You know how important maintaining a content marketing strategy, including blogging, is to the success of your marketing efforts. You’ve already set up a company blog in the hopes of converting leads into sales, but there’s one problem. Your blog posts are not accomplishing what they should. That is, capturing leads. Thinking of throwing in the towel? Hold on! I know you’re frustrated, but let’s take a deeper dive into how you can better optimize your blog posts for conversion. Read on for seven tips to writing a blog post that converts.
Understand who you’re talking to
Before you start writing your blog post, you need a good understanding of your buyer persona and what problem or question they need addressed. Don’t have a buyer persona to reference? Here’s a quick breakdown and free templates to help you get started.
Keep in mind, there’s no guesswork involved here. Your buyer persona should be driven by numbers, industry-backed research and who your competitors are targeting. Once you have your buyer persona nailed down and understand their unique pain points, pull up Evernote or a good ole’ fashioned notebook and start brainstorming a list of topics your audience would like to know about.
Craft a clickable headline
Hard truth alert: It doesn’t matter how amazing your content is. If readers aren’t pulled in by your headline, then you’ve wasted hours of hard work for nothing. Your headline should tell your audience what they will learn by reading your article. If you’re investing significant time and energy into the content you create, commit yourself to writing a compelling headline that will drive your audience to read on. I use CoSchedule’s headline analyzer to nail down my blog headline copy!
Use subheadings wisely
Readability is crucial for blog posts. Who wants to read a post that’s just one giant block of text? Not me! When your reader lands on your blog post, they’ll skim the page before they decide to jump in. Subheadings are a nice way to break up blocks of text and make it easy on the user’s eyes while reading your blog post.
In addition, H2 and H3 tags tell search engines what your blog is about. Search engine crawlers scout for heading tags, so make sure the sentence or phrase contains your designated long or short tail keywords to boost your blog’s search engine ranking.
Implement calls to action throughout your post
Short, sweet and to the point. A good call to action should be concise but compel your readers to act immediately. A call to action can manifest in the form of inline text or a popup halfway down an article. Regardless of how it looks, you want to put your call to action in a place that stands out from the rest of your blog post without disrupting the article’s natural flow.
Also, don’t be afraid to add the same call to action more than once or multiple calls to action in the same blog post. Whichever way you choose, always keep in mind the blog’s readability. If your readers can’t stay focused on your article, they’ll bounce right off your page and onto another!
Use bullet points
Bullet points are your secret weapon! They’re the most adaptable tool in a writer’s arsenal, not only helping to break up your writing but making your text easy to skim through.
Here are a few tips to writing compelling bullet points:
- Outline clear benefits. Remember, features tell, benefits sell.
- Keep them brief and avoid bullet clutter. Never write paragraphs in bullets.
- Start with a verb to reveal the most information about your bullet point.
Remember, people read blog posts because they’re seeking information on a specific pain point in their lives. Don’t make them work to get it.
Make use of social sharing
Amplify your content’s reach by enabling your readers to share it with their networks through social sharing. Remember, they won’t share if you complicate the process, so keep your content optimized for social sharing by including options in the form of in-line engagement and sharing buttons to give your audience a quick, simplified process. I use Monarch for my blog but here’s a cool list of WordPress plugins that will make social sharing on your own blog a breeze!
Encourage commenting
As a site owner, user comments on your content can help organically boost your search engine ranking. When multiple users leave their feedback on your post it will signal that your content is engaging. It can also provide additional insights into the topic of that page and contain your targeted keywords used naturally in the comment’s phrasing.
Optimize your post for search engines
Optimizing your blog posts for SEO is a non-negotiable in order for your blog to get indexed and attract the attention of your target audience. You should optimize your blog posts for one focus keyword and sprinkle other relevant keyphrases throughout your post.
Here are some other on-page blog optimization tips:
- Include a proper meta title with your primary keyphrase
- Add a proper meta description that includes your primary keyphrase
- Include your primary keyphrase in the first paragraph of your blog
- Add alt-text to your images
- Embed internal links throughout your content
- Include external links to medium/high domain authority sites
Check out this handy guide to optimizing your blog post before you hit publish!
Hooray! You’re now equipped with all the tools to generate a blog post that converts. Apply each of these seven tactics in your blog activity to achieve the ROI you’re seeking. Have more questions?