How to Start Blog Posts Without Boring Your Readers

I wanted the introduction of my article to do three things:

1. Let the reader know I was a meat eater, then became a vegetarian, and finally went vegan. I needed this information so the reader could trust my advice.
2. Make it clear that going vegan was hard for me. I needed this information so the reader could connect with me since I wrote the article for people struggling to switch to a plant-based diet.
3. Tell the reader what I was going to talk about in my article.

I looked at the first version of the intro and thought, This is too long. How can I keep it as snappy as possible so I can quickly get to the point?

I started removing and compressing sentences.

Here are some sentences from the first version that don’t appear in the second one.

• To me, a meal wasn’t a meal if I didn’t have a steak, pork ribs, or cold cuts on my plate.

I thought this was unnecessary information. I wanted to show readers how much I loved meat but then realized these details could easily be omitted. Who would eat meat for 24 years if they didn’t like it?

This is the next sentence I removed:

• …I listened to a speech by an animal rights activist on YouTube…

Also unnecessary information at this stage. It gives relevant details but I thought they were too specific for an introduction. So I decided to move it to the main body of my article.

• …is one of the best choices I’ve ever made in my life.

Unnecessary. Saying I’ve been vegan since 2016 already suggests I don’t regret making this choice.

• …and give you my tips and advice on how to go and be a good vegan forever.

Repeated information as I say this in the headline. The reader already knows what to expect in this article: tips and advice on how to go vegan.

• If you’d like to go vegan,

Unnecessary — what else are they reading my article for?

• I hope that what I’m about to tell you will help you understand what veganism really involves.

I could have left this one, but it was too wordy and impersonal. I like the one I used in the final version more as it’s shorter and more relatable.

Check the final version again. Notice how it presents all the essential information I wanted to give without wasting the reader’s time:

In 2011, after being a meat eater for 24 years, I became a vegetarian.

Five years later I then went vegan.

Quitting meat and fish first and then switching to a plant-based diet were life choices that took effort. I faced challenges, learned lessons, and made mistakes along the way.

I’ll share some of these with you, hoping they will help you on your journey to veganism.

Less is more — always.

However and unfortunately, some writers would have started this article by saying how much they loved meat when they were kids. They would have shared stories about them going to the butcher to buy beef for their grandmothers or killing chickens on their uncle’s farms.

There’s nothing wrong with this. Writing is an art, not a science, so I’m always suspicious of anything too prescriptive.

But I’m not a fan of those long intros as we’re writing blog articles here — not books.

An article, to me, falls under the umbrella of short-form content so there’s no time to muck around.

Get to the meat! (Even if you’re vegan). 

An example from a top writer

Eve introduces her readers to the topic in a few sentences and then…boom! We’re in.

This is the introduction she wrote in her article titled “What I Learned For 3 Years of Creating Alongside My Full-Time Job”

The best way to learn anything the first time around is to get stuck in and have a go. The best way to learn something the second way around is to teach.

I’ve been creating on the internet for the last 3 years, it honestly feels like I’m just warming up, but here are a few ideas and thoughts if you’re just getting started.

That’s it.

In 3 sentences she tells me why she’s writing (to teach me what she learned), why I should trust her advice (she’s got 3 years of experience), and what she’s going to talk about (a few ideas and thoughts).

And that’s all I need to know.

And that’s why I read her articles.

And, I guess, that’s one of the reasons why — at the time of writing — she’s got 20K followers on Medium.

Let me give you one last example of how you could write shorter introductions.

An intro I could have shortened

The following is the introduction from “4 Simple Ways to Improve Your Listening Skills with Podcast Transcripts: Tried and tested activities I’ve used with my learners” — an article I wrote about a month ago.

The major problem in listening to connected speech is lexical segmentation — recognizing where one word ends and the next one begins” (Lynch, 2009).

Podcast transcripts can help you solve this problem — if you know how to use them.

Maybe you already use podcast transcripts to check unknown words and expressions. Maybe you enjoy listening to a podcast episode while reading its transcription.

That’s good. But there’s more you can do.

I’ll show you 4 simple activities to improve your English listening skills using transcripts. I’ve used them many times with my learners of English and they work. I’ll also explain why these activities are effective.

I’ll be talking about podcast transcripts, but you can use transcripts of any kind such as YouTube, TED Talks, and movie transcripts.

All right, let’s take this to the barber and give it a trim.