Do You Want a Blog With Great Content and Lots of Readers?

Blogging can be a powerful tool to help you build your business. It can bring you a group of fans interested in what you have to say. It's been said that people buy from vendors they know, like and trust. Your blogging can give readers the sense that they know, like and trust you, making it more likely they will want to do business with you.

Blogging can build your status as a thought leader in your industry or niche. It can be a great way to showcase your knowledge and expertise. It can bring a lot of traffic, including repeat visitors to your website. Bottom line – it can give your marketing efforts a powerful boost.

But, maybe you're thinking “all of this sounds great, but it's not happening for me. My blog isn't bringing a ton of traffic to my site; it isn't bringing me a flood of new business”. Well, keep reading. The steps in this article just might lead to some different results than the ones you've been so frustrated with.

Please Note: Today, we will make two basic assumptions – we'll assume you are “sold” on the potential business benefits of blogging, and you currently blog for your business, with the goal of attracting new customers, not as a hobby. We'll break the process of building a more successful blog into two parts:

1. How to make your blog more interesting and compelling
2. How you can grow your blog's audience

1. How to Make Your Blog More Interesting And Compelling

So what can you do to create blog content that attracts your desired audience like iron filings to a strong magnet? Let's take a look at some of the techniques world-class copywriters and content marketers use to sell more of their products. You and I, as bloggers who are attempting to keep our audiences spellbound can learn a lot from these masters of “salesmanship in print”.

Here's a bonus for you: the valuable tips you are about to gain will not only make your blog entries more interesting to your target audience, they will help you write more persuasive, effective marketing content in general.

Do This Before You Start Writing

One of these first things to consider is this: are you writing on the right topics to the right audience? Think about and analyze the audience you have, or consider the audience you want to have. What are their pains, problems and frustrations that relate to your product? What are they looking to you to help them accomplish? What's important to them? What could they not care less about?

If you already have a sizable audience, you may want to conduct an quick online survey to get a more accurate handle on the answers to these questions. If you don't yet have a large audience, roll up your sleeves and do some detective work.

Hang out where your desired audience members spend time online. Participate in the Internet forums where they congregate. Follow them on social media. Reach out to different individuals in your desired audience and ask what blog topics would resonate with and be helpful to them.

Before you start writing, understand your audience well!

You want to write your blog entries leveraging many of the powerful techniques a pro copywriter would. So what are some of them?

Learn to write “conversationally”

This may be a challenge, but I'm confident you can do it. Although you want to follow proper grammar and spelling rules, part of writing successful sales copy (and blog entries) is to “unlearn” what you learned in college or high school.

You are not writing a stiff, boring, formal academic tome, at least I hope not. Unless you are trying to win the attention of an audience of college professors or such, your writing will fail to resonate with your audience.

So how do you write conversationally? Imagine that you are enjoying a relaxed visit over coffee or lunch with an old friend. You're sharing fascinating stories with each other.

The tone of the conversation is laid back but lively. It's informal, not stuffy. It may take some practice, but that's how you want to write your blog entries.That's how the world's most successful copywriters write great copy that sells products like crazy!

Write to an “audience of one”

This relates closely to writing conversationally. Even if you have an audience of thousands, write as if only one person was reading your blog. Write in the first-person, specifically. Use the word “you” often; it's one of the most powerful words you can include in your marketing content.

People like to focus on themselves, so when you infuse your content with the word “you”, you get their attention, and you make your content seem much more intimate and familiar to them.

Headlines, headlines, headlines

Or in the case of blog entries, titles, titles, titles! Compelling titles are critical for getting a maximum number of readers for your articles. A great title can draw curious readers like moths to a bright light, a lackluster title can cause them to pass your article by, to ignore it entirely.

What a drag! You may have written and posted the single greatest article in blogging history, but a lame title will cause most potential readers to ignore it entirely. So pay attention to the title, like a world-class copywriter would. This matters! You won't enjoy the success you want without it!

So what goes into the making of an eye-catching headline or title that draws readers to your blog content? Consider this quote from David Ogilvy, one of the greatest advertising minds in history:

“The headlines that work best are those that promise the reader a benefit”

Want to get peoples' attention with your blog titles? Promise them a very desirable benefit. Take it a step further an add an element of curiosity. Make your title strong enough through a combination of benefit and curiosity, and readers will flock to your content!

Make your content easy to read: If reading your content is hard work, your audience will desert you. Count on it! So how do you make it easy to read?

Remember what we said about “unlearning” the formal academic style of writing you learned in school. This “rule” applies here. To make your content easier to read, write on a fairly basic level, instead of trying to imitate a Masters degree thesis.

Says Brian Clark of Copyblogger, “...keep it simple and clear. No one will ever complain that your writing is too easy to understand”. I agree with Brian.

In addition to writing at a basic level, keep your blog articles fairly brief (but as long as they need to be to make your point), include plenty of white space, and keep your sentences and paragraphs short.

Thank about the last time you tried to read super-wordy sentences in a paragraph 50 lines long. It was hard work, wasn't it? And even if you made it all the way through that “verbal marathon” how much of it did you remember? How enjoyable was the reading experience? I'm guessing your answers to these two questions is “not much!” and “not very!”.

2. How You Can Grow Your Blog's Audience

You can have the world's most interesting blog, but if no one knows about it, it won't get read. It's up to you to get the word out about it. Don't be shy here. Announce new blog articles in your social media channels. Send an email to your list every time you post a new article.

Along these lines, grow you email list. According blog traffic expert Neil Patel, cofounder of Crazy Egg, “all the blogs I've created have a common trend… email is one of the biggest sources of traffic.”

Write SEO-friendly blog article titles to get the attention of search engines. We are often told to “write for people first and search engines second”. I agree. But why not do both? You can write content that appeals to people and gives you stronger SEO results also.

“So what does this have to do with landing pages?”, you may ask. Good question. Remember the assumption we made earlier – that you are blogging because you want to win new customers.

It doesn't matter if you run a B2B operation where your only online conversions are for content downloads or email list signups, or if you run an e-commerce site and you want to use your epic blog content to direct more customers to your online store.

Either way, landing pages are an important online marketing tool and you need them.

But not all landing page platforms are the same. Lander is the easiest-to-use landing page platform in the Universe! Not only is it easy to use, it's a snap to set up.

No longer do you have to deal with the frustration of trying to set up a landing page “the old fashioned way”. With Lander, you can have a state-of-the art landing page on the web in a matter of minutes.

And Lander offers you a list of useful features like

• Advanced A/B testing
• An intuitive, easy-to-use editor and form builder
• Built-in video support
• Google Maps Integration
• A countdown timer

that you will love because of  the goldmine worth of juicy benefits they'll deliver. But here's one of Lander's “features” you just may love the most: you can try any of our advanced landing page templates free and with no obligation!

Sounds pretty good doesn't it! Any questions about Lander and how we can help launch your next online marketing campaign into the stratosphere? Let's talk!

Happy Marketing!