Content marketing and blogging is an essential part of affiliate marketing. Engaging content drives customer sales. That’s why it’s crucial to understand how to write blogs that convert readers into customers. In this article, we explain 8 steps you can use to create content that converts.
1) Know your audience
It’s important to know your audience before you start writing your blog. If you have analytics on your website, you already have a lot of useful data to give you an idea of your key customer demographic, age, gender, location, and relevant interest groups. When you know who you are writing for and what their pain points are, you can tailor the content you’re creating specifically to that audience.
Blogs come in many varieties. Your content should be focused around a core theme and tell a specific story. Map the content you’re planning to write about onto a blank sheet of paper first so that you can ensure your story is told in the right way. Make sure to add a call to action at the end to lead customers to click and convert.
These are some of the general blog content themes that will help you develop a direction for your blog and position your core messaging:
- Educational – Sharing ideas, insights, and inspirations that match customer needs and answers questions they may have about the product, industry, or similar topics without selling.
- Informational – Giving customers information about the product uses, offering practical implementations, and key feature explanations.
- Opinions – Offering a viewpoint on a subject you may have expertise in.
- Reviews – Comparing the product to others and detailing the benefits and features in comparison.
Here are some additional tips for writing with conversion in mind.
2) Craft a killer title
The title of your blog is sometimes more important than the content itself. If you don’t have a catchy title that grabs the attention of your audience – you won’t get people to read the content.
You also need to ensure that the title will set the correct expectations of the blog content. If what they begin to read isn’t quite what they expected – the user is more likely to click off and won’t take any further action to convert.
Keep your titles short, sweet, and concise for best results. Include high performing keywords in your title, but don’t use too many – make sure it sounds natural. There are some great FREE online resources to help you create ideas for blog content such as Hubspot’s Blog Generator.
3) Use keyword search tools
Proper SEO and keyword usage within your content can help trigger interest, make your blog content more searchable, and encourage conversions. Answer the Public is a fantastic tool you can use for free to help you research keywords. This tool effectively listens to the autocomplete data in search engines. It then provides you with useful phrases and alternative keywords that you can input in your content to answer the questions people ask about your topic. It allows you to create fresh content that will be valuable to your customers and aligned with what they are looking for.
Ubersuggest is another free SEO search tool that can be quite valuable when planning what to write.
4) Use tracking and UTM codes
When you use tracking and UTM codes in your blog, you can find out how well your content is performing, and if your audience is really engaging. There are 5 potential URL parameters that you can track: source, campaign, term, medium, and content.
The keyword term parameter allows you to track the keyword that the website visitor used to find the content. Tracking these details in your blog content will allow you to build a clear understanding of what content your audience is resonating with. Ultimately this will enable you to fully optimize your content planning and better target customers.
5) Make sure images are tagged and optimized
Your images are just as searchable as your written content, so make sure your blog images are tagged and optimized to the core keywords you want your blog to convert for.
Image selection is also important because it’s effectively a visual title for your content. You should use an image that matches your text and subject matter wherever possible. Make sure to optimize the file size for faster page loading time, and don’t forget to add in alt text. if an image isn’t available to the reader due to browser settings, this will ensure it’s still accessible.
6) Think about using a data capture element
Your content is going to offer value because it’s well crafted and answers your customer’s needs, but your goal is to get them to convert. To do this, you need to have a lead generation link to capture customer data. You can offer a free video, user guide, or infographic for customers to obtain once they submit their email address. This will allow you to capture customer information to nurture them toward a sale.
7) Add a sharing function for additional reach
Maximum audience reach means more opportunities for a conversion to take place. A simple way to help your content get shared is to add social sharing buttons, which will allow your audience to share the information if they find it useful for others. This is a free and easy way to expand your content reach and get more website visitors.
8) Automate your marketing and content generation
It takes time to craft relevant and personalized posts and emails to promote your content. Make it easier with tools such as TextExpander. Create email template snippets, custom product snippets, and personalized outreach snippets that you can insert into posts or emails in seconds to make a significant impact on your affiliate business.
If you’ve been creating blogs that aren’t converting into customer sales, try these simple techniques and tools to ensure you save time, get better results, and deliver consistent revenue for your affiliate business.