“Effective blogging is the single best thing you can do to improve search engine rank, get more traffic, get more leads and have the opportunity to convert these people to long-term and referring clients” – JSE
Ok. So now you know that on average: high frequency business blogging translates into a 500+% increase in targeted web traffic and a 250% increase in actually business leads.
You’ve become deeply inspired by the idea of using your blog as way of establishing yourself as a trusted online expert and even an industry thought leader.
But there’s one more critical key to fully unlocking the incredible social selling and branding power of blogging for your fitness training or coaching business.
What’s the second key? Well, if you really want significant those increases in blog traffic to translate into new clients and increased revenue for your business: the content you publish must be deeply engaging, truly inspiring and perhaps most of all, seriously solution-focused.
So how do you write deep-engagement content that will build your brand, accelerate your social media community building and ultimately, grow your business?
Here’s a list of the top 10 most effective tips, tricks and techniques for writing an amazing blog post every time:
- Magnetize Your Blog Title and Your First Sentence
The vast majority of blog and website visitors out there won’t stay and read the first sentence of your new post if your title doesn’t quickly peak their interest or tug at their emotions. And that will only get them to your first sentence!
If you want readers to stay and really connect with your content, your first sentence has to be even more engaging then your blog post title. For example, the title to this blog post delivers a clear value proposition about the results you can get if you follow these writing tips.
Did you notice how crafted the first sentence I used to open this blog post? I offered you real concrete branding and social selling deliverables. For example: Who in the industry doesn’t want a whopping 500+% increase (and beyond) in their blog traffic and a major boost in revenue?
If you’ve read my first post in this “how to” blog series for fitness and wellness professionals, you’ve see that it’s true: frequent quality blog posting is arguably the single most powerful organic SEO strategy currently available for generating large volumes of targeted blog traffic!
More proven tips for magnetizing the first sentence of your blog post:
- Open with and write around a truly inspiring quote from an easily recognized author or thought leader. But if you do open with a great quote make sure to magnetize the next sentence you write.
- Open with a thought provoking question that reminds your reader of a problem or pain point you’re going to show them how to resolve and the clear benefit you’ll help them realize in the body of your post and ultimately through your clearly stated call to action. Here’s why:
- Follow the 1-2-3 Rule of Blog Post Writing
Following the 1-2-3 rule is probably the single most powerful blog post writing strategy currently available. How does it work? Simple:
In step 1 you create a sense of urgency for change. You do this by clearly describe your ideal customer or client’s personal pain point or real time business problem.
In step 2 you clearly and simply outline your real-time high value tip, trick or strategy for eliminating that pain point or business challenge.
The name of the game here is really sharing and demonstrating your expertise. Don’t hold anything back.
Your main goal is to solve the problem for your reader as though they were a high paying client. And if your blog posts frequently solve the very real problems your readers are facing, then high paying customers are what you’re far more likely to get as a result!
In Step 3 you shift into generating high levels of positive inspiration in your reader. There’s a second very important goal in step 3 as well. That’s to channel all that motivation for change you’ve built up in your reader into having them following through with your call to action. You do this by clearly describing the tangible benefits of following through with your solution-focused advice or strategy.
- Solve The Immediate Real World Problems and Challenges That Your Ideal Customers are Facing Right Now
In digital marketing terms: your ideal customers or clients are the hundreds or even thousands of people who are looking for your product, service or expertise right now, but who have not been able to find you online or via social media to pay you for them.
The world’s leading marketing experts have known for decades that sales copy that highlights your potential customer’s real-time pain points followed by strategies, products or services that solve those real world problems, is the sales copy that’s most likely to convert into actual sales.
What’s the take away? You need to write based on the psychology of your ideal customer. Ask yourself these questions:
- What are the biggest problems and challenges your ideal customers or clients are facing right now?
- What actionable, solution-focused strategy, product or service can you connect them with right now that will resolve their problem or pain point?
Clearly describing and evoking your reader’s current real life business and personal pain points creates a sense of urgency. What you’re doing here is building a kind of motivational burning platform for change. This sets up a very powerful contrast for sharing your action plan in story, form for solving your reader’s most life interfering challenge or problem.
- Be a Story Teller Not an Information Dumper
One of the most effective ways to share your information and really help you to connect with your readers is to share a true success story. For instance, some of the most deeply engaging sales copy is built around real world examples, including actual case studies and stories of personal transformation. To craft a powerful story, ask yourself these questions:
- What is the single most inspiring true story or case study I can share about the product or service I’m marketing?
- What real world problems or challenges were solved in this story?
- What was it like for the client before the problem was or challenge was resolved?
- What specific action steps did you introduce to help your client to overcome their problem?
- What were the biggest challenges to implementing the action plan?
- What was it like for your client after the problem was solved?
- What did it look like for them?
- What did it feel like for them?
- How did it positively impact their life and the lives of those around them?
- Keep Your Blog Posts Scan-Friendly
Ok so you crafted an attention grabbing title for your new post. Your reader has made the decision to stay and read your inspirational first sentence.
You’re now in flow, sharing a great content idea that you’re framing around the 1 2 3 rule and by sharing a success story. It’s critical now that you do everything you can to make your reader’s experience as effortless and user friendly as possible in how you present your text on the page.
Online writing is a lot different from academic or professional creative writing as usual. The most effective and engaging online business copy must use:
- Short Paragraphs and Sentences: Many blog visitors will quickly scan your blog to rapidly identify and extract maximum value in the minim amount of time. The more genuine value, inspiration and freshness they find while scanning, the more likely their scanning will slow down into a complete read.
- Bullet Points and Lists are a great way to break large pieces of helpful information into logically sequenced scan-able chunks. Top lists (Top 10 is best) are second only to infographics in social share rates. For instance in tip #4 above, I could have written several paragraphs about how to tell a story in your blog post. But I used bullet points instead to outline a helpful yet detailed story telling process.
- Snackify Your Blog Content for Easy Social Sharing
What’s blog snackification? It’s yet another amazing benefit of packaging your blog content into quickly scanable and easily digestible morsels. Why? Because in addition to writing your blog post, you’re also crafting content snacks that will be easy for you to share on social media. Of course, this might involve a quick bit of “repurposing”.
For example, one of the top social media sights for generating real time blog traffic and connecting directly with potential customers is Twitter. It may seem counter intuitive, but if you have a strong social community on Twitter: high frequency tweeting on (i.e. Tweeting every 15 minutes) at key times has been proven to generate increased traffic to the links you post and engagement with your brand.
Having your latest blog post written in convenient, socially sharable snacks means you can copy short, thought provoking quotes from your blog posts and use them to optimize and share fresh engaging Twitter tweets designed to generate interest and traffic around your target #keywords. This is true for all of the major social media platforms.
Just add an engaging image, a link (shortened if possible i.e. via Bitly.com) to your blog post and #hashtags (for your 2 most important keywords) and you’ve optimized a tweet that’s 400% more likely to be RTed (shared) by your followers! Here’s an example an optimized tweet using a content-snack from this very this blog post:
The #1 Key to Unlocking (Shortened Link Here) The Incredible #SocialSelling and branding power of #Blogging!
- Genuine Inspiration is Contagious
A recent study of over 100 million online articles found that the most shared posts on the web inspire the reactions of awe, laughter, amusement and joy in their readers. The 3 step blog writing strategy described earlier is a particularly powerful tool for eliciting those kinds of feelings and reactions, since you’re setting up such a major emotional contrast between your reader’s real life problem and solution states.
To really inspire awe, laughter and joy in your reader you need to share ideas, images and quotes that deeply and genuinely inspire those feelings and reactions in you first.
Great business bloggers are always on the lookout for quotes, stories, images and insights that have the power to really move people emotionally. If it genuinely “wows” you, it will genuinely “wow” your reader too!
Many leading business bloggers craft fresh blog content around current events and trending news and entertainment stories. For example, they offer solutions to problems faced by major media personalities.
Other highly effective bloggers take a content marketing approach to writing blog posts. They summarize the hottest online content in their business niche by collecting and integrating the most effective insights and strategies currently available for their readers. One of the most powerful content marketing strategies bloggers use is to write fresh blog content around trending infographics and videos from other blogs.
- Add Internal and External Links To Your Posts
The most highly shared blog posts have an average of 9 or 10 links in them. This includes both external and internal links.
External links are clickable links built right into your content that lead directly to high authority websites and blogs. These are links that you use to refer to external sources, studies or research that you summarize in your blog post.
Linking to strong external content is also an important SEO strategy. Google and other search engines tend to rank blogs and websites that link to external high authority sights, higher than blogs and websites that don’t build quality external links.
Internal linking is all about strategically linking to other posts on your blog as write and add fresh content. Internal linking is also a valuable SEO strategy. Yet perhaps most importantly, external linking promotes traffic to all that great blog content you’ve already written.
- Add 2-3 Quality Images to Each Post
We’ve all heard that adding a highly quality, deeply engaging image to the top of your blog post will increase engagement right? But did you know? A recent study of 100 high ranking blogs and their most widely shared blog posts, found that the most effective posts had an average of 3.2 images each!
- Enable Strong Social Signals
Finally, crafting blog posts that drive large amounts of targeted web traffic and business leads isn’t just about frequently posting deeply engaging content. Nor is it just about writing content that creates real and immediate value for your ideal customers by solving their most pressing problems and challenges.
What else you ask? Well, you need to make sure that your blog is optimized for social sharing as well.
That means having large easy to see social share buttons on your blog. I also recommend having a large floating share tab that hovers at eye level as your readers explores your content.
It’s very important to have share buttons that clearly display the number of shares your posts are accumulating on social media too.
This will make sharing your great content that much easier for your readers. But it will also deliver strong social signals to your blog visitors and to the search engines, both of which are proven to increase targeted blog traffic.
ATTENTION: If you’d like more detailed training on this topic, join the JSE Inner Circle
[box]
The #1 Website for Fitness Pros (Fitness Business Website Solution)
FitPro Fitness WordPress Theme
Get a killer website for your fitness or coaching business without spending big money! FitPro allows you to control everything yourself and get online fast. Get started today for only $49!
[button link=”http://presscoders.com/affiliates/idevaffiliate.php?id=120_1_3_3″]Click Here[/button]
[/box]
[box]
CoachPro Fitness Website System (Coaching / Personal Development Business Website Solution)
CoachPro is a website designed specifically for personal development coaches. It is a professional, easy, and affordable way to get your website online quickly. Starting at only $79 with no monthly fees!
Get online quickly
Edit your own site easily
Low cost, no monthly fees
[button link=”http://presscoders.com/affiliates/idevaffiliate.php?id=120&url=13″]Click Here[/button]
[/box]
Stenell Myers says
Hi Spencer
I read your blogs daily thankyou. How can I add a blog to my website or link my blog to my website to drive customers. I agree just having a website don’t drive customers. I have were do i start. Thank you