While many bloggers don’t exactly articulate what it is that they expect of their blog, they would, in reality, love to be able to give every blog post of theirs the ability to inspire readers with a sense of urgency to do something positive. The technical term for it is a call to action.
The term comes from the world of advertising copywriting. It speaks of copy that has the ability to inspire people enough that they will take an action – whatever the copywriter desires. What he desires could be making a sale, signing up a visitor to a newsletter, getting a signature on a petition or anything else.
The question is – how to you imbue your writing with that kind of persuasiveness?
Have you considered the fact that your call to action isn’t even clear?
Many blog posts are so eager to push their readers to do something that they fail to give them clear direction. It can be hard enough to inspire a reader to take action when you offer him one clear, singular direction. If you are eager to get him to sign up for your newsletter, click on the Like button and also download a free report, you spread yourself too thin.
The lesson to learn is that you need to make your mind up about what specific action you need to see your reader take after reading through your blog post and focus the entire post on making that happen.
Think of a great opening line, a great midsection and a persuasive closing line, all funneling the reader’s attention towards this one action that you would like him to take.
If you’re trying to get your reader to sign up to a particular service you offer, you can introduce them to the subject by offering a few ideas about what you offer that no one else does. If you have an ebook on the subject, you can offer it as a free download.
When your reader is hooked, you could continue to talk about how important good service is. At the end of your post, you could conclude with and user reviews.
Why would your readers be interested in listening to your sales pitch?
No one is interested in a sales pitch anymore. They call traditional sales pitches interruptive marketing. It’s considered old-fashioned and rude. Content marketing is the replacement.
Content marketing doesn’t interrupt anyone to make a sales pitch. Instead, it simply offers content that is useful to the reader in its own right. The reader comes across a subtle nudge given towards making a purchase while reading through the useful information that he has been provided for free. Many marketing experts today consider high quality content to be the best kind of call to action.
How do you write content that offers a good call to action?
Blog posts that are successful at putting out a CTA share a few key characteristics.
- They are brief, and full of practical information that can be put to immediate use. This kind of information puts the visitor in mind of taking action himself.
- It is very clear about all the positives and negatives to do with taking the action asked for.
- It meets needs that are uncomplicated and immediately clear.
There are a number of ways that you can provide advice that is practical and actionable. Whatever it is that you are publishing instructions on, you need to try them out yourself and report your experience right. Personal accounts are popular and actionable.
Another effective call to action involves not pushing your visitors into taking action all at once. If you wish to see them sign up to your email newsletter, you can give them a halfway step, instead. You can offer them a limited time newsletter whose subscription automatically expires unless renewed. This kind of respectful behavior will win points.
Businesses and one man online marketers run blogs for one reason – they wish to achieve tangible results of some kind. Yet, their blog posts aren’t often set up to inspire their readers to take immediate action.
