Ever wonder what makes one blog popular and another flop?

Or why one blog builds a solid readership, while another struggles to find an audience?

There’s no doubt about it. Starting a business blog isn’t easy. But growing one? That is even harder.

From content to promotion, creating a blog that gets noticed takes time.

But here’s the good news. There are ways to grow a blog without scouring the web. Or spending long nights agonizing about whether your decisions are the right ones.

This last week, I was fortunate to receive a nomination for Social Media Examiner’s “Top 10 Social Media Blogs.” This isn’t an award I take lightly. Not with the amount of blood sweat and tears behind the success of my blog and the business behind it.

As I reflected on my 12 year blogging journey, a foundational piece within my career, it got me to thinking.

What do I wish I’d known when I first started out? And more than that, what blog success strategies did I need to know to keep me from making critical mistakes? (many I made along the way)

In today’s post, I’m sharing four steps to help you grow a profitable (and successful) business blog…the right way.

How to Grow Your Blog (the Right Way)

1. Create Strategic (and well-defined) Blog Goals

If I asked you why you want to start a blog, would you know the answer? Can you articulate what your blog will do to support business goals?

If not, don’t start a blog. If you already have a blog, stop writing immediately. Sound harsh? Consider this.

Blogging without a plan is as useful as cleaning the house with a party going on. Oh sure, you might gain a little traction, but you’ll end up backtracking, and eventually starting all over.

If you started your blog with a loosely defined plan, then what you have is an erratic content strategy at best.

Without clarity in direction, mission and strategic goals, you’ll limp along.

Want to create your blogging goals? Start with this goal setting worksheet.

Important Blog Questions to Answer

• What is the number one reason you want to blog?
• What will a blog do for your business or what has it done so far? Look down the road – 3, 6, 9 months.
• Who will read your blog? Be specific about your reader and potential customer. (we’ll tackle this in depth below)
• How will you stay consistent? Who will help you achieve your blogging goals?
• How does a blog support your current marketing efforts? (this is a biggie – don’t overlook what role it plays in your overall marketing plan)
• What’s your writing style? Are you serious, straightforward, funny, data driven, silly, witty?
• What will your marketing funnel look like? e.g. How will your blog create business opportunities and drive sales?

It’s a noisy online world with millions of blogs authored every day. If you want to stand out, you need to get strategic.

Commit to SMART goals. Goals that push you towards something tangible, concrete and trackable.

• Specific Have you been specific in what you want to achieve? 
• Measurable How will you know if you’ve achieved your goal? 
• Achievable Is this a goal that you can achieve?
• Relevant Is this goal aligned with your mission, vision and values? 
• Time Specific When do you want to achieve this goal by?

No matter what industry you’re in, one thing is certain. Content is a constant and gaining customer attention is at a premium.

Make yours stand out through defined blog goals backed by an actionable plan.

2. Write Audience Specific Content

There’s a whole lot more to blogging than writing. Don’t believe me? Just ask any successful blogger what the key to their success is.

What drives blog traffic, leads and conversions?

The answer is simple. They know who their market is, what they need and how to solve their problem(s). Then they produce content with that audience in mind.

Just like those bloggers, you have an ideal blog audience. They’re уоur customers, prospective buyers or users. Do you know them inside out?

If you want to run a successful blog, you must create content for your ideal reader. That makes research a must.

So, where do you begin?

First, get crystal clear on your specific market. List their qualities, demographics, skills and any other important information.

Here’s what that might look like:

Persona Description (example)

• Female
• Average age: 44
• 3 people in the household – have to assume older child (no small children running around)
• Self-employed, small business, or entrepreneur
• Income – $75k

Persona Resources

These details can come from many sources:

• Google Analytics
• Customer Surveys
• Customer Interviews

Creating a persona can help you better focus on your core reader and customer. Not sure how to get started? Use this Persona Template from HubSpot.

Solve The Problem

Your next step is to write down the top 5-10 problems you solve for your reader/customer.

For example, if you’re a productivity coach, you might help business owners:

1. Work smarter
2. Overcome procrastination
3. Put systems in place to combat overwhelm
4. Identify counter-productive habits
5. Balance life and business daily tasks to get more done

Or you might be a local daycare provider. Your blog addresses the challenges all parents of small children face. You talk about teething, potty training, sleeping through the night, and how to get them to eat their peas and carrots. Or at least that’s what I remember from those days many years ago.

Now think about it. Those issues are very different from ones faced by parents of teenagers. What you write about, the topics you tackle and how you position your content – should all have this audience in mind.

Your blog topics and the content you write must have a specific audience in mind. Here's how!CLICK TO TWEET

Not 100% sure who your market is? Start here.

How to Define Your Target Market (answer these questions)

• Who are you passionate about serving?
• What differentiates you from the competition?
• Who is your specific target market?
• What qualities or characteristics define them?
• What’s important to them?
• What problems can you solve?

Being clear about your exact market will allow you to tailor your content and your message in a specific way.

Do Your Due Diligence

Your next step is research. You’re going to research the topics you listed above. Each one will become topics within your blog, allowing you speak to that challenge.

Now this is where it gets really fun. You’re going to turn to Google to search for terms around the problems you solve.

You’ll search based on the words/phrases your potential readers, users and buyers would actually type or say. What are they asking Google, Siri or any other search engine when looking for your product or service? In other words, what is the intention behind their need?

Probably not going to be “work smarter.” Instead they might ask, “what are the top productivity tips for business professionals?

See how conversational that is? Not the traditional SEO tactics we once knew. Those tactics have made a radical shift. The days of “tricking” search engines with keyword placement and stuffing are long gone.

Today, it’s all about user intent, the value of your content and writing for the reader. And not just any reader. Writing for the reader you want, the one you’ve outlined in detail.

As Marc Ensign puts it, 

“You must do extensive “people” research.  Instead of looking for the “right” keywords, we are looking for the “right” visitors. Our ideal clients. The ones that can move the needle for us. And once we know who they are, we can better understand what they need, how they search and what they expect when they land on our website. We don’t care about traffic. We care about the right traffic.”

This is something we work on daily at Post Planner. Here’s how our Editor in Chief, Diana Adams explains it:

For the best results, think about what kind of content would be most valuable to your audience. In other words, what is their intent? Why did they come to your blog? What kind of info are they hoping to see from you?

The best way to answer these questions is to really know your audience (your customers and potential customers). What are the struggles they face? What problems do they need solved?

Once you can figure out how to answer these questions better than anyone else in your niche, your traffic and subscribers will go up up up (and fast)!!

Now it’s time to get writing. Create a spreadsheet like the one we use above to define the exact struggle and intent of your reader. Get into the details first and the writing will be a breeze!

3. Make a Consistent Blog Schedule (and management system)

When was the last time you went back to a blog that hadn’t been updated in months? Probably never.

Staying consistent with your blogging efforts is the only way to establish your reputation and build blog credibility. After all, how can anyone take you seriously if you don’t take your blog seriously?

Whether you use Google Calendar, Handle (my personal fave), or another reminder system – pick yours and stick with it.

And don’t get caught up in creating an elaborate content calendar. It’s as easy as picking the days you’ll write, identifying your topics and then sticking with a plan.

As CoSchedule says,

The more time you spend strategizing, the less time you spend creating real content that will influence sales (which, let’s face it, is the entire reason to plan your marketing calendar).

Amen to that. Stop agonizing over the details and instead focus on what you can commit to.

Can you blog once a week, twice or even three times? Think seriously about how often you can create and publish new content.

Begin with at last one post per week and keep the day you publish consistent. You want to train your readers when to look for your content. Certainly this can and will change as your blogging continues, but for now, just focus on one consistent day.

Peg Fitzpatrick offers this advice,

“Once you have your editorial calendar created, you’ll find that creating more content is easier because you know just what’s coming up next. This takes some of the pressure off of creating blog content and still allows you the freedom to move articles around in the schedule or work ahead in any order that you see fit.”

Remember: always put the quality of your work ahead of the quantity you produce. Only posting one quality post per week is far better than alienating your blog audience.

And poorly written articles that are thrown up on your blog hastily will hurt you in more ways than one.

Not sure what to add to your blog calendar? Answer these questions to add content (along with the intent above) to your schedule.

• What makes your business unique? What do you love about it that your blog audience will appreciate and respond to in kind?
• What questions do current clients and customers ask over and over? If one person asks, more will want the answer. Create a running list of top questions you can answer.
• What do past customers have to say about your business? Use testimonials to add to your blog to help others understand how you help.
• What makes you passionate about your business? Write down why you love to help your community and then share that within your blog.

4. Put Together a Blog Promotional Strategy

Hitting publish on your latest blog post is not your final step. In fact, it’s only the beginning.

If you want to get the word out and encourage blog growth, you must promote, promote, promote.

That means getting your content in front of the right people. People who will take action on the content you share.

That’s where an email list, traditional marketing and a social media promotional strategycome in.

A blog audience isn’t going to miraculously show up at your doorstep. To get your blog noticed (and build a popular blog that keeps people coming back), you need to tell people where to find you.

Start with traditional marketing. Add a link to your email signature, newsletter and other promotional items. If you’re a Gmail user, a great option is Wisestamp.

Now build an email list. One of the biggest mistakes many bloggers make is creating a healthy list. Get Response offers these tips to build an email list…fast.

• Don’t buy email lists. Unless the vendor is highly reputable, purchasing an email list is worse than a waste of time. You could end up having your company listed as a spammer.
• Start with current clients, business partners and followers. You already have them in your contact directory. Many email management services have tools to let you easily move them from your contact book and email history to your email-marketing list.
• Leverage membership lists. Many chambers of commerce and professional organizations provide contact lists as a membership benefit. This is great for B2B market, but only when used intelligently.
• Ask online. Use multiple online locations to host your sign-up form: website, social media profiles, blog, online ad, infographic, whitepaper download, squeeze page, ecommerce checkout, and more.
• Ask offline. Use sign-in sheets at stores, events and shows; collect business cards; use QR codes or an SMS signup service.
• Use incentives to encourage sign-ups. Offer free stuff that is relevant and matches your brand and industry: exclusive webinars, industry reports, eBooks, how-to videos, and special offers.

If you want to get the word out and grow your blog, building a list is a great way to do it. Write amazing content that goes out to just your email subscribers. Get them excited and involved in your marketing efforts.

Next, leverage social media. Share your post across all of your social channels, including Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus and even visual networks like Pinterest and Instagram.

There’s a whole new audience waiting to find you, so let them!

Final Thoughts

No matter if you’re looking to gain new leads or improve online awareness, the benefits ofgrowing a thriving business blog can be far-reaching.

If you want to succeed, make the commitment today to stay consistent with your blogging efforts.

No blog succeeds overnight. It will take time and perseverance.

But in the end, the results are what make the difference. Take the plunge, enjoy the ride and have fun growing your blog!

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7 Psychological Triggers for Mind-Blowing Conversions, Sales and Growth

The world of online selling is drowning in data.

From analytics dashboards to visualizations tools to A/B testing suites to automated marketing solutions, just keeping your head above the big-data waters can be overwhelming.

Sadly, even with this flood of computer generated insights, 95.8% of the world’s internet still does “nothing” when they visit a site.

So, what’s missing?

Psychology.

As Neil Patel put it in The Complete Guide to Understand Customer Psychology:

“Online marketers are obsessed with traffic acquisition numbers and conversion rates. It’s easy to forget that your consumers are real people on the other side of the computer screen.”

And the key to reaching these “real people” is triggering what persuasion expert Robert Cialdini in his book Influence: Science and Practice calls “judgmental heuristics.” Heuristics are “mental shortcuts” that allow you take advantage of humanity’s love of “simplified thinking.” Cialdini himself identified six “weapons of influence,” which is exactly why the first six triggers on this list follow his own.

However, to make this as actionable as possible, I’ve added not just best-practice tips, but plenty of real online examples to back them up. Even better, I’ve also included an additional trigger tailored especially for those of you who love data.

1. Reciprocity
2. Scarcity
3. Consistency and Commitment
4. Authority
5. Liking
6. Clustering
7. Social Proof

1. Reciprocity

Reciprocity is powerful and deeply ingrained psychological trigger. Actually, it’s inescapable.

The principle is simple: when you receive, you’re more likely to give.

To be clear: this isn’t just fanciful karma. As Cialdini explains, “One of the most widespread and basic norms of human culture is embodied in the rule for reciprocation. The rule requires that one person try to repay, in kind, what another person has provided.”

Brick-and-mortar retailers have been relying on reciprocity for hundreds of years. In fact, we’ve all experienced this trigger first hand … especially if you’ve ever been to Costco. As The Atlantic pointed out, offering “beer samples at many national retailers on average boosted sales by 71 percent.”

So how do you trigger reciprocity online?

The most obvious way is through what are often called “lead magnets” or “carrot content offers.” By offering your audience a free but genuinely valuable email series, online course, webinar, whitepaper, checklist, or special report they are far more likely to take the next step in the sales process when it’s presented. QuickSprout’s “Free Course” serves as their primary CTA:

If you provide a SaaS product, however, then the real key is honing a “freemium” model. Dropbox is perhaps the most famous example of this tactic. From 50 million users in 2010, Dropbox has grown to well over 300 million by giving new users 2GB of free space and then offering paid plans that start at $9.99/month.

In 2011, it was reported that only 4% of Dropbox users were paid subscribers, which can sound small, but that percentage translates into upwards of $1.18 billion dollars in annual revenue.

Image Credit: Dropbox

While Dropbox is clearly a breakout success, this principle holds true across other companies in the SaaS industry. As Groove discovered in their 2013 SaaS Small Business Conversion Survey, the conversion rate of visitor to trial to customer far outpaced the alternative of visitor straight to customer.

Image Credit: Groove

2. Scarcity

The harder it is to get something — that is, the scarcer a resource appears or the more urgent its appeal — the more we want it. In a nutshell, that’s scarcity.

In academic terms, scarcity is, “the fundamental economic problem of having seemingly unlimited human wants in a world of limited resources. It states that society has insufficient productive resources to fulfill all human wants and needs.”

What drives scarcity is fear. More to the point, as humans we’re far more motivated by the fear of losing than we are by the desire of gaining. With at least56% of us experiencing active FOMO, this trigger drives consumer behavior and is even responsible for our borderline addictive love for social media.

The best example of just how powerful scarcity truly is the deeply ironic relationship between gun control and gun sales in the US. As USA Today reported in early September of this year, “Renewed calls for more restrictive gun laws, following a succession of fatal shootings in the United States, immediately appear to be generating a boost for the gun industry.”

Why?

Because we want what we can’t have.

The tricky thing is … how can you create scarcity without waiting for the hand of fate to swing your way?

Take Chanel for instance. Simply by producing a limited amount of seasonal colors of it’s infamously expensive nail polish, the make-up provider drives sales season after season. Infomercial giant QVC, hotel and airfare sites like Expedia, and even Amazon all employ scarcity similarly by displaying quantity countdowns — “Only 9 left in stock” — and time constraints — “Want it tomorrow, Sept. 24? Order within 2 hrs 50 mins and choose One-Day Shipping at checkout.”

Image Credit: Amazon

Free trials, in addition to generating reciprocity, also play on loss aversion and therefore scarcity. As mentioned above, offering a free trial allows customers to see and experience the product or service firsthand. When they become attached to it, they’re more likely to pay for the use of the product or service at the end of the trial, because they don’t want to lose what they’ve already gained.

The easiest and most powerful form of scarcity online, however, comes in the form of what Content Marketing Institute recently called “painful buttons.” Painful buttons are essentially opt-out or “close window” copy that appear on pop-ups. While most “No” buttons are passive, painful buttons drive home the consequences of not converting.

Joanna Wiebe, for example, was able to move her daily, Copyhacker’s email signups from the double digits to the “triple digits” with the addition of this pop-up:

Image Credit:  Copyhackers

CrazyEgg employs the same approach:

KlientBoost, on the other hand, which goes right for the FOMO jugular:

Image Credit: KlientBoost

3. Consistency and Commitment

Consistency and commitment operates on two levels.

First, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. People, for both interpersonal-social reasons and personal-subconscious reasons, will go to great lengths to appear consistent with their previous thoughts and actions. This is exactly why making major changes in lifestyle, such as losing weight or quitting smoking, are far more successful once the goal has been publicly announced.

Second, small yeses always precede big yesses. Put another way, as anyone who’s been in face-to-face sales knows: the first “yes” is hard; the second, easy.

The key is to make commitment a bite-sized act. When it comes to small yeses, a tiny action can produce huge changes. Conversion Voodoo increased application conversion rates by more than 11% simply by adding a commitment checkbox:

Image Credit: Conversion Voodoo

Mini-commitments help people to be more likely to follow through with the application process that can take much longer than the checkbox. The easy yes turns into the hard commitment.

This same principle is behind two-step opt in forms like those created by LeadPages. Not to be confused with double-opt-in emails themselves — which require new subscribers to click “Confirm” once they’ve signed up — two-step opt-in forms break the actual process of signing up into two (or more) separate steps.

LeadPages used this approach on their own blog and landing pages which resulted in a 60% increase in opt-ins. Here’s the CTA for their product tutorial:

Image Credit: LeadPages

Then, instead of putting the entire form within the CTA itself, a pop up appears as the next step:

Image Credit: LeadPages

Retargeting is another phenomenal application of consistency and commitment. Retargeting works through cookie or pixel-based tracking that allows you to “follow” your audience and represent offers based on visits to a specific page on your website.

There are at least two huge stats to remember here. First, 70% of users will start a purchase on one device and finish on another. Second, retargeted ads can boost response rates up to 400% compared to cold ads.

4. Authority

Authority is one of the scarier psychological triggers.

Where social proof, which is covered below, relies on the power of crowds — i.e., people “just like me” — authority takes the principle a step further to utilize the power of specific individuals.

The reason authority is scary is the same reason it’s powerful. As Cialdini explains:

When reacting to authority in an automatic fashion there is a tendency to often do so in response to the mere symbols of authority rather than to its substance. Three kinds of symbols that have been shown by research as effective in this regard are titles, clothing, and automobiles.

In other words, people not only respond to legitimate authority, they also respond to the appearance of it. A clear example is how businesses in the health, supplement, or weight loss industry use endorsements from medical professionals with impressive credentials.

Celebrities are often used for the same purpose. Trendyol, a rapidly growing e-commerce company in Turkey, “started launching campaigns with celebrity endorsements, and saw a traffic increase as well as a 30% increase in sales.”

However, what do you do if you can’t afford to hire Britney Spears, David Beckham, or Catherine Zeta Jones?

The answer is … logos.

Logos are short-hand endorsements that immediately convey authority. Even smaller companies — like Coding Zeal — can take advantage of this by featuring clients:

Image Credit: Coding Zeal

Likewise, Ramit Sethi uses two different versions of a logo-bar on his site, not to feature clients, but his appearances:

Image Credit: I Will Teach You to Be Rich

Again, even CrazyEgg follows this principle:

Image Credit: CrazyEgg

5. Liking

Liking is another obvious trigger … but that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

However much we pretend our decisions are logical and data-driven, in reality, “people prefer to say yes to individuals they know and like.” In other words, if they like you, they’ll buy from you.

Face-to-face this means devoting yourself to what can feel like shallow tools:

• physical attractiveness
• shared interests and similarities
• being complimentary
• developing familiarity and rapport

Airbnb took this idea to the bank by revamping their referrals program with the principle of liking. Their outcome? An over 300% boost in the program’s user signups and bookings … per day!

This is the reason “About Pages” — one of the most overlooked opportunities for influencing conversions — need to be about story and personality. The aim isn’t to sell, but to build a bridge between you and your audience through shared experiences, shared passions, or even shared geography. Creating an enviable following is much easier when you’ve showcased your humble beginnings. Loyal customers also like to see the faces behind the product or service they’re signing up for.

Portland-based agency North takes full advantage of their Portlandia geography and roots, even in their employee pics:

Image Credit: North

Your background is equally as compelling to visitors. Consider ProBlogger Darren Rowse’s about page whose story reads exactly like those of his visitors.

Image Credit: ProBlogger

The emotional push that comes with genuinely liking a company doesn’t start without a nudge. Giving your audience the right information inspires them.

6. Clustering

This trigger doesn’t appear in any of Cialdini’s writing. Nonetheless, it too is a powerful psychological heuristic that is essential to moving visitors into buyers.

Clustering is what the human brain does naturally to better retain information.

Like the name implies, it involves grouping similar things together in order to take advantage of our limited short-term memory. Because people only remember about seven pieces of information at a time, crafting content with clustering in mind will help keep your product or service front and center either when they recall it or encounter something similar later on.

Think about it. If you make a grocery list of random items, you’re going to have a hard time remembering the list. What do you most often do? You likely organize it by department or food type — such as “dairy”, “produce”, “meat”, and “non-food items.” This approach helps you remember more about the actual list contents.

Online this translates into grouping your copy with similar topics together. Use headings, bulleted and numbered lists, indentations, and background changes to make your content easy to scan. This approach increases retention and recall.

It also increases conversions. One way to know if you’ve got a clustering issue is to test your page success with eye tracking. Already mentioned under reciprocity, CrazyEgg’s heat-mapping solution produced a 24% increase in leads for Pronto by identifying and responding to how their visitors were hovering, scrolling, and clicking.

Lastly, the principle of clustering also impacts your pricing structures.

It has long been recognized that presenting tiered prices in the form of high, medium, and low will automatically draw customers who would have otherwise selected the lowest cost to the medium offer, while allowing those who want premium options to select the highest.

To drive this home, Patrick McKenzie presented two pricing options: first, a highly customizable option and, second, a tiered option.

Image Credit: Kalzumeus

Image Credit: Kalzumeus

The results were staggering: a 100% increase in revenue with 93% confidence. Why? Because tiered pricing relies on clustering to make comparisons easy and choices clear.

7. Social Proof

Whether we like to admit it or not, crowds are powerful forces. Humans are inescapably social and the simple truth is we love to act in packs.

That’s why we’re ending with what Cialdini calls “social proof.” Social proof is exactly what it sounds like, leveraging the testimonials, endorsements, and ratings that come from real people instead of you.

For example, research by Harvard Business School concluded that “a one-star increase leads to a 5-9 percent increase in revenue for independent restaurants.” As Jeremy Page emphasized in a recent CrazyEgg article on this topic, “The study demonstrates that users are constantly evaluating what others are saying when it comes to making their purchasing decisions.”

In other words, the first psychological trigger to increase your conversions and sales shouldn’t come from you. It should come from the people who are already using your product or service.

Testimonials are a great starting point. Email provider GetResponse, for example, exemplifies two social-proof cornerstones on their homepage: the power of numbers and the power of specific individuals.

Image Credit: GetResponse

What if you already use testimonials on your homepage? Insightfully, KlientBoostadvises using this type of social proof on checkout pages to ensure you’ll truly bring the conversion home. Rather than focusing simply on price, successful pages — like Ancestry.com — use social proof to demonstrate value.

Image Credit: Ancestry

In addition to traditional forms of social proof — like testimonials, endorsements, reviews, and ratings — there are two other forms you can employ online; namely, positive social-media mentions and in-depth case studies.

A well done case study is worth its weight in gold. Crazy Egg’s “How Pronto Used Heatmaps To Increase Leads By 24%” is a prime example of a case study that relies on social proof to showcase one company’s success in order to drive online conversions. The principle behind it is the same principle behind Ancestry’s testimonials: “They did it … and so can you.”

Conclusion

Not everyone is a natural salesperson.

In fact, we all struggle.

Basing your CRO on these seven, core psychological principles takes the guesswork out of marketing and leads to mind-blowing conversions, sales, and growth.

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