Are your blog posts not converting as well as you would like them to? Want to know the secrets of how to write a blog post that converts? In this article, I’ll share 7 tips that will help you write a blog post that converts.
You see most people that visit your blog post usually leave without reading it all the way through.
What sucks even more is that even larger percentage of people who see your blog post on twitter, facebook, etc don’t even click on it.
You really only have 2 – 3 seconds to grab your user’s attention and convince them to click and actually read your blog post.
So how do you make sure that your content marketing efforts aren’t going to waste? Well, you follow these 7 tips, and I promise it’ll help you write blog posts that convert.
Before you start writing, it’s crucial that you know who your audience is, and what they are looking for.
Instead of guessing what your audience need / want, I recommend that you make data-driven decision by doing industry research and competitor analysis.
Sounds complicated? It really isn’t.
There are tons of resources out there that you can use. Below are some of my favorites:
KeywordTool.io – a free tool that you can use to see what are some of the most popular keywords searched by users in your industry.
Twitter Advanced Search – simply type your keyword and select the filter “questions” and it will show you all the questions that folks in your industry are asking.
Quora – great resource to find questions folks in your industry are asking.
SEMRush – although it’s a paid tool, it works extremely well and allows you to spy on your competitors and steal their best ideas.
If you don’t have a compelling headline, then there is a very good chance that your blog post will not be read or shared.
As humans, we’re shallow. We judge a book by it’s cover and a blog post by it’s title.
This is why your blog post title is crucial for the success of that blog post.
I recommend that you run your headline through EMV headline analyzer to find the emotional marketing value of your headline.
You can also use Headline Analyzer by CoSchedule which also gives tips on how to improve your headline.
Formatting is crucial for blog posts.
There’s nothing worst than reading a blog post that’s just one giant paragraph.
Most of the time people skim through the content before they actually decide to read it, so I always recommend breaking your article with subheadings.
Anything you can do to make it easy on the user’s eyes is going to help them read your blog post (and take the action that you want them to).
Aside from subheadings, bullet lists are perfect because they’re very easy to skim through.
Here are some tips that I use to write bullet points that people will actually read:
Express clear benefit. Think of bullets as mini-headlines.
Keep your bullets symmetrical. 1-2 lines each.
Avoid bullet clutter. Don’t write paragraphs in bullets.
Remember bullets are not sentences. They’re just like headlines.
Human brain processes visual content a lot faster than text based content. That’s why adding captivating images can help boost your engagement.
There are tons of awesome free resources for finding high quality royalty free images.
For our blog, we also use Shutterstock, a premium stock photo site.
While I never recommend writing for SEO, but I also don’t recommend writing without SEO in mind.
Google organic search drives a huge chunk of the traffic for most websites.
If you want to maximize your SEO ranking, then I highly recommend that you optimize your blog post for important SEO ranking factors.
Below are some of the tips that I follow:
Add proper Meta Title
Add proper Meta Description
Optimize for Focus Keyword
Use related keyword variation
Add image alt attribute
Interlink my content
For more details, you should check out my 14-point blog post checklist to use before you hit publish.
Whether it is to ask your readers to leave a comment, share your blog post, follow you on social media, or purchase your product, make sure you clearly state what you’d like them to do.
A good call-to-action is something that’s easily distinguishable and stands out.
For example, if you like this post, then I’d really love it if you can share it on Twitter and Facebook.
I hope you found these 7 tips helpful, and if you follow these, you’ll definitely be able to write blog posts that convert.
What other tips do you use when writing your blog posts? Let me know by leaving a comment below.
