Blogging With No Purpose
Are you creating content for its own sake?
I feel like the more I am blogging, the more I am forgetting that content creation should have a purpose. I simply enjoy the creative process too much — and forget what business purpose this content is supposed to have.
After all, I am a creative at heart.
I love writing. I love the process of it. Even if I knew that it’d never pay off financially, I’d probably not stop doing it. Consequently, the business side of it seems to be only a secondary priority.
That’s okay when you are blogging as a hobby.
But it’s not okay when your blog is supposed to be your main source of income. Or, if it supposed to be a marketing tool for your main business.
If you really want to use your blog as a business tool, then every blog post should have a clearly defined business purpose. Every blog post should fulfil one specific objective.
And that’s what this article will be about.
Why a call to action is the most important component of any blog post
The creative in me doesn’t think about calls to action. The creative in me just wants to come up with great stuff and hopefully provide some value for my readers.
Thinking about which ‘objective’ my article is going to fulfil, doesn’t seem to be particularly helpful in that process.
In fact, it seems counter-productive as it limits me in my creative endeavor.
I love to just start writing something and see where it takes me. My best work is mostly a result of just starting out with a simple idea and then slowly evolves into something much more meaningful.
Writing something that purposefully ‘prepares’ my reader to take a specific action seems like it takes that away from me.
But it doesn’t, really.
After all, I can think about that call to action once the article is written. I can create something relevant that couldn’t possibly have come into existence, if I hadn’t gone through that thought process.
Regardless of the order, that call to action is necessary.
Without a call to action, a reader remains just that. He or she reads your article and then moves on to somebody else’s article. With a call to action, however, you are giving your reader the chance to dive deeper into your work.
You are giving them one specific action they can do right now, which moves them one step forward in your sales funnel.
This could be many things, such as:
- asking a question at the end of your article and thus making your audience more engaged with your work
- downloading your free-ebook and thus having a chance to collect your readers’ e-mail addresses
- letting your audience know that you have a free upcoming webinar, which they can attend if they register for it in the next two hours
- asking your readers to follow you on various different social media
- buying your low-level entry product
What I do is just not good enough…
Because I’ve been mostly ‘forgetting’ about the call to action, I have mostly just been copy and pasting similar stuff in each of my articles. Something along the lines of (subscribe to my free newsletter here and/or get my book here).
If you are doing this too — it’s just not good enough.
Your call to action needs to be:
- a good fit with the article you’ve written
- aligned with the strategic objectives of your business
- designed in a way that takes your audience one step forward
For example, it is not enough to simply have one free e-ebook to give away to your customers in return for their e-mail addresses.
What you need is several different free products that are aligned with the different types of content that you produce.
Plus, if your objective is to use your content to advertise for your upcoming free webinar, then your content is better something that is directly related to the topic of the webinar itself.
After all, you want to make sure that the people who are interested in your free blog posts are also interested in the products you are going to offer to them at a later stage in the sales cycle.
The heart of a creative & the mind-set of a marketer.
I know feel that this is the best approach to blogging. In your heart, you remain a creative. You want to give yourself as much creative freedom as possible. In your mind, however, you are constantly considering how this content is going to contribute to making your business more profitable.
For every article you write, you ask yourself:
- what customer problem am I solving here?
- at what stage in the sales cycle is a potential customer at this point?
- what can I get my customer to do at the end of the article, in order to move them closer towards a purchase of my products?
- what product can I build that take the idea of this article further and provide more value for the customer?
At the end of the day, blogging is extremely valuable for two primary reasons. The first one is idea validation. Blogging allows you to understand which ideas resonate with your potential customers.
Secondly, blogging is an amazing tool for lead generation. People who fall in love with your free content are much more likely to try a low-risk cheap product and then slowly move through the sales cycle.
Never forget these (and other potential) business objectives.
Don’t just blog for its own sake.
Be deliberate in every single blog post you write. Deliberately design them in a way that they take your potential customers one step forward towards making a purchase.
Call to action:
I would like to hear from you:
What are the primary business objectives of your blog? What are the biggest challenges you are facing in terms of making your blog a (financially) worthwhile investment in line with your business objectives?
Leave a comment or send me an e-mail to rettigtim@gmail.com!
