How to write content that converts

The 4-step formula for producing conversion driving content. 21 detailed writing tips. 350+ emotive keywords that will engage your audience. PLUS! How to monitor results

• Each piece of content must give real value to the audience that is consuming it. You need to entertain, include an offer of value, and you need to do that frequently.
• Your brain makes emotional decisions – then tries to rationalise them with practical logic.
• People are more likely to share based on emotional value.
• They need to know, like and trust you.
• Not sure where to start? It’s easy. Start by including more emotive keywords (list below) in your content. 

HOW TO WRITE CONTENT THAT CONVERTS

Why do cab drivers make good content marketers?

Because they really drive traffic. – Ba-dum-tss!

Lame jokes aside… As individuals and brands start to amass audiences by publishing their own content; conversion driving content has become a hot topic marketing strategy.

Producing content that will eventually entice your audience to take action – at scale – can be tricky, or at the very least, time-consuming and expensive. 

It can also get a little mundane once you’ve used up all of your initial ideas; or worse, if your initial ideas didn’t get the traction you were hoping for.

So we’ve decided to make it easy for you. Whether it be a blog, social media posts, video script or podcast questions – here’s how to write content that converts.

YOU CAN’T WRITE GOOD CONTENT WITHOUT THIS…

If you want to encourage someone to take action when engaging with your content, you first need to understand human psychology. It’s a tad more complicated than this, but to keep it short – your brain makes emotional decisions – then tries to rationalise them with practical logic. Which is why evoking an emotional response has been the goal of marketers since the dinosaurs. Because emotions drive you. And enticing them to buy is more about getting them to know, like and trust you.

To demonstrate the point – think about this. Ever had someone crack a joke you couldn’t resist laughing at? Day to day problems vanish, even just for a few seconds, as you cackle with laughter. That’s your emotions taking over. And humour is an easy way of making your content exciting and to establish a positive first connection with cold audiences. 

Of course, you can try to activate all of the human emotions to get your message to resonate. You’ll notice news broadcasters play on fear a lot, and sporting brands make you feel empowered. (More on this a bit further down)

In fact, Buzzsumo analyzed the social share volume of 100 million posts to determine what people share and why. The takeaways are that longer content is more popular, images are practically mandatory, humans are a visual bunch, and people are more likely to share based on emotional value.

THE 4-STEP FORMULA FOR PRODUCING CONVERSION DRIVING CONTENT AT SCALE

The content formula is simple when you approach it like this… 

Each piece of content must:

• Contain goodwill (you need to add real value to the audience that is consuming it). 
• Entertain. 
• Include an offer of value.
• And you need to do that frequently.

21 TIPS FOR WRITING CONVERSION DRIVING CONTENT

• Do Keyword Research
• Read Industry Studies
• Monitor Social Media
• Get To Know Your Customers
• Monitor Trends
• Ignore Your Competitors and Focus On Your Customers
• Focus On Practical Topics
• Write Enticing Titles
• Deliver On Your Title’s Promise
• Keep It Short And Sharp
• Test Your Content
• Include Images And Video
• Write In A Casual Tone Of Voice
• Use Humor
• Use Fun Facts 
• Embrace Controversy
• Use Metaphors
• Tell Relevant Stories
• Add Exciting Surprises
• Include Call To Actions
• Optimise Your Content

Do Keyword Research

Keyword research doesn’t mean keyword stuffing. Keywords are still a factor for SEO, but they aren’t the be-all-and-end-all like they used to be. And the keyword research process is still valuable, and by looking at what people are searching for, when and how often, you start to understand what they want to know more about. So when you’re brainstorming topic ideas, it’s as easy as focusing on topics that answer all of those commonly asked questions.

Read Industry Studies

You don’t know what you don’t know, and there’s absolutely no need for you to reinvent the wheel if the hard work has already been done. Which is why setting up Google Alerts to notify you of case studies and research pieces published in your industry – and actually reading them – can be a huge time saver and source of interesting topic ideas.

Like Marketo’s piece on what people share on Facebook and why. There’s no need to spend days or weeks conducting experiments when there’s a ton of industry reports that will help you keep up, and a lot of them are free. 

Monitor Social Media

Read the comments. It’s that simple. Look at what people are saying. How they’re responding. Who is engaging and what conversations they’re having. And you’ll get a good idea of what they care about and therefore what content you should be producing. It’s like conducting market research without time and resources. And you can do it sitting in your undies on your couch at home. 

Get To Know Your Customers

As analytical as life has become in today’s digital age – your customers are more than numbers on a spreadsheet. They’re human, and whoever understands their customers best, wins!

Record as much detail as you can every time you engage with them. Conduct surveys. Track and monitor their behaviour. Take customer service calls for a few days to get a sense of their real-world problems. Dive into the sales process and monitor what they like or don’t like. What words are they using? You need a deep understanding of what makes them tick if you want to entice them to take action.

Monitor Trends

Just like doing keyword research, monitoring trends over time will inform what’s topical now. It’s about being relevant now. Find the trends that are hot now, and growing, and build your content around those. And as they cool off, adjust your content focus to stay in front of the curve.

Ignore Your Competitors and Focus On Your Customers

Others will say to spy on your competitors. And yeah, you could steal their ideas. But here’s the thing. You’ll never be better than them if you’re copying them. Instead, spend 100% of your time on your customers, and give them more of what they want.

Write Enticing Title

Don’t get lazy and think, ‘oh, this half-cooked title is okay. It will be fine.’ 

First impressions matter. And your title is like your opening line on your first date. 

Aim to drive an emotional response and the ones that work well usually play on your audience’s pain points, humour or curiosity.

You can inspire someone to take action (convert) by aligning with someone or something aspirational (like an influencer).

Make the subject matter obtainable, so readers instantly feel like it applies to them. 

Deliver On Your Title’s Promise

Everyone hates clickbait articles these days. Consumers hate it, and so do the search engines and social platforms. So if you use sensationalised clickbaity headlines; make sure you back it up by delivering quality content and real value. Otherwise, it may turn into a negative experience in the eyes of your audience and your SEO.

Keep It Short And Sharp

Small, bite-sized pieces of content always perform well because it’s easy to scan read. People are busy. To create content that is easy to consume, simply;

• Break everything into short paragraphs of 3-4 sentences. 
• Use relevant subheaders and highlight or bold key points. (You can get these from your keyword research).
• Use bullet points and pull quotes to help key content to stand out.

Test Your Content

Test your content and see what resonates most. For instance, use different captions on social posts when linking back to the same blog and see what gets the highest click-through rate. Publish the same type of post at different times of day or days of the week. Or use tracking software to see how far down your article people are scrolling. Or run experiments to see what engages them, and gets them to take action. 

Include Images And Video

As they say: a picture is worth a thousand words. That’s usually because your eyes and brain can interpret, understand and react to visuals faster than blocks of text. 

Not only is it more engaging, but you can use them to create context, establish a connection and really start to evoke that emotional response. 

The tip here is: don’t just settle on any visual media. Find an image, GIF or video where you can pinpoint 10 reasons why it’s perfect for getting the message across. If it doesn’t work on multiple levels, it’s probably too generic.

Write In A Casual Voice

We want to make it easy for your audience to engage and feel that connection, and ultimately, take action. So we need to make it easy for them and we do this by talking the same language. 

Technical industry jargon and political correctness might be the ‘right way’ to do it on paper, but often it’s not what really matters to your audience. Your audience wants real. Real content using the words they use every day talking about what matters to them.

Use Humor

Ever heard the saying, ‘you’ll get more bees with honey than vinegar’. It’s a similar story when it comes to evoking an emotional response. You’ll usually find it easier and better in the long term to use humour to entertain your audience, than scare tactics to shock them. When you can make someone feel good about your brand, it establishes trust, and you can use that to get them to take action. Think about it – people pay to watch stand up comedy, but no one pays for stand up negativity!

Use Fun Facts

If you can teach someone something about a topic they genuinely care about, you’ll make a lasting impression. Get good at it long-term and you’ll build a lasting connection. You become useful, and they want to have you around. That doesn’t mean you need to be Mr or Mrs Know-It-All, but it does help to establish credibility, and when you’re consistently right, you’ll also build trust.

Embrace Controversy

There’s nothing wrong with a healthy debate, so long as people are playing nice. As humans, we have differing opinions. It keeps things interesting. Questioning the norms is how we innovate and evolve. 

Adding just the right amount of controversy to your content strategy can help to evoke interest, provoke new thoughts and challenge old and often outdated habits. And if it just so happens your brand, product or service is the newer, better solution to those habits, you might see it translate into results.

Use Metaphors

You’ll see we’ve used subtle metaphors in this article. Metaphors help your audience to visualise, gain context, make a point, and keep things short and sharp. Metaphors are particularly useful when introducing new concepts and aligning them with similar ideas your audience is already familiar with.

Tell Relevant Stories

Stories help to build connections with your audience via shared experiences. You connect to people you can relate to. And the more your audience can relate to your content, the stronger the connection and trust. 

Your stories might explain a problem, and how you, or your brand, can help provide a solution. It shows you’re real, you understand them and their needs, and therefore builds credibility.

Throw In Some Surprises

No matter how wealthy you are, you can’t buy more time. And with the rise of on-demand content providers and the virality of social media, people need to be stimulated to pique their interest and keep them engaged.

Aim to through in surprising and interesting twists and turns early in the piece, and every few paragraphs throughout. You want to give them a reason to stay connected and keep reading. And you guessed it, you might do that through surprising stories, metaphors, humour, fun facts or controversy.

Include Call To Actions 

Okay, here comes your money ticket.

The best way to convert your audience into leads is to add a call to action after you’ve given them something of value. But you need to do it the right way. Softly. 

A few ways to start the process is to use gated content, special offers, or exclusive experiences, where handing over their contact details becomes the key to unlock the next stage. 

Be aware though – there are privacy laws around data security, so you need to understand your responsibilities when managing personal data. And you also need to make it worth their while, or all of the hard work you’ve put into getting them to this point could be wasted.

Optimize Your Content

If you’ve got this far, you’re probably doing all the right things. But you won’t know unless you test and measure. And more importantly, experiment with new changes to see what works best.

Optimising your content for more conversions is as simple as giving users more of what they want, so dive into your analytics and see what’s holding user’s interest for longer, what entices them to view more pages, or watch that next view… and do more of it.

350+ EMOTIVE KEYWORDS THAT WILL ENGAGE YOUR AUDIENCE

Not sure where to start? It’s easy. Start by including more of these words into your content. Simply decide what mindset or emotion you’d like to evoke, then create that feeling by working these emotive keywords into your content.

AT PEACE

HAPPINESS / JOY

INSPIRED

SECURE

URGENCY

CURIOSITY

CONTROVERSIAL

ANGER

HOW TO MEASURE THE PERFORMANCE OF YOUR CONTENT

Once you start publishing content, it’s well worth your time analysing what works and what doesn’t. But how? What are the best indicators for successful content? 

To measure the performance of your content, you’ll need to monitor:

• Time-on-page (also known as session duration)
• Pageviews
• Social sharing
• New vs Returning visitors
• Conversions
• Impressions
• Click-through-rate
• Scroll depth
• Scroll speed

Source: Kudos to Statista for supplying these killer stats.