Write great headlines and you will suck your readers in. The headline is the most important part of your content. The second most important part is your introduction.

Your headline compels people to click on your post, but your introduction draws them in so that they actually read the post.

If you’re sick of not getting a high level of engagement on your posts, this is probably the main cause.

Think of it like this:

• Write Bad headlines – low traffic
• Write Good headlines, bad intro – High traffic, high bounce rate (people leave), low time on the page
• Write Great headlines, great intro – High traffic, low bounce rate, high time on page

Aim for the third scenario – write great headlines.

To help you achieve the third scenario, I’m going to show you 4 of the best types of introductions you can use in your content.

1. Embrace the fear of failure

Great introductions (to anything) connect with the reader on an emotional level. Emotions drive action. In this case, the action we want is for the reader to keep reading.

Fear is one of the strongest motivating emotions, and people will go to great lengths to prevent that fear from coming true.

How to write your own fear-inspired introduction:

Create it in three steps:

1. State the fear of failure or cause of fear – Do this in a straightforward manner.
2. Illustrate the fear – Describe the fear and make the reader picture it.
3. Transition to a solutions – The whole point is to hook the reader with fear and then provide a solution that eases that fear. Write about how your content will help them.

2. No one wants to be left behind

Another big fear is the fear of missing out. The fear of missing out is what drives the frenzy over buying lottery tickets. No one wants to be the one who misses out if someone within your group of friends miraculously wins. The fear of missing out can be applied in a few ways:

• Fear of being left behind – in niches like SEO, if you don’t keep up with the latest information, you can become obsolete.
• Fear of missing out on fun – no one wants to miss out on fun.
• Fear of missing out on an opportunity – people tend to be more interested if something is only available for a limited time or limited to a certain quantity.

3. Use AIDA to captivate visitors

You may have heard of AIDA before.

It’s one of the most famous copy writing formulas there is because it’s so effective.

First, what does AIDA stand for?

• Attention
• Interest
• Desire
• Action

To start off, you need to grab the attention of your readers. How do you do that? Typically with a bold or surprising claim.

If you can use numbers—great, but they’re not required. The only goal here is to catch the attention of your reader. It may be a sentence or two that seem unrelated at first to your topic.

Interest is similar to attention, and you certainly need to maintain attention, but this is where you tie your attention-grabbing introduction to the subject of the post.

To induce desire, all you need to do is make the benefits of your content clear.

Now, what about action—the last part of the formula?

You can interpret and use it in two ways.

First, you could get a reader to take an action right at the end of your introduction. Maybe you want them to get a pen and paper or open a spreadsheet. Or maybe you want them to answer a question and come back to it at the end.

If this applies, go for it.

The action in this formula typically refers to the end of the content, though. So, in your conclusion, you should make it clear how a reader is supposed to apply what you just taught them.

4. Benefit First – Show Me The Money

If your readers are impatient and just want you to get to the point and do it fast, then consider starting off with the biggest benefit of your content.

This is how you will attract attention, and if the benefit you promise is big enough, they will invest the time to read through your content.

For example, you could start an article about website redesign by saying:

If you redesign your website, you could make $3,000+ per month within 6 months.

Assuming you’ve got your audience right, they’ll be glad to dig a bit deeper to find out if your claim is true.

After that opening claim, you want to expand on and back up your claim. To continue the example:

I know this because I’ve redesigned many websites and those sites have earned me $3,000+ per month on average.

That statement lends credibility to the initial claim. Finally, you should close the introduction by explaining how the reader will get to the solution. In this case, something like this would work:

I’m going to show you what you need to know to move forward so you can start generating additional revenue.

Conclusion

Don’t spend tons of hours working on content and then just slap on a weak introduction. Make sure it sucks readers in and hooks them.