Leave a Good Impression with Your Blog Posts

This is the first post of an upcoming series inspired by Barry Schwartz’s book, The Paradox of Choice. Return in the next days for more.

Several sources discuss various ways of increasing not only the traffic, but also return visitors to your blog. Active participation in social networks, quality content, and increasing friend count are just a few.

Most bloggers have tried out these strategies, but not all of them are satisfied by the results. Indeed these tactics are not a guarantee of returning readers.

In blogging, it is the small details that make the difference.

A blog post should not only concentrate on its main body to provide quality information, but also on the final impression it leaves. This can increase the returning visitors to your blog in ways that you didn’t expect.

Leaving a good impression

Daniel Kahneman, Nobel Prize-winning psychologist showed, that what we remember about the pleasurable quality of our past experiences

is almost entirely determined by two things:

1. how the experiences felt when they were at their peak (best or worst)
2. how they felt when they ended.

This “peak-end” rule of Kahneman’s is what we use to summarize the experience, and then when we rely on that summary later to remind ourselves of how the experience felt.

Peak Moments of Your Blog Post

Of course the major peak moment when reading a blog is the content of the main body of the post.
Depending on the quality of the content, the text leaves a negative or positive impression to the reader. This trace will play a fundamental role on persuading the reader to return to the blog or even subscribe. It is a logical conclusion that quality content means returning visitors.

The second peak moment is located at the end of the post. This is where you summarize your thoughts, pose your questions and invite the reader to participate in the discussion.

A very common mistake when writing an article, is that we mostly concentrate on the main content (the first peak moment of the blog) and we disregard the final impression it leaves (the second peak moment).

Conclusion

The belief that the impression your blog post leaves is also based on your final remarks, is not just a result of Daniel Kahneman’s psychological hypothesis.

Notice how you scan other blog posts:

Do you read the whole post word by word?

Do you comment on the questions posed by the author?

Spending more time on the final part of the blog post is much more important than we actually think.

• it leaves a final good impression to the reader,
• it shows that you followed a structured argumentation concluding to your remarks,
• it shows that you value the time of your readers

Not only your regular readers will appreciate this little extra effort, but also casual readers will recognize the value of your work.

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