to enjoy longer content. A few blogs that are extremely successful at long posts and case studies include:

• Moz.com
• Quicksprout.com by Neil Patel
• Backlinko.com by Brian Dean.

5. Make use of Graphs & Charts

Have you ever completely finished reading a post filled with a bunch of statistical data and tables?

The answer would certainly be a BIG NO!

Yes, it’s a fact that most of us skim over lengthy and complicated statistical data however, if you make it easier to digest with the help of colorful graphs and charts, you can make it motivating for your readers to read.

Check out the Periodic Table of SEO Success Factors below, originally created by Search Engine Land Team:

These guys have taken what could be quite boring content and made it more fun and digestible by turning into a graphic.

A few more blogs that use such charts and graphs quite frequently are:

• Triple SEO by Chris Deyon
• Kaiserthesage.com by Jason Acidre

6. Tell a Story

No matter what topic you are writing on, add real life stories to your post to make it more engaging for the readers.

You can share your own experiences or those of people you know. Readers love to get to know you as an person instead of the usual marketing professional.

In fact, storytelling has been one of the most popular tools used by writers since the dawn of man.

When telling your story, be sure that it fits the theme of your post.  An irrelevant story may not help your post at all.

7. Ignite a Spark With Emotion

Did a post ever make you all emotional?

Don’t deny it! Words have immense power over your emotions. With words alone, you can make people laugh until their stomach hurts, or cry a bucket of tears!

So why not use this trick to grab hold of a reader’s attention?

By inserting emotion filled words in the title of your post you can ignite a spark of interest and gain control of your readers’ attention.

To Finish…

Writing in boring niche is challenging for sure. But by following these tips you can make your content interesting and attract more people to your blog.

Remember the Golden rule: write for readers, not for search engines.

And being a marketer, we should always put our readers’ interests first.

Header photo credit: Derek K. Miller via photopin cc