Turn Blog Readers Into Action Takers
Are you getting lots of website traffic but not lots of sales? Are people coming to your website, but not doing anything when they get there?
Yes? Ouch!
You work way too hard to create valuable content that brings visitors to your website to have them leave without taking action. You need to turn blog readers into action takers so they become subscribers, leads, clients, and customers.
But how do you do that?
How To Persuade Readers To Take Action
Here are seven ways to encourage readers to take action when writing new blog posts and improving old blog posts:
1. Publish Relevant Content
Your content should solve a problem, teach the audience something new, and provide value, but more importantly, it must be relevant to the client or customer you want. The content must meet consumers where they are at in the buying process and align with what they want, need, and are interested in.
2. Write For Skimmers
Before deciding if they are going to read a blog post, many people quickly skim through the content first to see if it is interesting or worth their time. When writing and formatting your blog posts, tailor it to the skimmers:
- Write in short paragraphs
- Break up the content with sub-headlines
- Use bullet lists or number lists
- Include images and graphics
3. Communicate The Destination
Many marketers will tell you to lead with the benefits and follow up with the features, but there is one thing more important to communicate and most writers forget it. It’s the destination.
The destination is the result of achieving the benefits.
When creating new content, think about what happens when someone experiences the benefits you list — what is the result?
4. Include A Success Story Or Mini Case Study
If you want to inspire a blog post reader to take action, you need to inspire them and motivate them to do so. One easy way to do that is to share a success story or mini case study they can relate to and see themselves in.
- Present the situation a past client/customer was in
- Explain the problem that needed to be solved
- Communicate what you did and how you helped
- Share the benefits experienced and the results achieved
5. Explain The Complex How To
Give away the farm. Give away everything you know and write the best, most detailed, most comprehensive how-to article on a topic ever written. Include everything you can possibly think of. This type of post will create three different results:
- Some will read it and take action without you — they will become raving fans who tell their friends about you and help expand your reach
- Some will read it, feel overwhelmed, and just want to hire you to do it for them because you have clearly demonstrated your expertise
- Some will appreciate your hard work, try to take action on their own, realize they don’t have time and reach out to hire you
6. Logical Next Step
To turn readers into action takers, it is critical that in every blog post, you clearly communicate what the next logical step is. Share what they need to do to now and help them progress to the next stage of the buyer journey. The easiest way to do this is to tell them exactly what to do and provide simple instructions. Don’t make them think or work at it.
7. Include Calls To Action
Don’t forget a call to action! If a reader has made it to the end of a blog post, they clearly connected with your content. This is the perfect time to include a call to action to stay in touch via social media, subscribe to your newsletter, download a freebie, purchase a product, register for a webinar, or book a discovery session.
Also, if you have relevant resources available to giveaway, consider including calls to action for content upgrades throughout your content.
Read about which button color gets the most clicks on Calls to Actions.Improve Your Blog Posts, Improve Your Results
As you can see, improving your blog posts to turn readers into action takers isn’t difficult. It simply requires you to think about what the next step is, what readers need now, and why they would take action. Each blog post you write then needs to focus on helping readers make progress, meeting their needs, and leading them to take action.
HOMEWORK: Use the seven tips above to evaluate the blog posts on your website. Look for posts that can be improved by:
- Editing the content to align it with a stage of the buyer journey
- Adjusting the content styling to format it skimmers
- Communicating the destination — the results of achieving the benefits shared
- Adding a success story or mini case study
- Explaining how to do something in detail
- Sharing the logical next step and telling people what to do
- Including a call to action
If you can do that, you’ll begin to see website visitors taking action before leaving your site and enjoy a better return on investment when creating new content.
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