MN Interactive

How To Increase Blog Readership Conversions

A blog is as good as the attention it garners, unless of course you are writing it for personal or therapeutic reasons. If it’s a consumer or business blog, you will want to concentrate on its end goal- to urge visitors into making a planned decision- be it to subscribe to your feed; buy, trade or sell products; or retweet your posts.

Identifying what you want them to do and actually getting them to do it are of course two different matters and contrary to popular belief, a higher readership doesn’t always translate into a higher conversion rate. Setting up a strategic plan is necessary which lays out step by step what you need to do to get visitors to actually take action.

One of the most popular conversion terms coined is ‘Call To Action’. What it simply means is that unless you call (not con) people into taking action, chances are they’ll read and enjoy your posts without doing anything about it. Think about the average visitor who browses a few sites each day – if he likes what he sees on your site, he might bookmark it to visit again. Will he voluntarily retweet or comment on your post? Maybe, if he enjoys your content, or if he’s building a marketing campaign and wants his brand noticed. On the other hand, if he’s visiting a site which sells information, products, or services, and can be converted into a potential buyer, will he do so without any urging? The chances of that are slim.

Call your reader to take action in your blog post, in your related site, in your navigation menu, on internal banners, and even in your comments (though that has to be handled subtly). As with all marketing tools, you need to experiment with what works best for you.

End your posts with an urgency. ‘Click here for more information’ is so boring and passé – people will not even bother to do so. Instead, try ‘Only 5 days remain to….’, or ‘A special SALES OFFER…’. People like to be offered something of value, which makes them feel special. Tap into this for your own sales.

Rethink your marketing campaign. What can you do that you are not already doing to make your reader conversion rates leap through the roof? Most of us will use standard marketing ploys – newsletters, free eBooks, articles on ezine directories etc. Begin to think outside the box. Does your WordPress or blogger page look okay? Can you add your own sales tools on it to boost sales? Where can you position this? What colors are you using? Do they make the ad pop? Do all the links work? (This is such a basic principle, yet most bloggers fail to check if links published are valid!). Again, it’s all about experimenting with what’s right for you. In this sense, tracking devices are invaluable in helping you calculate conversion rates.

Similarly, be ruthless and delete the unnecessary. Have you heard about too many cooks spoiling the broth? The same holds true for too many ads and links- they distract the reader. No one wants to visit a site for information and find themselves battling against an untold number of ads or sales links. Subtlety is the key to gaining higher conversions. It’s true you won’t get anything if you don’t ask for it; but it’s equally true you’ll lose a lot of potential visitors if your site feels unkempt and cluttered. Have a primary message (e.g. signing up to your newsletter) and build your secondary messages around it (e.g. selling your ebook and affiliate products in it), ensuring they all link together. This way, visitors know they are being led in one direction, not scrambling to choose between many unrelated paths.

And finally, don’t forget to use all the tools successful bloggers use to get their blog noticed and talked about including:

• Regular valuable content
• Text interspersed with videos and images
• Related keywords
• Comments and responses
• The occasional survey, interview, and guest post
• Plenty of links
• Incentive via gifts, discounts etc.

In the end you will find your blog evolves, matures, and changes over time, and your marketing plans need to be adjusted to keep up with it. But with consistency and a well-planned campaign, no matter the direction you’re headed, your customers will follow you.