Your Lead Paragraph: What Should You Say?

The most important paragraph of your article is the first paragraph. In newspaper lingo, it’s called the lead paragraph. Why is it so important?

The lead paragraph is important because this is where you capture your reader’s interest. Your article will rise or fall on that lead paragraph, and particularly on that lead sentence. Let’s examine what you need to do to establish credibility in that lead paragraph and get your readers to keep on reading:

1. The first sentence – You need a killer first sentence that does two things: Snags the reader into reading the next sentence and that uses your keyword effectively. SEO is an important aspect of article marketing. You want the search engines to discover your most important keywords and phrases and to rank your article for them. That first sentence goes a long way to helping you do that. Put your keyword in there one time. You do not need your keyword in the rest of the paragraph, but it does need to be in that first sentence. And make sure that you engage the reader from the very first word.
2. The rest of the paragraph – You need to get people to read every sentence. If you lose your reader’s interest at any point in the article then they will leave and you will lose the sale. Every sentence must lead the reader to the next sentence – all the way through your article. That means, to get them through that first paragraph there must be a logical flow to the sentences and they’ve got to be interesting enough to keep them reading.
3. Prepare the reader – I learned early in public speaking that when you have an audience you need to follow the three-point plan: Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them. This works in article marketing too. Use that first paragraph to set the stage for your article. Give a good summary of what the article will detail then subsequent paragraphs will give the “rubber meets the road” gritty details. You should not use phrases like “I’m going to tell you” or “This article is about.” Those are filler phrases that will lose your audience. Instead, simply give an overview of your subject before getting into the details.
4. Paragraph structure – Another element I borrow from newspaper writing is the 5 W paragraph structure. In newspaper writing, it is customary to tell your readers what the article they are about to read is about by including the 5 basic pieces of information all readers look for: Who, What, When, Where, Why. And sometimes newspaper people include How. With informational writing in particular, which article marketing is, this information is essential to establishing what your article is about. Answer these questions in your lead paragraph and you’ve established in your readers’ minds just why they should read your article. You’ll also establish yourself as a credible authority on the subject.

Article writing is not newspaper writing, but there are some similarities. Establish yourself as a credible authority and attract your readers’ attentions by writing a dynamic lead paragraph. If you do that, they’ll keep reading.