Why is Your Blog Whispering?

The all important ‘call to action’

If you are reading this then chances are you are somehow involved in internet marketing,  and therefore have heard the term ‘call to action’ thrown around. In case you are either not a marketer, or you are one but enjoy the view from the underside of a rock then allow me to enlighten you. A call to action is simply a statement or image that gives your visitor somewhere to go. The call to action refers to the simple idea of making someone take action, whether that be signing up to your newsletter, subscribing to a feed, or clicking an affiliate link.  I agree that it is important that you have a defined call to action in place, especially on the end of each blog post for example – but more important than this, and crucial to the overall success of your CTA (call to action) is your Unique Selling Proposition or USP.

Blogging in the Dark

Too many new bloggers are entering the blogosphere with the knowledge that they need a call to action and are therefore implementing it in both blog posts and through opt in forms in the sidebar, but because they are not understanding the importance of a unique selling proposition, their overall blog does not reflect this ‘call to action’ in any way, so what I end up seeing is a hundred blogs that all look very similar, and even when I listen very carefully it’s hard to hear what they are trying to tell me. Define your USP and your call to action suddenly speaks a LOT louder.

Your Unique Selling Proposition

A Unique Selling Proposition is a marketing term that basically asks you to define what it is about YOU that makes you different. Why would a customer want to seek your services over that of a competitor for example? This is an important term to take into your blogging mindset and although it clearly relates to the whole topic of ‘finding your passion and your niche’ it is more about the act of defining your own unique brand within that market.
Your call to action is part of this brand, so the more defined it is, the louder the call to action is going to speak to me when I finally get to it (at the end of a blog post say)

Consistency is Key

Kind of an obvious statement, but especially true of your USP. The more defined and consistent the message, the more chance I will follow through on the call to action. This is especially true of viral marketing, because if I see a consistent message that you can help me with X, and I see this on more than two sites, then chances are when I see it again on YOUR site, I will be convinced that you can indeed help me with X. Social proof is a powerful thing and you don’t need 20,000 RSS subscribers to get this effect, it only takes two or three people who are not connected to you to tell me how awesome you are for me to be convinced, that’s the psychology of the human brain.
This doesn’t mean that you need to write about the same thing all the time, just be consistent with what you leverage/market outside of your blog, and obviously be consistent with what you promote on your blog.

Window Shopping

We’ve all heard the term ‘blog hopping’ before, but in relation to the message in this post, I want you to refer to it as ‘window shopping’ because this will help you define your USP and realise the importance of it.
Around 50% of your first time visitors will come directly to a post (made up figures), but there is still another 50% that are going to see you for the first time at your home page. If you have this awesome call to action at the end of a post (which I can’t read here) then your home page had better tell me EXACTLY what it is you offer, how you can help me, and where I should go from here.

Your blog is your shop window, it is the first place people come when they want to check out what you have to offer – so dress it up a little sure, but make sure that it speaks to your visitors and urges them to take action. In short, make your blog a verb, and then give it a megaphone.

• What methods do you use to help define your USP?

Tagged as: Blog subscribers, call to action, unique selling proposition, viral marketing