Engaging Blog Content: Part 2 - Illustrate

Be verbally illustrative: People like novels because their minds create the reality. I remember being in fifth grade and my parents suddenly realized that I was a nerd. To combat that evil they gave me a numerical game to play and a stopwatch to play it with. I had to keep track of how much time I spent reading and being "active". That was the amount of time I was then allowed to spend playing video games, "playing" on computers and watching TV. What they didn't understand was that I would end up loving the Hardy Boys novels. No not originals, the new ones. Yes, if you click that link you will see a paperback book cover that I remember from 15 years ago. This set of 127 paperbacks would give me virtually unlimited computer time. I read them and read them putting our local interlibrary loan program in talespin. Why? because they helped me create a reality.

Somewhere, in the next 5-10 years something happened. I started to hate reading. Why? Because all of my reading was set on informing and "learning" me. I was reading countless pages of text books for high school and college. Even though I now enjoy reading a good historical or instructional book, the idea of the novel sounds so much better. Novels are a way to create a reality. Just like I KNOW(by know I mean create in my mind) Mitch from "The Firm"(buy) drove a 1989 red Honda Civic hatchback, with a shot muffler and rust on the doors (before they got him his BMW), I create every detail that the author does not. These details stay, they create a world in our mind that will not go away.

Point of this post? If you can be so illustrative with your blog post that a reader burns a part of it into their mind, they will be more inspired to post and more likely to pass your site on to other readers. This passion about a site is what helps create a thriving user base, a group that is passionate about what you say and hopefully passionate about whatever your product may be. Stay tuned for another long and diluted way to make your posts stick with your readers.