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How to write blog posts that sell like hot cakes

How to write blog posts? – This question leaves every blogger wondering, right?

Over the years blogging has become one of the important and well known tools for earning money online.

But as a blogger, you need to understand a few things before you can start writing and thinking about earning money.

Before getting into detailed discussion, you have to understand one thing very clearly – to earn money from blog posts, you need to choose a topic that will actually help you sell things or get people interested into buying something else.

So, here are the steps to follow which can help you sell via your blog posts and make money:

What are you trying to sell?

Depending on what you are trying to sell, you will need to choose the kind of topic that will be perfect for your blog.

You will have to find out a way to create content which will solve your readers’ problem and then you will be able to direct them towards a paid offer that you wish to sell.

Do not force your product into your content rather guide your readers towards it to automatically engage them.

Who’s your audience?

Knowing your audience is really important. Understanding your audience’s need and requirement will certainly help you post something they are looking for.

This will give you chance to sell your product.

To understand your audience in a better and efficient way, you will need to follow them on social media, check out on what they are looking for, and only then you will be able to understand their requirement.

How to write blog posts? Do a bit of research

Research is always an integral part of writing content, but when it comes to blog posts, it’s a bit different from just writing some content.

Doing a good research can actually help you in finding valuable information, charts, data analysis, and a lot more that you might need to put into your content to compare and promote your product naturally.

Choosing an eye catching title

You have to understand one thing very clearly, when you readers search online for certain topics, they are not going to have a chance to read your post; instead they will have a look at your title only.

So, choosing a well crafted title is really important. This can certainly give you an edge over all your competitors online.

You main goal will be to choose a title that will answer your reader’s question, or maybe you can put up a title that will explain the benefits of particular thing or a product to a reader.

Whatever you choose, make sure that the title is catchy and it is capable of attracting your reader’s attention.

Starting the content like a Pro

Starting your content in a positive and efficient way can be the key to the fact whether the reader will continue reading or not.

It does not matter how intriguing or engaging your title is, having a good start is the only way to keep your readers engaged.

You can start with a nice success story, or may be with some questions, may be share some stats, or even starting with a myth is really great to get the attention of your readers.

Setting up the call to action

This is the most important part of your blog writing. You will have to find out the right situation to inject your call to action button or may be link.

For this you might have to use some statistical comparisons as well, so that at the end you can put the call to action naturally.

Show your credibility and expertise

There is no shame in putting in some words about your experience, expertise, and capabilities.

This might actually help your readers to understand what you are up to, what kind of work you have done, or what kind of credibility you have to discuss a particular topic.

Putting on social media links for direction communication is welcomed by the users as well.

Introduce the solution

You can just put your solution or the product right away in your content. You will have to put it in a Q&A format.

Ask a question that might interest the reader and then you can actually put forth your solution.

This should not be forced into the content; the reader knows that it’s an obvious fact to find a solution of your choice at the end of the content, but you should not make it an obvious choice.

Make sure to include it naturally and discuss the situation or the problem genuinely to reach out to your readers a bit more.

Engage the call to action

The call to action is not something that you can put in just as a link and hope that your readers will be interested in buying or following your choice of solution.

For this you will need to do some homework, make sure you design it well to attract the user, and then only you can hope for the best.

Provide enough proof to strengthen your sale

Users are ready to visit your blog posts on a regular basis.

Some might even start following, but to ensure that your readers are getting valuable info and something that can be helpful for them, you will have to ensure that you are providing enough proof to strengthen your writings or your claims.

Make sure to include stats from different sites and reviews as well, so as to consolidate your claims.

In case any well-known social media figure has said something about your product or solution, remember to put it as a quote which will really be an additional touch to your blog.

So, now that you know how you can put your blog post to good use and make sure you are able to sell products via every post you make, get ready with your resources, and get going with your blogging.

Be smart, be brave, and blogging will certainly bring you the success you need.

So you are publishing blog post after blog post. You get some traffic, but that’s it. Nothing else happens!

No sales; no subscriptions; no affiliate sales; no email opens; nothing!

Now that’s heartbreaking isn’t? Really, really heartbreaking.

And, it doesn’t matter whether you get a trickle of traffic or really good traffic. All that matters is engagement.

That might be a very bold statement. But I am not taking it back.

Traffic is of no use without engagement. Which is why we all talk about targeted traffic.

Pointless traffic that comprises of people who just come to your site, stay for a few seconds (or not!) and then bounce back is not going to do any good to your business.

Your business depends on people who buys your recommendations, your own products, people who subscribe to your email list, people who talk about you, people who are interested in taking up your service and so on.

When people just come to your site and leave without doing anything, the traffic is just dead weight.

That kind of traffic is only putting unnecessary load on your server. Nothing else!

What exactly is engagement for a blog?

It depends actually on the focus of your business.

Some bloggers want their readers to subscribe to their newsletter – THAT simple. Some want people to fill out a form – say, asking for a quote!

Some bloggers want their readers to leave a comment or share their blog post in social media.

Their main aim is to increase input from the readers as well as want their readers to spread the word for them.

So, every blogger has a different goal in mind when it comes to engagement.

The most important step in boosting engagement of your blog!

You know what it is? It is first to identify YOUR goal. You have to identify the answer to YOUR search; the longing.

What do you REALLY want to achieve from this blog?

To get to that point you ought to have clarity first. You need to know your goals clearly. Only then you will be able to define what you want from all that traffic you generate!

Which is why we talk about targeted traffic – Pointless traffic is dead weight.

You could drive thousands of visitors to your site from a PPC campaign; or from sites that sell “hits” for some pennies.

But if that traffic is not interested in what you are blogging about, they are simply going to bounce off.

That’s wasted resources (and time), right?

Clearly defining your blogging goals helps you generate targeted traffic; and that helps you achieve engagement on your blog!

Define your blogging goals clearly to boost engagement on your blogClick To Tweet

And once you know what you want, you have your own definition of “engagement” on your blog – it could be newsletter subscription, a comment, social share, product sale, affiliate sale or whatever!

You have to define it first! This is the most important step of all when we talk about boosting blog engagement – in fact, without this step everything else is invalid in this context.

OK now that you know what you want, let’s see how you can achieve a substantial increase in blog engagement.

User friendly design

This one is mostly overlooked in the blogosphere. I know there are some bloggers who dedicate quite some money and efforts to the look of their blog.

But what I am talking about is even more than the look.

And whatever I am going to talk beyond this point about design – assume it is for YOUR target audience, as I cannot give a one-size-fits-all solution!

First, your blog’s design should be pleasing to the eyes. You should know what pleases your target audience.

In general no one likes white text on a black background. If it is the other way around it would be much better.

And people also like some white space between the text so eyes can breathe (can eyes breathe? Oh well!).

PS: You can contact me if you need help with your website design!

And then think about the use of colors, widgets, ads, plugins etc. Only use those plugins that are absolutely needed for the function of your blog.

You might add a few cool features – but use them only if they are necessary; you don’t want to load your own server and your readers’ eyes with unwanted features.

Assuming you know what you want your readers to do (the definition of engagement, according to you), make sure those elements are right there in the right place on your site.

If you want people to optin (sign up) you have to put those sign up forms in the right place; and as well as make sure the process of signing up is easy.

If you want people to buy your product, you have to include the appropriate call to action in the appropriate places.

I can go on adding, but you get the point.

Focus on site speed

Don’t give me that look 🙂 You are thinking what website speed has got to do with improving reader engagement in a blog right?

If users don’t stay on your site how can they engage in any activity? Yes, your site speed decides whether people would stay or not.

Think about this – if you click on a website’s link from Google search and if it take ages to load, will you wait?

Or will you click the back button and go to the next site in the search result?

Obviously, you will click the back button and go to another site, right?

Because in these times, a particular site that takes ages to load is not the only site that can give information on that topic.

You can find the same information on another site, right?

There are hundreds, if not thousands, of sites on any topic on the planet.

If you don’t have a website that is optimized to load faster (less than 3 seconds, preferably), then your readers won’t be staying on your site to do any kind of engaging activity.

Easy sharing buttons

So this is another blunder I see with many blogs. If you want your blog readers to share your blog posts in social media, you better make it easy for them to do so.

This isn’t rocket science.

If the sharing buttons are not there or if your readers have to go through five clicks and a lot of edits to do the sharing, they will just go on without sharing.

You have to make sure that your sharing buttons are prominent (clearly visible) and are visible both at the top and bottom of the post.

If you want readers to share your content make sure sharing buttons are prominentClick To Tweet

Some readers argue with me on this – why would one want to put sharing a sharing button on top of the post.

People would be willing to share a post only when they finish reading it, right?

Well that’s quite true. But in today’s busy world people do prefer to share a post, if it is from a reliable source.

I do that some times. If I don’t have the time to read the post immediately, I save it for later, but share it immediately.

Either put up sharing buttons at the start and end of the post. Or put up sticky buttons so they come all way through the end.

Optin forms

So you want your readers to sign up for your newsletter, right? Take a look at your site to verify where you have given them that option!

If you have put up a sign up form only in the sidebar, you are missing out hugely.

People are becoming more and more blind to sidebar optin forms, because it has kind of become a standard.

People fail to pay attention to things that they are used to see repeatedly – like banner blindness.

So if you are using the sidebar as the ONLY option to make people sign up, you won’t see engagement.

You could put up optin forms in the header, in the home page, after post, in the top of the sidebar as well as in the bottom (better make this one sticky), footer etc.

You can also go a step further and use pop ups, slide ins, exit intents etc. if your readers are not annoyed!

Remember this KEY thing

IF you want to boost engagement in your blog, you have to make the necessary facility available and easy for your readers.

I hope I have made that point clear in this blog post.

For even more juicy tips on boosting engagement, I strongly suggest you read this post > The 7 step process to successful website conversion.

If your engagement opps are not prominent enough and/or if you make people to go through lots of loops to get there, they are not going to engage – no matter what.

While you are actively concentrating on creating killer content and promoting it, make sure the engagement boosting elements are in place on your website!

How to write blog posts that sell like hot cakes?