A search engine friendly website is a must-have for any digital marketing plan, but frequent website updates are also needed. A recent blog post discussed specifically how blog posts can help boost the SEO of your website. Fresh content also increases your authority potential, gives you more opportunities to highlight keywords, and leads to more frequent indexing with search engines.
That all sounds good in theory, but how do you write content which is clear, concise, and easy to understand, but also incites a Call to Action – or CTA. Here are 8 tips we think will help you do just that.
1. Know your target.
We’ve talked about this before, but it is difficult to overstate the importance of knowing and understanding your target audience. Determine the key demographics of your target audience – age, gender, occupation, income, interests, etc. What challenges do they face and what problems are they trying to find solutions for? Are you targeting individual buyers or executives in business which make buying decisions? Target an audience which reflects most of your potential customers. Or, if you have more than one target, switch the focus from time to time.
2. Bring on the “feels.”
It’s probably not a secret that feeling sell products. That’s one reason why TV ads with puppies, horses, or babies tend to stick in our memories – because they grab at our feelings. Making people feel important or special is a way to engage your audience and create potential clients. Using phrases like “hand-selected” or “randomly picked” makes prospects feel special, but in a good way. “When it comes to converting a prospect, the features of your product or service will only get you so far. Why? Because features appeal to your prospect’s logical brain. And purchases aren’t driven by logic. They hinge on emotion, which explains why good commercials make us want to laugh or cry or pick up the phone to call home.”
3. Create urgency and exclusivity.
Convince your reader to act now. They need to feel “uneasy” about waiting to decide to act rather than become comfortable and delay a decision. Phrase like “ends tomorrow,” “last chance,” and “supplies are limited” are examples of this.
4. Avoid “weasel” words.
Words and phrases such as “fight,” “reduce,” and “as little as” insert ambiguity and “wiggle room” in your statement or claim of what your product or service can do for a potential client. The weasel pokes small holes into eggs and sucks out the content, leaving the shell intact but the egg empty. Avoiding these words and phrases makes your content stronger and more authoritative.
5. Tailor your CTA.
The options for creating an effective call-to-action are limited only by your creativity. Don’t settle for “click now” every time! Weak, ineffective, and cliché’ CTAs will give low conversion rates, so try out some new ones and see what works for your audience. Some of the best CTAs are short, sweet, and to-the-point. Give these a try:
· Start your free trial now.
· Try it free for [amount of time].
· See how it works.
· Order your [product] today.
· Subscribe now.
· See how it works.
· Talk to us!
6. Use analogies and metaphors.
Marketing is all about convincing potential customers that what you have to offer – be it a product or a service – will add value to some aspect of their life. Readers won’t pay attention to something that don’t understand or that they don’t perceive to be valuable. Here’s an example of how this works: Conveying value to a potential customer of your product or service without using clear, compelling language is “like trying to thread a needle while wearing hockey gloves.”
7. Keyword care.
Google receives over 63,000 searches per second on any given day!! Make sure your writing includes the keywords and phrases your target audience is searching. Focus keywords evolve as trends shift and terminology changes or your product and/or service line changes. Keywords should be naturally integrated into the blog post, appearing in key places - title, headings, URL if possible, image alt text, and throughout the content.
8. Use a mix of time-sensitive and “evergreen” content.
In other words, mix it up. At times you’ll want to write about a topic which is timely or reactive to something that’s going on in the news. At other times, you should focus on a topic that will be as relevant in six months as it is today. This also helps create content which is “feedable” into social media platforms and thus can be used and reused.
Remember, as a content writer, “your job is to first and foremost figure out the value in what you’re selling and then put it into clear, concise, compelling words.” If you’d like help with blog writing, we offer affordable, customized content writing solutions including blog articles, social media articles and posts, press releases and more. Contact us today for pricing or to see examples of the types of things our content writers do.
Resources:
Evolve Impact Group. How to write a blog people want to read AND boost your SEO! Evolveig.com [blog post]. 21 Jun 2019 [accessed 14 Jul 2019]. https://www.evolveig.com/News/ArticleID/218/How-to-Write-a-Blog-People-Want-to-Read-AND-Boost-Your-SEO
Fuld J. 10 Ways to create great inbound content for your association. HubSpot [online]. Updated 28 Jul 2017 [ accessed 14 Jul 2019]. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/10-ways-to-create-great-inbound-content-for-your-association
Patel N. 16 Call-to-action formulas that make people want to click. HubSpot [online]. Updated 6 Sep 2017 [accessed 15 Jul 2019]. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/call-to-action-formulas
Shleyner E. How to write compelling copy: 7 tips for writing content that converts. HubSpot [online]. Updated 19 Dec 2018. [accessed 14 Jul 2019]. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/write-compelling-copy-tips