Why does your business have a blog?
If it is not to generate new clients, then you are wasting your time and the thing is that, when you look around, most company blogs are definitely not optimized to actually bring new clients.
So here is “How to write blog posts that bring you clients, people actually read and comment on.”
Writing blog articles suck. It is easy to spend a long time on an article that never gets any interaction, let alone actually brings you clients.
That is if you “just want to write an article because you have heard you should”.
It is not about writing articles. It is about creating content that attracts your potential clients and strategically plugs them into your sales funnel.
We have a little template and a few rules over here that we follow when creating our blog posts.
Here is the biggest mistake most people make
The main thing that people often get wrong is that they save their best stuff only for their clients.
Write your best stuff in blog posts – a lot of people want to save their best stuff only for their clients that pay them a lot of money.
It seems to make sense. But it doesn’t.
When your potential clients decide between you and your competitor, they are likely to read the content that both of you put out.
If you give them something more useful, they will choose you.
It doesn’t matter if you have the greatest thing ever waiting for your client after he becomes a client. He will never become your client if you don’t catch his attention first.
Just put out your best stuff. Don’t give them everything. Give them the most impressive bits, but don’t give them the whole thing.
This 3 step process never fails to make a good post
Now, with this out of the way, let’s get to actually creating articles like a well-oiled machine.
1. Start with the end in mind
If you want your blog post to bring any sort of benefit to your business, start with the exact thing that it should achieve in mind.
Do you want to get people to sign up to your email list? Do you want to them to schedule a free consultation? Do you want them become aware that you are offering something?
There should be something that happens after a person reads your article that plugs them into a machine that takes them a step closer towards buying from you. I will talk more about the specifics of doing this later on in the article.
2. Pick your topic strategically
After you know what action you want, you can choose the topic of the article.
Here are three questions that will help you to come up with topics for your articles:
What are your potential customers reading/researching before they decide to invest in your product/service?
Let’s say someone wants to get into horse riding. They will probably be interested in “5 things you must know before buying your first horse”, which can be great article topic that attracts people who are looking to buy a horse. It is something they are likely actively searching for, or at least would be very interested in, in case they saw it.
Then the article itself can explain what those things are and offer them a series of free training videos of the first exercises that they should do with their newly bought horse.
They would subscribe to those via an email, go through them and then be offered a paid more comprehensive training. It would seamlessly move them towards buying your product. So, think about what your customers are reading or researching.
What barriers your potential customers must overcome before they can buy your product?
For example, you might write an article “How to ride on a horse if you cannot afford to own one”.
A lot of people want to ride on a horse. However, most often they don’t simply because they cannot afford to own a horse. Give them tips on how they can be riding on a horse without the huge expense of owning one.
Again, the goal is to help them overcome the barrier towards becoming your client. There are a lot of articles you can come up thinking about this angle.
What do they need to believe before they buy your product?
So we talked about a person that is interested in your thing and already is researching something relevant.
We talked about a person that is interested in your product, however they have a barrier that is preventing them from buying it. Now let’s talk about the last group.
Those who need your product but don’t believe they do.
Imagine a small local business owner. He doesn’t think he needs Facebook ads because he has a small local business, he thinks Facebook ads are expensive and only good for e-shops or big businesses. If you identify that there is such a potential client that needs your services, but believes that he doesn’t, you can, for example, write an article “5 reasons why small local business owners need to start using Facebook ads”.
Or something like “How a small hair saloon owner doubled her amount of clients and turner her small saloon into a franchise thanks to Facebook ads”.
Those articles would change what your potential clients need to believe to be able to buy your services.
3. Get your article opened and read
So you know what action you want your reader to take and you know the topic.
Now it is the time make sure the person that clicks on your article actually reads it.
You can easily make sure that some people will see your article. You can run ads to it. However, what is more difficult to make sure of, is that they will read it.
You have to spend time optimizing your article to be read. You want it to be easy and fun to read. Inviting. So let’s start with the basics:
- Use font size 18 – Bigger fonts are easier to read. Size 18 hits the sweet spot at the moment.
- Use short sentences – Short sentences are easy to read and easy to understand. Long sentences over more lines are hard to read, people get confused and click away if you use long sentences.
- Use lists – Lists like this one, for example, are easy to digest and more interesting to look at then a paragraph of text. They help to break down the boredom of paragraph after paragraph.
- Use short paragraphs – Just like with sentences break the blog post as much possible to make easier to read.
- Use headlines through your post – Just putting the name of the article is not enough, use sub headlines to break it down. To keep it interesting. Use sub headlines to motivate your reader to keep reading and further bread down the post and make it easier to read.
- Use images – Images are again great to make your post fun and inviting. Images help people keep scrolling through the article and make it more interesting. (Little ninja info here: one of the parameters that Google judges when deciding whether your blog post should show up in the search is based on how far your visitors scroll once they get onto your page. The further they scroll, the better Google assumes your article is. Images make people scroll further, therefore they enhance your rating when it comes to SEO).
These tips will make your articles easier to read, here is what is going to make them irresistible though
What people do when they click on your article before they even start reading it, is that they just scroll through it. They scroll down and then they go back up.
They are trying to judge whether it is worth their time or not. That means that of course, the name of your article is the most important.
That is what makes them click on it.
However, your sub headlines are also incredibly important.
They will make people actually start reading your article. Your sub headlines shouldn’t be boring, and simply descriptive of what you are going to be writing about.
Your sub headlines should convince the reader that your article is relevant to them.
Here is an example:
For example one of our horse riding articles is called:
“My horse started misbehaving, now what?”
Here are some of the subheadlines:
“Worsening behavior with seemingly no reason” – we know from our customers that they perceive it as if their horse was just getting worse by himself. The aim of this sub headline is to create a connection with them make it seem relevant. So when they open the article and scroll through, they notice the sub headline and think “that’s right, that is what is happening to me” then next sub headline is for example:
“Worsening behavior is rarely caused by a health issue” – we know that most of our customers tend to believe that worsening behavior might be caused by their horse having a health problem. Challenging what they believe is there to make them think: “Strange, so what would it be caused by then? I thought it would be caused by health issues” this is designed to make them believe they will learn a new point of view they are not familiar with yet. Then another sub headline sample from that article is:
“Remember this when your horse misbehaves” – this sub headline is designed to create curiosity. A sub headline should not say what to do, it should not say “When your horse doesn’t listen, keep calm and ask him again until he listens”, that gives away what the thing that they should do is. It doesn’t make them want to discover what it is. A headline like that makes the reader want to skip the whole paragraph because it already gave them all the essential information they will get in the paragraph itself. You want to create curiosity.
When you scroll through sub headlines that confirm that the content is relevant, challenge what people believe and create curiosity, people are likely to actually read your article.
These “ninja tricks” will keep your readers hooked
Here are the other things that are very important:
- The first sentence – the job of the first sentence is to get people to the second sentence. Do not be boring. Say something bold to get them hooked.
- The transitions – transitions between different parts of the article are very important they are an easy place for your reader to stop reading, so pay special attention to them.
Woohoo, congratulations. Now you have a great article that people will click on and actually read, there is just one problem.
There is just one problem, without these few things, it will still be kinda useless to you.
1. A clear call to action
In the end of the article, you should create a clear call to action. Tell your reader what to do next. Maybe you can offer them a blog post headline temple. It will help them come up with headlines that were time after time tested and always performed great. Offer it in exchange for their contact information. Put up a lead gen form where they will be able to get the file. You can give them the headline templates and then contact them and start a conversation, maybe sell them your services.
2. Retargeting
However there is one other ninja trick you can do. Set up retargeting. Set up a Facebook pixel and retarget people who read your article. Show them a relevant ad on Facebook.
Did someone read an article on how to write a blog post? Show them an ad offering a free-scoring sheet to judge how well their articles are optimized in terms of SEO. It is good to make the offer done through retargeting slightly different from the offer that was in the article itself.
Just as I have mentioned here. In the article about writing a great blog post you can offer the “proven blog post name templates, that are guaranteed to get you more click on your posts”, while the retargeting would offer the readers “Blog post SEO scoring sheet” to see how are they optimizing their articles in terms of SEO.
Two different offers, both relevant, both capable of generating leads and engaging your audience.
Here is a cheat sheet for you to download
Wohooo, no you have really made it to the end. You know how to write one great blog post after another.
If you want to make it easier you can of course, as you already suspect download our template that we use for creating names for all our articles.
These templates will get you more people to click on your article without spending a ton of time having to come up with a catchy name yourself.
Click here to talk to Lorena, our friendly chatbot that will send you our templates.