By Alice Seba
In part 1, we talked about knowing the traffic and conversion purposes of your blog posts. Both are important, but it might be time to start taking a practical look at things. It’ll save you plenty of hard work and help you get a lot more out of the work you put into your blog.
If you’ve been putting most of your focus into traffic, let’s step back and worry about it less and focus on getting more RESULTS from the traffic you do have.
Because let’s get serious, big traffic can come with its share of big headaches. More email and comments to manage. Readers who have unrealistic feelings of entitlement and can suck your energy dry. See you don’t need a ton of raving fans, you just need some dedicated consumers who love to spend their money buying your stuff. Theyíre two completely different things. Don’t mistake popularity for profitability.
Here are a few tips to help you increase your conversions.
1. Know Your Conversion Purpose: Once you know the reason why for your post, create your post within that frame. That includes:
- The title
- Topic
- Angle/Opinion
That doesn’t mean title your blog post “Buy Hamster Wheels” Here and say, I think you should buy a hamster wheel because Not at all, you can be informative while you sell.
Choose a title, topic and angle/opinion that would be of interest to someone who would sign up for your mailing list or would buy the product you are promoting.
For example, if you’re selling an info product about flat abs, some post titles might be:
- 5 Starter Tips for Flat Abs
- How what you eats affects your abdominal muscles
While you can write on a wide variety of topics, keep it focused when you want to sell a specific product. In this example, you probably wouldn’t write a general weight loss or eating healthy article if you specifically want to sell the flat abs product. You’d probably promote something else that is more fitting.
2. Call-to-Action: If you forget everything else about this blog post, remember this. You have to tell your reader what you want them to do or itís not likely theyíre going to do it. You have to guide your reader to EXACTLY what you want to happen. If you think they should sign up for your newsletter, tell them to do it and give them a good reason why. If you think they should buy a certain product again, tell them to do it and back it up with a good reason why.
Make sure your call-to-action is:
- Strategically placed: Don’t simply put your call-to-action at the end of the post as an after-thought, put it into the context of the post wherever it is appropriate. For example, if you’re sharing tips for cleaning silver jewellery make a bulleted list of tips and one of those tips is to use your favourite silver cleaner.
- Make it compelling, yet conversational: I know what you’re thinking, you donít want your blog to turn into a sales pitch. It doesn’t have to be. When you believe in the products you sell, it’s a natural fit to your conversations. Think of it as a conversation with friends. You wouldn’t hesitate to recommend and encourage them to buy a product they need.
- Repeated: Say it again in future posts. Don’t just mention a product once and expect that to do the trick. Mention your best products and your newsletter frequently whenever itís appropriate to the topic.
- A Link is Not a Call-to-Action: Just linking keywords to a product isn’t enough. For example, if you include a link like this:
it is NOT a call-to-action. It’s just you talking about and linking to some shampoo. You can link that way for keyword purposes, but you also need to give your readers a more direct call to action For example, “You can buy it here”, “If you buy it at X, you get a X discount. It’s an amazing deal”.
What About Blog Design?
You can fiddle with the design of your blog, test different ad positions but it usually comes down to your blog post. Keep your overall design simple and add your sign-up box and a compelling reason to subscriber in a prominent place. But calls-to-actions must be in your posts for best results. It’s the area of your blog where your readers are focused (reading your posts) so use that space to your advantage.
Confident for Conversion
- Act like you know what youíre talking about, because seriously, you DO. And if you don’t or your ghostwriters don’t, maybe it’s time to find someone who does or move onto something else.
- Be confident in your writing (see above), but be even more confident in the product recommendations you make. Think of the recommendations you make to friends and people you talk to in person. You talk about movies, TV shows, stores and special deals and you do it naturally, without even thinking about it.
- Observe other bloggers who sell confidently and informatively. What language do they use? What language do they not use? What are their calls to action?
Be Natural, but Work Toward Being a Naturally Informative Sales Person
You should always be yourself, but continue to stretch your comfort zone. The more you get accustomed to incorporating a call-to-action throughout your work, the more natural it will be for you and for your readers. Get rid of the guilt and hesitation because when you give your readers a call-to-action, you are giving them exactly what theyíre looking for. Whether it’s a subscription to your newsletter for more tips, a product that will help them with what they’re looking for you’re doing your readers a favor.
About the Author: Alice Seba is the creator of Contentrix.com and one of the first to get Ed interested in growing organic search traffic. But what good is the traffic without the conversion? Click here for your free Profit with Content guide.