Today I was turned on to a great blog post over at Copyblogger entitled “Are Vampire Words Sucking the Life Out of Your Writing?” that I just had to share. This post gives a key point of advice that will help you write better.
Here is the basic gist:
As writers we can often play it safe by using words like: quite, fairly, often, sometimes and may. These words are boring, show a lack of confidence and thus turn readers away. This is where the vampire analogy comes into play- these words act like vampires and suck the life right out of your sentence. So the next time you are thinking of writing a headline like “You May Gain More Customers and You Might Make More Money” you need to stop and stake the vampire words to keep your readers coming back for more.
Douglas Karr did a great job of this today over on the Marketing Technology Blog with his post entitled “Why I Don’t Like Facebook.” This instantly caught my eye and I had to read it. Now if his blog title had been “Why I Kinda Sometimes Don’t Like Facebook” I would not have been as inclined to read it. Heck he even went so far as to put “facebook-sucks” right there in the URL. It’s not every day a social media superstar proclaims that!
So the next time you are writing a blog post title, take a moment to review and find those vampires there as well. Today’s theme: Be confident. Be Bold.
It’s all about the link bait, Derek! You pointed out the 2 characteristics I used to pull folks in…. shhhh… quit telling people my secrets.
Appreciate the comment Douglas! Don’t worry, my lips are sealed….
Great site…keep up the good work.