How Psychology Can Help You Grow Your Blog. 4 Lessons To Be Learnt By Bloggers

                                

#Writer’s life

You MAY be wondering what has Psychology got to do with growing a Blog.

Today, I will be looking at the First lesson of the Psychology, which is rocking your first impression with the halo effect. From this perspective, it will help you tremendously to grow your Blog. I promise you the four lessons are going to be in series, where I’ll taking one lesson per week. I hope you will enjoy all the four lessons of this blog post.

I can tell you with a fair degree of certainty that no matter how great your product is, it is very likely that 40–60% of your free trial users never see the product a second time. Which makes that first use of the software really freaking important?

That’s where all this psychology stuff comes into play.Whether you’re on-boarding for your product or growing your blog, you want more than 40–60% of people to come back to your blog or site. Am I right?

So here’s how to grow your blog—to keep your readers coming back—with some really interesting insight from psychology.

1. Rock your first impression with the halo effect.
2. Make sure your climax is positive and your ending is happy with the peak-end rule.
3. Build a relationship with your readers through the Psychological Foundations Of Trust.
4. Help your readers build and maintain habits to come back to your content again and again.Bottom of Form

1. Make Your First Impression Count

No experience with your content is more important than the first one.That’s where the halo effect comes in. It’s the first impression of how we feel about another person’s character.

Norman Nielsen Group has already connected this social-psychological phenomenon to Web design:

“If users like one aspect of a website, they’re more likely to judge it favorably in the future. Conversely, if users have a particularly bad experience with a site, they’ll predict that the site will treat them poorly in the future as well and, thus, will be reluctant to return to the site.” —Jennifer Cardello and Jakob Nielsen.

Read that paragraph again, but substitute a few words to apply the concept to your blog content:

If readers like one post on a blog, they’re more likely to judge the entire blog favorably in the future. Conversely, if readers have a particularly bad experience with a blog, they’ll predict that the blog will treat them poorly in the future as well and, thus, will be reluctant to return to the blog.So the first impression your content makes for your readers really matters.

How To Grow Your Blog By Understanding The Halo Effect

One element of the halo effect involves physical attractiveness. As humans, we’re influenced by the physical appearance of our surroundings. We experience different emotions—like thinking that a person wearing clothes from the 1990s is out of touch while the guy in the snappy suit must mean business.

Your blog’s appearance—whether it’s a post, a landing page, or your home page—leaves a distinct impression that builds credibility.According to usability.gov (and cited through KISS metrics), having a credible looking website scored a 4 out of 5 on the relative importance scale.

So here is what you can do to build a credible blog (loosely adapted from KISS metrics’ advice on websites):

1. Answer your readers’ questions as posts and in the comments.
2. Organize your posts in a logical way. Your home page and landing pages should be super easy to navigate to help people learn what to do.
3. Reference facts, research, stats, and other data that supports the claims you make in your posts.
4. Show your authors’ credentials. I’ve seen blogs who have the author as generic as the company’s name—stop it! A person with intelligence wrote that—gives them credit. Companies are made up of humans—don’t take that away from us!
5. Focus on your blog design. Hire a designer to capture the essence of your company and reflect it in your blog design. Just having a blog that “technically works” but looks like crap isn’t going to keep your readers coming back.
6. Provide an archive of your old posts. I’ll add again—make it easy to navigate.
7. Keep the blog as up-to-date as possible. So publish consistent content.
8. Provide links to outside sources and materials. Do this to back up any claims you make in your content with facts, stats, etc.
9. Help credible blogs reference your content. Links from other blogs indicate that you’re an expert. That will happen when you publish amazing posts.

2. Write attractive headlines.

Headlines are like covers are to books. People tell you not to judge a book by its cover, but you do it anyway.Think about that with an understanding of the halo effect: Physical attractiveness helps you decide if you even want to dive in further.

Only 8 out of 10 people who see your headlines will actually read them. And of those folks, only two will click through to read your posts.Your headline needs to be attractive. So here are a few quick tips—based on real data—to write headlines that capture attention:

1. Use the keywords your audience is looking for in your headlines. That also helps them find your content through search engines.
2. Focus on a headline type that’s proven to work. List, “how to”, and question headlines perform the best.
3. Make sure your headline is around 55 characters long with about 10 words in it.
4. Write a positive headline that helps readers emotionally attach with an idea immediately after reading it.

There is actually a really easy way to do this, too: Use a headline analyzer. This free tool measures everything you need to write headlines that are most likely to result on social shares, traffic, and search results.

Write The Best Headlines With A Free Headline Analyzer

The headline analyzer will help you:

1. Use headline types that get the most traction for social shares, traffic, and search engine ranking.
2. Make sure you have the right word balance to write readable headlines that command attention.
3. See the best word and character length for search engines like Google and email subject lines, while also seeing how your readers will scan your headlines.

Try The Free Headline Analyzer Now

Your introductions need to hook your readers.

A majority of your readers only see 18% of a blog post. Since you’re reading this, you’re my new best friend—and one of very few who actually reads entire blog posts.

Your introductions for your content need to hook your readers from the get-go to keep them interested in reading the remainder of your posts.

After headlines, your first 100 words are the most important part of your post. Less than half of your blog readers will actually read past your first 100 words.

So, how can you write a great introduction to help those first 100 words make a great first impression on your readers?

1. Start with an interesting fact (and back it up). As you’ll find out in a bit, people want to be able to trust you… your transparency of how you know what you know helps build that credibility.
2. Give away the ending of the story in your introduction. Leave a bit of mystery as to how you got to the end to inspire further reading. Readers spend about 80% of their time above the fold.
3. Use a catchy anecdote that happened to you, is funny, or even a quote.
4. Ask a question that people can’t answer with a simple “yes” or “no” that draws them in to find out the answer.
5. Go for a cliffhanger that gets your readers crazy for the next paragraph.
6. Try some gentle confrontation to show your readers why their standard belief was a bit misleading, and hint that you’ll tell them why in the remainder of your content.

3. Include awesome visuals in your content.

Our brains process images 60,000 times faster than text. Think about physical attractiveness from the halo effect: It makes sense to include beautiful graphics with your content to make an awesome first impression.

Articles with relevant images get 94% more page-views than those without. Pages with pictures get 50% more shares than those without. 67% of consumers consider images to carry more weight than customer ratings, review, and product descriptions.

And a cherry on top: Social media messages with images get up to 150% more click through than those without. Was that enough stats for you to take the jump and add more visual content like images, graphics, and videos into your content?!You can start making simple blog graphics with as little as four steps:

1. Find and use the colors that will inspire the emotions you want from your readers. Use them to draw the eye where to look and know what to do.
2. Choose a sans serif and serif typeface that complement each other.
3. Figure out if you want to use stock photography, hero images, or vector graphics. You could do all of these.
4. Find the icons, patterns, brushes, and shapes that you’ll repeat throughout your content for brand consistency.

Your blog graphics, colors, design, and credible content help make your first impression stands out as a positive one.

All of this leads really nicely into the next psychological idea, and Arthur Dobrin, D.S.W. transitions this way better than I could. You will hear from me next week. Bye!

First impressions matter but substance has the final word. —Arthur DobrinClick To Tweet

SOURCE: Nathan Ellering