92% of the companies who blogged multiple times a day acquired a customer through their blog.
A blog can boost your business especially if you know how to convert a new visitor into a real-time reader, and then a “lead” who subscribes to your blog.
The “stickier” you make your website and the more wow factor you deliver in your content, the better chances they’ll stay around for longer.
Here are a few ways to do just that.
1. Create Compelling Content
According to HubSpot, 46% of people read more than one blog a day and the number of readers is growing by the year.
Writing clear, compelling content should be your priority from day one. Your readers are not novices – they have been reading a lot of other blogs. If you don’t give them what they want, they’ll probably go looking elsewhere. That’s the last thing you want.
The first step is to write good content to make your website sticky. Here are a few types of content for which your readers will love you:
- How-to’s, advice and in-depth tutorials
- Best-of lists from the net. This requires more curation than writing. You collect the best posts from other authority blogs. Your readers come to you for more hand-picked content.
- Videos and podcasts
- Personal stories embedded in content to engage your reader
2. Offer Something for Free
Just writing great content isn’t enough. You have to do something to make them subscribe. And I am not talking about RSS here. The more number of people subscribe to your blog via email, the better.
With an active email list you can keep in touch with your readers and promote your products by combining copywriting and inbound content marketing skills.
If you’re wondering, copywriting is about making a sale and content marketing is about educating them through content. When you’re promoting a product, you want to combine both – not just use one or the other. Here’s a good explanation.
The next step is to offer a “lead magnet” for free in exchange for their name and email address. A lead magnet could be an ebook, a 10-step special report, a white paper, a series of lessons delivered in their inbox every week or an exclusive how-to video you made.
Make sure you choose an appropriate medium (audio, video, content) and a great topic that matters to your audience.
Have you got a lead magnet? Do your readers thank you for it?
3. Create a Clean Design
A good marketer will always think of ways how to create a better website for their audience. They ask smart questions such as:
- Should I add more content above the fold?
- Do I improve the CTA button?
- How can I optimize my website for user experience?
A well-designed website will load quickly and be easy-to-read and navigate. In short, user experience comes first. Attention spans are getting shorter by the day. What are you doing to step up your game?
The “3-second” rule of website design says that 40% of people will
abandon a web page if it takes more than 3 seconds to load.
More and more users are making a buying decision on the web. In 2011, $1.1 trillion in sales in the retail sector was influenced by the web.
4. Optimize for Multiple Platforms
People love ease of access and what could be easier than using mobile phones to read a blog or make a purchase?
Apart from optimizing your website for search engines (SEO), you should also optimize it for mobile platforms. A mobile website immediately sends the right message – it helps you stand out as a brand that cares for the user’s optimal experience.
Mobile websites boost engagement. They are more efficient and cost much less than developing a dedicated app. Smart phone users are growing by the day, and soon, mobile phone browsing will overtake browsing over the PC.
One-fifth of Americans accessed the mobile web each day in 2009.
But having a mobile-optimized website is not enough. Once you’ve got it up and running, measure it for performance. More often than not, what works on your normal website will not work on your mobile site.
Recognize the loopholes to convert more mobile site visitors into leads:
- Is the CTA button too big for a smart phone screen?
- Is the design too cluttered and overwhelming?
- Are the colors working?
Do you have a mobile-friendly website? Have you optimized it
for mobile platforms like smart phones and iPads?
5. Go Visual for Viral
The average attention span in 2013 was 8 seconds, less than that of a goldfish and down from 12 seconds in 2000.
How can you make an impact in 8 seconds or less? Think visual. Human brains are wired for visual information. We can process a visual 60,000x faster than text.
90% of the information transmitted to the brain is visual.
40% people respond better to visuals than to text.
Infographics, memes, videos, photos, images with quotes are some of the most “snackable” and sharable content on social media. It should not be surprising that most of the viral content online is also visual.
With the likes of Instagram and Pinterest, you can communicate your point with just an image and literally no text. Slideshare is another great platform to combine text with images.
A good example of how to use visual content to gain traffic is yTravel Blog run by a husband-and-wife team. They post cute “truth bombs” on their Facebook page with 20K+ likes and on Pinterest with 4.35 million followers.
If you’re wondering how much money it will cost, the answer is none.
There are many free online tools to help you get started with visual content. Presenter is one example that lets you create infographics, banners, demos and presentations all in one place.
With that, you really have no excuse
to not go visual in 2014, do you?
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