How to Create Content that Converts

Do you want to create the kind of content that a viewer will pick up their phone to call you or share the link with their friends, immediately after viewing the content?

Whether you’re a content creator or just a blogger, this is one of your primary goals; to create content that converts. That kind of content that will help you to achieve the result you have in mind prior to creating it.

Unfortunately, many times, lots of content creators do not always create the outcome they had in mind when they set out to create their content. And oftentimes, this usually leads to a feeling of disillusionment or a desire to quit.

Truth be told, sometimes, it gets difficult to create content that really converts especially when you don’t have a clear idea on how to go about it. But even when difficult, it is not impossible to create content that converts.

A lot of successful bloggers and content creators are creating blog posts that convert, every single day. And to these people, getting this level of conversion is part of the reasons that motivates them to create these contents again and again.

So, the question is, do you create the same exceptional results with your own content?

I am sure you’re reading this because you also want to create content that converts and delivers the results you want but, before we get started, I’ll like us to discuss briefly about the meaning of conversion.

What is conversion?

In marketing, conversion is the ability to achieve a particular outcome which is usually sales in most cases. In the context of content marketing or blogging, while conversion may not only refer to sales but conversion happens when a visitor takes a particular desired action on your website, after coming in contact with your content.

As a creator, conversion could mean different things to you. And for this reason, you could set a different action to define conversion for every post you create, including things like clicking a link, making a call, downloading a file, subscribing to your email, liking your page etc., after your content has been read.

Like I mentioned earlier, many times these outcomes don’t get to happen. But there are steps you can take to create a better conversion for your posts. Below are some of these strategies…

Identify your audience

To create content that converts, you have to target the content at a specific audience who are most likely to take action after coming in contact with the content. This is one of the top strategies I teach in my content sessions.

Unfortunately, a lot of new content creator do not realize this. On particular day, while reviewing a client’s website, I realized that not only were his posts created without any identifiable target audience, a lot of the content he created were not appealing to any audience in particular and for this reason, he hardly had any views on his content.

This absence of traffic and viewership was so discouraging that at some point, my client had to stop posting altogether because it became like a waste of time, until we stepped in.

Right now, a lot of creators are facing the same scenario above. Before creating your content, you have to identify your audience. And beyond that, you also want to find out what appeals to them and what will trigger them to get to take action, after coming across your content.

Without identifying these things it can get really difficult to create content that converts because if your content is not appealing to your audience, they may not read it or take any step forward with the content.

Hence to be very effective with getting conversions with your blog posts, you have to know your audience thoroughly, understand their pain points and all possible triggers that will get them to take actions.

Create a Conversion goal

After identifying your audience, you may think that’s where it ends but no, there’s still a lot to be done. For instance you need to create a conversion goal for the specific content.

A conversion goal is the action you want a reader to take after reading your content; it is also represented as a “call to action” in some cases.

Truth is, any content without a clear conversion goal is a waste of time for the creator. This is something a lot of new content creators need to understand.

You can’t create content without having a particular reason for doing that.

Even if it’s for entertainment purposes, you need to understand your purpose and create your content in line with that because without a clear conversion goal and subsequent call to action, a reader may read or view your content and click away without taking any action because you didn’t set any clear call to action.

So, to drive better conversions with your content, you need a clear conversion goal. If your goal is to get a reader to subscribe to your email list, sign up for a course after reading, your content, whatever it is, make sure that this goal is included as a clear “call to action” in your content.

Create valuable content

One thing you need to know is that no matter the kind of conversion goal or CTA you put in place, if your content is not valuable or appealing to your reader, you can’t get to convert them.

Now, what this means is that to create content that converts, you need to go beyond what your industry is creating and create content that adds value to your audience. And you need to do this consistently.

Where possible, you need to bring in your own perspective to your content. Where you have shared or personal experiences in this particular area, consider sharing it.

If your conversion goal is to get shares for instance, you don’t only want to create content that is one of the best; you want to create posts that can really stand out. These are the kind of posts that will be shared and promoted.

Create Captivating titles

Before getting to read or view your content, one thing that compels a person to decide whether to click through the post or not is going to be your post titles.

No matter the quality of your content, without getting an equally compelling title that can convince a reader to click through and view the post, you might lose a lot of potential readers.

That said, to create a post that converts, you need a post title that is both compelling and powerful enough to convince your potential reader to click through and read your post.

To get this kind of post titles, you need to understand the problem that your post is solving, understand how your target readers are searching for such posts in the search engines and then combine this knowledge to create emotionally driven post titles, using power words and compelling adjectives.

I have written a complete guide on how to create an effective title for your posts here.

Optimize your SEO

As far as content creation is concerned, search engine optimization is still an important factor that will get the traffic over to your website.

Without optimizing your content for the search engine, it might get really difficult to generate organic traffic to your website or blog.

To get started, work on identifying the search terms or keywords that works for your audience. Find out ways to integrate these search terms into your writing in a way that will make your post discoverable when someone is searching for related topics.

Update your meta tags and meta descriptions too. Ensure that these tags are search engine friendly. After that move to getting back links to the post.

For content created for the social media, you can use relevant hash tags, keywords and tags to create more visibility for your content.

Here’s a compete guide you can read on how to optimize your blog posts for the search engine.

Share to your target audience

Now, that you’ve created a very powerful post with a compelling title. It’s time to share it with the world.

It is quite unfortunate that a lot of content creators would rather focus on the other steps mentioned above without considering the marketing and promotional aspects of it.

But regardless, sharing your content is a very important step because this is one of the most direct forms of marketing in the word content marketing.

And as some marketers would put it, the promotional part of your content marketing might take up to 80 percent of your entire content marketing effort as a creator, if you really intend to create content that converts.

The reason is because the more people get to see your content, the more you stand a chance to create conversion with the content.

So, even if your content has all the other element listed above, without sharing, promoting your content and getting a decent number of viewers and readers etc., you may not achieve any tangible result with your content marketing effort.

To get started with this, you want to share and promote your content across your social media handles, collaborate with other bloggers with similar audience to promote the content, create backlinks back to the post and take other promotional actions that will get the word out about your content.

Measure your results

In as much as your goal is to create content that converts, you might not have a good idea whether or not your results will measure up to your goals.

For this reason, after each successful content creation and promotion, you have to measure up your results. Find out, were you able to reach your set target? If yes, what were the factors that led to that success and are those factors by any means repeatable?

If by chance you were not able to achieve your conversion goals after taking all the necessary steps, find out what happened along the line? What were the possible steps you took that led to the current results you have and how can they be avoided in the nearest future.

With such content analysis, it becomes easy to spot patterns that are working either for or against your goals. And as soon as this is done, you get to find ways to use this to your own advantage.

Final words

Throughout my years as a senior digital strategist, I have seen many people who have need to create better visibility for their website and more content for their blogs. Unfortunately, I have not seen as much people who are willing to really take the step forward.

Reason behind this is not far-fetched. Creating content that converts is time demanding. And even more time consuming is creating powerful content that drives results.

But the question is, would you rather waste your time creating content without getting commendable results? Or would you rather work without getting the rewards for your effort?

I am sure you want to create better results with your content. And I’ll leave you to figure out your answers. But trust me, taking the above steps can bring tremendous changes to your ability to create better results with your content and a better outcome for your audience.

And should you desire to not go on this journey alone, should you want to learn the nitty gritty about effective content marketing from experts, then join our content marketing master class here.

Now, it’s over to you. What challenges do you currently face with your content? Let’s hear you.