BLOG POST THET SELL

Introduction
You may have already read a dozen guides on basic blogging, WordPress installation, theme choice and installation, maybe even customization. You might have even read some guides on SEO for WordPress
or how to write great content.
The trouble is that great content is not always content that
will help you achieve your objectives. Great content is not always what sells.
You can write the most helpful, interesting content in
the world and make no money from it
simply because you haven’t written the content
in a way that makes sales.
The most productive content is always written with the
bottom line objective in mind,
whether that’s increasing your mailing list, finding leads, or just making money. Generally, profit is the bottom
line for any organization except
a non-profit.
In this guide, you’re going to learn some of the best
ways to create content that is not only interesting, but helps you to achieve
your business goals—whatever those goals may be.
No more spending hours writing content that
isn’t going perform. Learn how to write content that sells
every time.
Let’s get started.
Why Content
Doesn’t
Sell
Before we start talking about the ways, you can write
content that does sell, let’s
take a look at a few mistakes people typically make when writing content that causes
that content to not sell well.
The Big Five Mistakes:
1. No or weak call-to-action. When you have
no call-to-action in your content,
or your call-to-action is weak, you’re basically
wasting your time. People can’t read your minds. They don’t know what action you want them to take.
2.
Off-topic
content. You may be tempted to add content to your blog that isn’t related to your main topic as a way to try to
draw more traffic, but this only
weakens your position in the search engines
and offers you little to no benefit with regards to leads or sales.
3.
Content that
goes on too long. Sure, search engines love long content. Some people even love long content. But creating long content solely for the purpose of getting
traffic isn’t going to do you any
good. Especially if that content drags on so long, and is so boring, that people leave before they
have a chance to see your call-to-action.
4.
Content that
has no purpose with regards to your goals. Some people believe that any content
is good content, because it’s another
article that can draw traffic. But it’s a waste of your time to write content that isn’t specifically
geared toward helping you achieve your business’s goals.
5. Useless popups or other interruptions. Do not,
absolutely do not, include popups,
interstitial ads, or any other type of interrupter for anything that isn’t directly going to
assist you with your main business goals. You’ll upset visitors and potentially lose them. Instead, save those interrupters for
times when you are trying to achieve your goals, such as getting
more email subscribers or selling a product.
Well, first-off you know some of the mistakes you might
make that could cause your content to
fail in its mission to help you reach the goals you have set for your business.
Now, it’s time to take a
look at the best way to create content that does sell.
Brainstorming
The first thing you must do, obviously, is decide exactly
what your primary and secondary goals are for your
business. It might be solely to sell
a particular product or service, perhaps with a secondary goal of building your email list. Maybe it’s the
other way around, and you’d prefer to
focus on building your email list with the secondary goal of getting sales.
Once you’ve chosen
your goals, you can figure
out what type of content
you should create to best reach your goals.
Let’s say you want to focus on building your list as a
golf professional. Each piece of
content you post should specifically be geared toward building your list.
For example, let’s say you have a lead magnet called “10 Ways to
Shave Strokes Off Your Golf Game”.
You’d want to create content specifically that
focuses on ways to improve one’s golf game so you could have a call-to-action asking people to subscribe
for a free copy of your lead magnet.
Try to figure out a number of different types of content
you can write specifically to relate to your lead magnet. If you create
different types of content later, you might want to first
create a lead magnet that matches it, especially if you think it will attract more subscribers.
For example, let’s say you’re running a weight loss blog that covers several
different types of weight
loss. You’ve been concentrating on the
low carb diet, and your current lead magnet is a list of
foods that are good for each phase of
the low carb diet, and ideas for snacks and meals.
Now you’ve decided you want to focus on the raw food
diet. People who practice this diet
would most likely not be the least bit interested in a list of low carb foods, because those
foods are most often cooked or processed
in some way.
Thus, you’d need to create a brand new lead magnet that focused specifically on the raw food
diet.
What if you don’t have a lead magnet for a particular
topic and would rather not create
one? Well, you could instead find an inexpensive paid product to promote,
or just have a generic
opt-in box that says something
like, “Enter your name and email address
for more information about the raw food
diet.”
Types of Blog Posts
that
Sell
There are lots of types of blog posts that have the
potential to get results, and some
that probably won’t. In this section, we’re going to take a look at some of the most effective content types.
Always remember that you should keep your content as
tightly niched as possible. You don’t
want to create content that could hurt your SEO, and there’s no reason to create content that isn’t likely to
help you achieve your goals.
Let’s say you’re running a blog about golf. You might
think that creating a post about the
top ten new luxury cars could attract golfers. While that’s not completely outside the realm of possibility since
golf is a rather expensive hobby,
that article is likely to attract a lot of visitors that don’t care anything about golf.
You want to create content that is the most likely to get
you a new email subscriber, or buy
something, or take whatever other action you
wish.
Top Lists
Top lists are a very popular type of content that is
perfect for a lead-in to a
call-to-action. For example, you could have an article called, “The Top 5 Drivers
That Can Lengthen
Your Drives”.
You could then have your call-to-action at the end of the
article asking people to opt in for
your lead magnet called “10 Ways to Shave Strokes Off Your Golf Game”.
Interviews
Interviews with industry experts and popular figures in
your market will draw a lot of
attention, and they help lend a little credibility to your call-to-action.
If you’ve interviewed someone people recognize, not only will it draw in more traffic,
it will also make people naturally feel your own information is more likely
to be good.
Guest Posts
Like interviews, guest posts by popular people within
your niche lend credibility to your own calls-to-action.
Tips & Tricks
People love articles that provide simple tips and tricks
in an easy-to- digest format.
Lists of 5-10 tips and tricks on a particular topic draw
a lot of readers, and make it easy to lead in to a call-to-action.
In-Depth Tutorials
In-depth tutorials always tend to be big draws, but they’re also excellent for getting
people to take action.
A good in-depth tutorial
will bring in a lot of traffic, and it will also give you a lot of credibility if it is well-written and interesting.
Video
Video is a type of content that has huge potential for
getting people to take action,
because you can actually ask them to take action in the video itself.
For example, you could say, “Visit my website your-url.com and enter your name and email address for more
information about how you can lose weight
with today’s most popular diets!”
People who are watching your video are much more likely
to hear your call-to-action than
someone who’s just read a lot of text and now need to read a call-to-action,
so video can be extremely effective.
Other Types of Content
There are other types of content you can consider, too.
Remember that you don’t
have to stick 100% to your main goals.
Occasionally, you can have additional goals for your content.
For example, maybe you just want to raise brand awareness. You want to get a big kick of viral traffic, and
you’re not as worried about your main goals.
In that case, you could create a post that was totally
out there just to get traffic
and help people recognize your name within
your niche.
Let’s
take a look at an example:
Let’s say you write an article called, “The
25 Most Bizarre Weight Loss Inventions Ever Created!”
This article is pretty generic, and it could potentially
draw a lot of people who aren’t even
interested in losing weight because they just
want to see the strange information—BUT, it could also draw dieters
who would be interested in what you are offering.
It could also increase recognition of your brand in your
niche, which could benefit you down
the road even if you don’t get a lot of results immediately.
Advanced Tips
Now that you know how to create good content and how to
get people to take action when they
read your content, it’s time to learn a few advanced tips that can increase conversions.
Segmenting
If you have a website or blog that has multiple types of
content—for example an outdoor
website that has sections for fishing, hunting, and camping—it’s important to use different
calls-to-action for each section.
Sure, it’s easier to create one single report that covers all of the outdoor
hobbies on your site, but you could be turning off people who only like one aspect of the outdoor life. For example, someone might like fishing, but not care for camping or
hunting at all. If you have a free report
that covers camping and hunting as well as fishing, that person probably
would not subscribe.
It’s
a better idea to segment
and create a unique lead magnet for each
topic in order to give you the best chance to get the subscriber.
You can also segment your mailing list into separate
topics to be sure you aren’t
later marketing hunting
products to camping
fans.
Of course, you could always have a generic
mailing list signup box in your sidebar for people
who want information about every topic.
Multiple Calls-to-Action
You don’t have to limit yourself to a single
call-to-action in each article. For
example, you can have your normal opt-in box at the end of the article, but you could also ask them to
view another related article on your
site. This would help you get more page views, and also give you another
chance to get the subscriber if they didn’t subscribe after reading
the first article.
You could also put your subscription box halfway through
the article, and then put a call-to-action for a paid product at the end, or vice versa.
Retargeting
If you use an ad service like Facebook or YouTube, you
can include a retargeting pixel on
your website so you can run ads to people who
have visited your site and perhaps didn’t buy anything or subscribe when they were there before.
Maybe they were not convinced the first time.
Maybe they were too busy the first
time they visited
your site, and meant to subscribe or buy something
later.
Who knows?
But using retargeting will give you another
opportunity to convert the visitor into a buyer
or subscriber.
You can run ads that specifically target people who have
visited your site in the past—people
who have already proven they’re interested in
your offerings, because
they’ve visited your site before.
Learn more about retargeting here:
Conclusion
Writing good content isn’t necessarily enough to get you
the results you are looking for. You have to craft
that content specifically to get results
by creating content that naturally leads users to want to take action.
Always write your content
with conversion in mind. Whether
your primary goal is to sell a
product, grow your mailing list, or even make
money from advertising on your site, content should be written with that primary goal in mind. (You may also have a secondary goal in mind. Don’t forget you can have multiple calls-to-action in a single
article.)
Remember to use multiple lead magnets if you have a
variety of topics on your site to ensure you have something
that will interest
the audiences of each of those
topics. Just because two topics are related doesn’t
mean they’re similar enough that fans of one will be fans of the other.
As long as you keep your goals in mind when you’re
creating your content, you’ll find your conversions
growing. More people will take action,
and you will get closer
than ever to reaching
your goals.
Good luck!
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