How to Write Content That Attracts Visitors

The key to bringing in visitors from social networks and social bookmarking sites is by offering quality (or popular) content. Depending on what you are writing/posting about, some niches bring in much more traffic then others. For instance, "funny pictures" or "cool stuff" certainly brings in more traffic from sites like StumbleUpon than say long boring tutorials or dry articles. So depending on what niche you are in, the amount of traffic will fluctuate (unless you can publish groundbreaking and eye-catching posts within your "boring" niche).

The first thing to know is that internet surfers love images. To attract visitors, publish a post with a "gallery" of funny, interesting, or stunning pictures. A post like that will surely be passed around the web via email and other methods. If you are just writing articles, be sure to include an intriguing image towards the top of your text to draw in the eye.

Similar to images, embedded videos do a great job of capturing viewers. Video repository sites such as YouTube have a huge selection of videos you can choose from to insert into your post. However, make sure that when you include a video that is relevant to the topic of your article/blog. If the video is interesting enough, most visitors will take a look around your site for more.

Another thing to know, is that readers love lists. However, the trick is to get the right balance when publishing a "list post". Be sure your list is of something interesting and relevent to your niche. You don't want to publish a list that is too short, or it won't be as captivating. Long lists generally do well, because if they are useful enough, readers will end up bookmarking them to return for later reference. Make sure that the items in your list are not so overwhelming. If you can, just try to include a link and brief description. If you find that you must write out large amounts of text for each list item, include an image or video.

Another great thing to do for long articles is to break them down into separate "bite-size" chunks. You can do this by either publishing different parts of the post on different dates (this works well if you already have a large reader base) or you can separate the post by using headers to divide up sections.