Writing Engaging Content that Converts for Business

I’m often surprised when I read an amazing article on someone’s business site or blog, but then I have no clue who they are, why I’d want to work with them, who they serve, or what they expect me to do next on the site. As you invest

Content that’s done well requires a significant investment in research, article design, imagery, and even promotion. If I land on your article that builds trust and authority with me on a topic that I’m researching… are you helping me understand what the next steps are to engage with you or your company?

You may have already seen my rant video on engagement, so you know how I feel about how that terminology is loosely thrown around. I’m not saying that every piece of content you put out has to be directly trackable down to the conversion metric, although that would be nice. But… when you’re attempting to guide a reader through your research with a business goal in mind… don’t forget to actually include the necessary resources, navigation, or calls-to-action to help them understand what the next steps are that they can take!

The key to producing content is knowing its purpose. If you’re publishing content just to keep your blog looking active and keeping up with the frequency, you’re understanding the point of it all. You should be creating content for the purpose of achieving specific goals during the development process.

Joseph Simborio, Spiralytics 

In this infographic from Spiralytics, Goal-Oriented Content: How to Create Content for Links, Engagements, or Conversions, they provide a simple process for ensuring your content can deliver on its investment. The breakdown of goals is simple and ingenious:

1. Content for Engagement – Content is what drives people to your website. But with the mass production of online content and Google’s constant algorithm changes, content quality and value will always be a top priority. If your content is good, it should be engaging. And if it’s engaging, expect traffic to increase.
2. Content for Links – Search engines uses links as a trust signal in their algorithm since people tend to link more to trusted authorities online, which also helps influence search rankings. Authoritative sites generally have larger audiences and visibility, making it easier to acquire links. In fact, 21 percent of Google’s ranking algorithm depends on link authority features or the number of links to a domain.
3. Content for Conversions – Your end goal as a business is to turn your prospects into profitable conversions, so your content should move audiences and get them to take action. This will turn your visitors into leads, leads into customers, and customers into brand advocates.

Check out the full infographic here, and be sure to click through and read Jim’s article in its entirety for some great detail!