Blogging

Content Marketing Explained: How To Write Content That Converts!

If you’re just getting started in blogging, it’s easy to get frustrated when you don’t see immediate results. But like anything, it can take a little time to get things rolling. It’s important to be patient in the beginning, because the quickest way to fail is to give up too soon!

When it comes to successful blogging, consistency is key.

Fortunately, there are simple, yet effective ways to dramatically increase the amount of traffic, subscribers, and revenue from the start, while also decreasing the time and energy spent managing your blog.

There is no better way to stay motivated and focused than by seeing results from your hard work, and that is exactly what you’re going to experience when you follow the techniques below.

Blogging is ALL about content and you must be producing content on a regular basis. You should ideally be producing 1-2 blog posts per week, but if that is too much to begin with, then aim for at least one per month.

And make sure that this is good, high-quality content that people would be willing to pay for. This should be some of your best stuff.

Many novice marketers get a bit squeamish about publishing their best content for free, but if you do this, your readers will thank you for it and be much more likely to buy from you. And yes, that includes the content that they have freely available to them. This happens because you have put the first and helped them.ext in panel

It goes without saying then, that regardless of your niche, you’ll want to write content that solves a problem and helps your reader achieve their goals.

When creating content for your blog, you want to focus on 2 things:

Educate
Empower

Every post on your website should do one or both of these things.

If you are writing how-to style posts that provides readers with a step-by-step process to completing a task, or accomplishing a goal, you are educating. If you write a blog post that offers insight such as a personal story of success, case studies, or motivational-style posts, you’re empowering your audience.

Content that either educates or empowers is the easiest way to create posts that become sticky. This means that you’ll be able to encourage visitors to return to your website again in the future as well as to subscribe to your feed or newsletter. It’s also one of the easiest ways to create share-worthy content and to position yourself as an authority in your market.

Another thing to consider when writing content for your blog is to focus on evergreen content. That way the content you post today should still be relevant months from now because it doesn’t become outdated quickly. This will cut down on the time you spend rewriting or revising content and prevent you from having to remove content that no longer provides value.

Start by jotting down links to the top 10 authority blogs in your niche market, and then spend a bit of time evaluating the type of content they are offering, especially posts that have a high level of engagement.

Look for things like:

Commonly asked questions posted by your target audience.
Posts with a high number of comments or likes.
Posts with the highest number of social shares.

High quality, informative and unique content is the key to your blog’s success. It’s what forms the foundation for your entire business, but it also is the driving force behind turning that traffic into subscribers.

Focus on building high quality content pages on your blog before you do anything else. You should aim to have 4-5 pillar posts before you start to drive traffic to your site. That will give your visitor’s enough reason to return to your site and to leave a positive impression in the mind of your target audience.

When it comes to the length of your content, search engines prefer longer blog posts that provide informative, original content, so try to write posts that are at least 1000-1500 words in length.

Think this is difficult to do?

It’s really not. Start out by creating an outline for every post and then add in images, bullet points and sub-headers that break up the content into digestible sections and keep readers glued to the page.

Whenever possible, try to write how-to or step-by-step style posts. Not only are they easier to write, but they’ll provide actionable information that your readers will love. Lists are another quick and easy way to produce a high value post that will help your readers.

Don’t be afraid to link to other bloggers! Not only is this a great way to provide additional value by guiding your readers to other resources that may help them, but it’ll make it easier for you get on the radar of authority bloggers in your niche market.

The goal is to impress your readers so much that they return to your site again and again because they know you provide value, and are a reliable source of information.

I cannot stress enough about consistency here. Content marketing is a proven strategy but it doesn’t happen overnight, so you need to be willing to wait for your hard work to pay off.

If you don’t want to solely rely on organic traffic, you can easily use some paid advertising (best via Facebook or Google Ads) to drive people to your best blog posts.

If you are doing this, then you definitely want a call-to-action on the blog post in question. In fact, I would go as far to suggest that ALL your blog posts should have some call-to-action in them. This could be to sign up for updates, go to a squeeze page or sales page, or to click on affiliate links in your post.

Get your content marketing plan right and you can make a serious amount of money by producing high-quality, high-value content that really solves a problem for your audience, and by adding a good call-to action, you can grow your subscriber list and monetize your hard work.

Start your content marketing plan today and see what happens; hopefully you will be very pleasantly surprised.

In the next post, we will look at choosing your primary traffic source, so until then…

How To Write A Good Blog Post (How To Write The Perfect Blog Post That People Want To Read)

No matter what type of business you’re in online, you are going to have to do at least some writing. Whether you’re a blogger, a website builder, an indie book publisher, a freelance writer, or even an online shop owner, chances are you need to write content of some sort.

One of the biggest secrets to success when it comes to blogging is knowing how to write content that people will actually want to read.

Note that this isn’t really about the way you write or at least that’s only a small part of the puzzle.

Instead, writing content that people will go out of their way to read is all about choosing exciting topics, giving them great titles and knowing what it is that makes people click.

Know Your Audience

It goes without saying that you must know who your audience is and what they are interested in before you even think about creating any type of content.

If you don’t know what your audience is feeling and the particular struggles that they face, then you really are shooting in the dark.

Take some time to do a little niche research and dig deep and niche down. This way your content can be super targeted to the right people and they are much more likely to read and engage with any content you produce as you are speaking directly to them and their concerns.

This doesn’t have to take long but is well worth the time and effort, but unfortunately this is one step that so many marketer and product creators skip. Yet if you do this you will definitely reap the rewards by targeting the right people at the right time which will result in more leads and (hopefully) sales for you.

Using Clickbait For Good!

One way to entice people to come to your blog and read your post is to use ‘clickbait’. Clickbait is basically any content that is designed to encourage clicks, even if it isn’t entirely honest in how it goes about that.

Normally clickbait titles are purposefully provocative or misleading and this gets people to click on them. Unfortunately this also gives them a rather bad reputation so you do need to be careful if/when using them.

For instance, you’ll see things like ’10 Tips to Transform Your Body – Number 4 Changed My Life!’ or ‘You’ll Never Believe What Happens to This Woman in This Shocking Video!’. For most people the curiosity/promise of the title will elicit a click.

The trouble begins when the actual content they are sent to is completely different to that eluded to in the link. As long as the content is entirely congruent and what was promised, you can use clickbait type headlines

There is no denying that clickbait does work and it generates plenty of hits for your website. The problem is that it can also be misleading and as such, it can damage your branding but of course that won’t be an issue for you as you will be using clickbait in a more honest and ethical manner 🙂

Choose Your Title Wisely

So let us ask ourselves: what is it about clickbait that makes it so successful?

The answer is that it looks different, it looks interesting and it promises something unique/that you haven’t seen before. It would be fine, if the actual content weren’t so lacking.

And clickbait is even more successful thanks to the sheer quantity of interesting content on the web. How many fitness sites have you been to where all the articles are on ’10 ways to get abs’ or ‘how to eat clean to lose weight’. This content is so derivative, we’ve all read it a thousand times!

To get around all this drudgery, you need to create content that offers something genuinely interesting, that people haven’t seen a thousand times before and that actually sounds interesting too because if you can’t generate interest, no-one will see it and that would be a shame.

For a fitness site, that could look something like this:

‘How my fitness addiction nearly ruined my relationship’

‘Cardio acceleration: a new type of cardio fitness that burns 300%+ more fat’

‘Why bodybuilders are stronger than powerlifters’

These sorts of titles are engaging and unique but what’s more is that they’re also meaty and give you the opportunity to write some really great stuff and they also have an air of mystery to entice viewers to click through and learn more. That’s how you get clicks and build fans!

OK, there are 3 quick tips to help you to create content that people actually want to read and hopefully this will result in more leads and sales for you and your business. Now where’s my pen…