You’ve been blogging for months but the results have been underwhelming. There’s traffic to your website but you haven’t converted interest into sales. You’re frustrated because it takes 2-4 hours to write these blogs and you’re not generating income for your efforts.
And that’s why you decided to click on our article.
First off, you’re on the right track. Over the years, the numbers supporting the effectiveness of blogging in helping businesses achieve their goals have remained consistent.
Second, you’re not alone. 70 million blogs are posted every month. 73% of Internet users spend part of their online time reading blogs. There are other content creators such as yourself who allocate 3.5 hours on a given day working on a blog they hope would deliver the desired results.
Thus, your blog will be competing with other blogs for the attention of the Internet. Before you can think about writing a blog that rings the checkout counter, you have to think about writing a blog that triggers interest first.
Top 10 Tips On Writing Blogs That Convert Interest Into Sales
In this article, we’ll teach you how to write a blog that attracts the attention of your target audience and triggers interest in your business that converts into sales on your website.
Before you get down to the business of writing a blog, find out who you’re writing it for.
1. Target Your Audience
Let’s assume you’re selling pesticide products, who will you direct your marketing strategies to? Are you going to run a shotgun approach and blast content to consumers who need pest control management?
That could be everyone but without a focused, targeted marketing approach, your efforts could end up hitting no one. The market for pest control products covers a wide demographic that includes households, businesses, and service providers.
To find out who your audience is, you need to conduct research.
Review your website and social media analytics. Identify and list down the key demographics based on data:
- Predominant gender
- Age group
- Income bracket
- Occupation
- Designation
- Location
- Most popular blog post
- Most viewed topics
- Blogs with the highest engagement levels
- Blogs that generated the longest screen time
- Blogs that compelled backlinks
From these pieces of information, you can have a better understanding of what your audience is interested in; what topics they’re looking for, their common concerns, and the types of blogs they prefer to read.
2. Optimize Your Blogs
Now that you know who to target your content to, you have to make sure they can find them by optimizing your blogs.
Optimizing means making your blogs readily searchable and easy to find by the search bots. A simple optimization strategy is to embed your content with high-ranking keywords.
Keywords are the most commonly-used words or phrases used by people when performing a search query.
Therefore, before writing a blog, you must do keyword research. We’ll write an article on how to do keyword research but in the meantime, you can try out some of the best keyword research tools we recommended by clicking this link.
Once you have a spreadsheet of the best keywords for your topic, strategically place them on your blog by following these simple rules:
- The main keyword must be found in the title.
- The main keyword must be found within the first paragraph; preferably in the first sentence.
- The main keyword must appear in the body and the conclusion of the article.
- The recommended keyword density is 2% of the total word count.
- Choose 2 to 3 supporting keywords.
3. Create Compelling Titles
Even if your target audience found your blog, it doesn’t mean they will click on it. A big reason why Internet users abandon the search before reading the blog is that the title isn’t compelling enough.
Here are our suggestions on how to create blog titles that will entice your readers to click on your content:
- The “How-To” Headline – “How to Cook Scrambled Eggs Without Frying”
- The Listicle – “Top 10 Ways to Burn Body Fat – No Diet Required”
- The Personal Experience – “How I Overcame My Fear of Failure”
- The Learning Experience – “7 Skills I Learned Living With a Remote Tribe”
- The Question Title – “What Do Smart People Eat for Breakfast?”
- The Negative Title – “Common Mistakes When Choosing Business Partners”
Keyword research will help you pinpoint the topics and titles that your audience is popularly searching for.
4. The Opening Paragraph Must Hook the Reader
If your blog title successfully compelled the reader to click your URL, the opening paragraph must capture him hook, line, and sinker.
Studies have shown that a person only spends 27 seconds reading a blog. Of the 27 seconds, the first 15 seconds lets him know if the content is interesting enough to continue reading.
So how do you write an opening paragraph that hooks the reader? Check out our tried and tested tips below:
- State their problem – “Are you getting frustrated trying all of these popular diet programs that don’t deliver results?”
- Discuss their situation – “You’ve been blogging for months but the results have been underwhelming.” Our introductory paragraph!
- Explain why they should read your blog – “If you’re having a hard time getting funding for your business – stick around! We’ll show you 5 easy ways to secure much-needed capital without having to deal with banks.”
Keep your opening paragraph short. The general rule is to use no more than 100 words for your opening paragraph. Again, make sure the main keyword is in there.
5. Write for Mobile Devices
More than 50% of online traffic comes from mobile devices, particularly smartphones. For this reason, when you write blogs, make sure they’re easily viewed on smaller screens.
If you’re reading this blog from a smartphone, you’ll notice the following characteristics:
- The paragraphs are short; usually 2-3 sentences per paragraph.
- The sentences are short; around 20-25 words per sentence.
- There are many white spaces on the blog.
- We use headers to categorize each discussion point.
We formatted the blog this way to make it more scrollable on smartphones. Can you imagine if all of the paragraphs were tightly bunched together? Or if a paragraph has more than 5 sentences that average 40 words each?
The web page would look crowded; the letters packed tightly and might make the blog harder to read. The white spaces open up the web page and add breaks or pauses between paragraphs.
Headers define the discussion point for the next section and help organize the content in your blog.
You can look at some of the most popular blogs on the Internet such as from Neil Patel or Copyblogger. They feature short paragraphs, have a lot of open spaces, and use headers. Not only are the blogs informative but they’re an easy read.
6. Add Internal Links
Adding an internal link is an SEO technique where you hyperlink a word or phrase to another reference page on your website.
We did this in #2 “Optimize Your Blogs” when we attached a link to a blog we wrote about the best keyword research tools on the Internet.
This is an effective technique to get readers to explore your website content further. You create an opportunity for visitors to read your other blogs and hopefully consider you as a valuable resource.
Make sure to update the information on your blogs. They have to be current in order to be useful to readers. If you’re still linking to data from 5 years ago, there could be new information by now.
7. Come Up With a Definitive CTA
The reader loves your content and is convinced that you’re the real deal. What do you want him to do next? This is your chance to get him on board as a customer, follower, or subscriber.
A Call-to-Action or CTA is a command that you give the reader. Having a powerful CTA is crucial in converting interest into sales. The biggest mistake a blogger makes when creating CTAs is coming up with a weak one; a CTA that comes across as indecisive and without enthusiasm.
In our blogs, we usually end it with an encouraging invitation:
“Give us a call or drop us an email. We’ll give you a free 30-minute consultation and get your digital marketing campaign off and running.”
This is what a weak CTA reads like:
“If you’d like, give us a call or perhaps drop an email. Let’s chat and figure out how to set up your digital marketing campaign.”
When writing a CTA, think of grabbing the reader by his shirt collar and telling him to act NOW. A reader who’s quite impressed with your blog won’t hesitate to do as you’ve asked.
A CTA doesn’t have to be situated at the blog. In fact, we recommend that you put a CTA in the middle of your content. To learn how to write an effective CTA, click on this link NOW.
8. Incorporate Exit Campaigns
Have you ever come across a blog that you scrolled for a few seconds and as you’re about to click out or go to another window, a pop-up like this shows up on your screen?
“Ouch That’s abandonment! Why not stick around and avail of a 50% discount on your first month’s subscription? Just give us your email address and click ‘I Accept’”
Exit campaigns are a great way to connect with your site visitors. A well-written pop-up can trigger emotions that might compel the visitor to consider your offer.
We recommend exit campaigns for e-Commerce sites. For example, if a shopper abandons his cart at the checkout counter, we’ll have a built-in feature that automatically transmits an email to him. The email could read like this:
“Hi! We noticed that you left some items on your cart. How can we help you with your purchase? Perhaps a 10% discount can convince you to give us another try. Just click on this link and we’ll take care of the rest.”
We’ll complement the email with a nice image that’s relevant to the message. Cart abandonment emails have a high conversion rate of 18.64%.
9. Run Activity Notifications Round-the-Clock
You might have been exploring an e-Commerce site and noticed pop-ups appear every few seconds. These pop-ups read:
“Paul from Archuleta just purchased a pair of ski boots.”
“Sandra from El Paso recently bought a 1-liter insulated water bottle.”
“Andy from Kiowa just purchased a pair of long-range binoculars.”
These are round-the-clock notifications that present social proof of people actually purchasing products from the website. As short snippets of information, people can quickly read them and get enticed to buy on the spot.
You can also run round-the-clock activity notifications to get website visitors to sign up for your newsletter or to avail of special promotions.
10. Minimize Sales-y Content
The most effective blogs are the ones that provide useful information the readers can use to solve problems.
If your business sells a product or service that provides the solution, pitching a sale into the blog once in a while isn’t bad. But posting content that frequently pushes a sale will put off the reader.
A study conducted by Kentico Software showed that incorporating a blog with a sales pitch can diminish the credibility of the brand by 29%.
Creating blogs with sales-y content might compromise audience loyalty. Instead of viewing your blogs as information that provides useful content, they’ll see them as generic marketing copy that serves only your interest and not theirs.
Conclusion
The numbers about blogging have remained consistent over the last decade: It works.
Blogging delivers results but you need to do it properly. As you’ve just read, there’s more to blogging than just turning ideas into content. There’s a process involved and strategies to consider in order to maximize the benefits of blogging.
Follow the 10 tips we discussed in this article and create blogs that will help convert interest into sales.
To save time, you can outsource blogging to our team of content writers. We have experience in content optimization and keyword research. Give us a call and let’s schedule a 30-minute consultation free of charge.
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