Use Monroe’s Motivated Sequence to Call Your Readers to Action

This guest post is by Sean Davis of SDavisMedia.com.

Blogs do not produce income. Simply writing and publishing content does not increase your bank account balance.

The idea that money is a direct result of blogging is a myth that the best bloggers have dismissed, but most choose to treat it as a law of the blogosphere.

What a shame.

Many new bloggers will jump out of their online careers just as quickly as they jumped into them when they realize that it’s not enough to simply create content.

There is, however, another goal for creating content. It’s not until you understand this goal that you will know how to make money from your blog.

The goal of blogging is not to earn money. It’s to earn attention—the attention of those who will, in turn, provide the revenue you’re looking for.

“If you build it, they will come.” We can argue all day about whether this is true or not. No matter what, though, we should all agree that just because people come to your blog doesn’t mean that they will buy your product, sign up for your email list, click your advertisement links, or whatever it is you need them to do in order to produce income.

As a personal testimony, I created an infographic about four months ago that seemed to be pretty popular on the internet for a day or two. The blog I published it on was only about three months old, and the infographic brought me over 1,000 visitors in one day. For some, that’s nothing. For me, it was the attention I had been dreaming about.

Take a wild guess at how many email subscribers I earned from that infographic.

If you guessed zero, you’re wrong!

The answer is actually one. One lonely person out of over a thousand visitors signed up to my free newsletter, which, by the way, offered a free gift for those who signed up.

This is when I learned that blogs have the power to bring attention, however, it’s what you do with that attention that matters most.

If you’ve ever taken a college-level language course or a speech or communications class, chances are you’ve been introduced to the art of persuasion.

Simply put, in the business world, whether it be brick and mortar or internet marketing, you have to know how to persuade people to take action—especially when they are visiting your blog.

Almost a century ago, Alan Monroe of Purdue University introduced a persuasion method that takes the human mind through a natural cycle of establishing a need, developing a solution to satisfy that need, and then becoming enthusiastic about implementing that solution.

There are actually five steps to this sequence:

Attention: The first step is to gain the attention of the target audience. You can do this with a story, a thought provoking question, or anything that makes the audience stop what they’re doing with curiosity and focus.Need: This is where you explain to the target audience what their need is. This can be an obvious, well-known need, or a need that you create on the spot. Often, a need is established by giving an extreme example of some unfortunate event that should never happen again.Satisfaction: Now that your target audience understands the need, it’s time for you to fly in like Superman and save the day. Provide a solution to erase that need and prevent the aforementioned unfortunate event from ever happening again.Visualization: Tell your target audience exactly how your solution can be implemented and how it will solve the problem. Also, tell them how things will progress (that is, get worse) if your solution is ignored. This is where you would provide proof—preferably a previous instance in which your solution was implemented—that convinces your audience that your solution will work. Politicians do this a lot when referencing what other nations have (or have not) done, and why it is important that we make the same (or different) decisions.Action: Get the target audience involved. You’ve already explained to them what the need is, how to satisfy that need, and what things will be like for them once the need is satisfied. Now, you have to convince them that they play an important role in making that change happen. In other words, you introduce an action that they can take to implement your solution.

If you take a step back and thoroughly observe TV commercials, political campaigns, sales pages, etc., you will notice that the most persuasive ones follow this sequence. Why? Because it was developed to follow your own natural thought patterns.

It was developed on the basis of human nature.

What if you could use Monroe’s Motivated Sequence in every area of your blog?

From the content you produce, to your blog’s unique design, you can follow the steps in the sequence to lead your readers down a path that causes them to take action.

Derek Halpern of SocialTriggers.com enlightened me a few weeks ago on why he doesn’t write the typical “17 Things You Can Do To Blah Blah Blah” articles on his blog.

He said that he encourages the reader to focus on one action to take with each of his articles. As a result, his readers leave his blog with something they can actually implement instead of a list of options—something that’s been shown to be less effective at prompting action, by the way.

Considering Derek builds email lists like crazy, it’s safe to say that he understands human psychology and what makes people tick online.

Does he use Monroe’s Motivated Sequence? I don’t know. But imagine the results you could produce, article by article, if you focused each one of them on one specific action to take, as Derek does, and you used Monroe’s Motivated Sequence to do so.

Are the ideas flowing yet? I hope so.

Remember: blogs don’t earn money. Blogs earn attention. Once you have attention, which is nothing more than a visit to your blog, you have to know how to guide the visitor down a path that leads them to an action you’d like them to take.

Whatever your goals for your blog, you can start using Monroe’s Motivated Sequence right now. Simply break something you want your visitors to do down to one single action, and then follow the steps of the sequence.

Take a few moments to think about communications you encounter every day and how they follow this sequence. And imagine the possibilities for your blog if you can master this technique.

Sean Davis is an internet entrepreneur dedicated to constant growth and helping others. Check Sean out at SDavisMedia.com and follow him on Twitter @SDavisMedia.

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5 Effective Tricks to Create a Killer Call to Action

This guest post is by Greg Digneo of Sales Leads in Thirty Days.

Here’s the dirty little secret: there are actually two steps to building an extremely popular blog.

The first and most popular step is to drive traffic by guest posting, social media, and SEO.

The far less sexy step is to convert that traffic into loyal readers who will become the backbone of your community.  Who will share every piece of content you produce with their friends.  And who will ensure that every post sparks an engaging discussion.

But most of all, they will be the first to buy your products and services.

Most likely, your readers have dozens of blogs in their RSS feed.  They follow hundreds of people on Twitter and have “liked” quite a few brands on Facebook.  With all this noise, your message is bound to be lost.

The most guarded space in a person’s online world is their inbox.  If you are able to get your blog post into your reader’s inbox, then there’s a much higher chance of your post being read.

But, you have to earn your way into someone’s inbox by creating a killer call to action.  Give your readers exactly what they want, when they want it, in exchange for their email address.

Below are five ways that you can create a killer call to action.

On the back of every non-fiction book, you’ll see at least four notable authors or industry experts boasting about how great the book is. On television, weight loss ads are endorsed by actors and athletic apparel ads always feature athletes.

Marketers have long used the power of celebrity endorsements to motivate their target audience to take action and buy their products.

This is a tactic not lost on Derek Halpern, founder of the site Social Triggers. When you arrive at the Social Triggers blog, the first thing you will notice is a feature box at the top of the site. Derek’s feature box promises to give you psychology-based marketing advice in exchange for your email address.

But what makes Derek’s feature box so effective is the celebrity endorsement by Chris Brogan that says “I’m totally loving Social Triggers.” Derek is a master of psychology.  He understands that his readers will be more willing to subscribe to his email list because someone of Chris Brogan’s clout loves his work.

An endorsement from an A-list blogger is truly something that needs to be earned by posting high-quality content and building strong relationships over time. However, it is one of the most powerful ways to help build your email list.

Research shows that when you create a very tangible benefit, your audience will be more inclined to take action.

On Quicksprout.com, Neil Patel creates a very tangible call to action in three steps that explains to his audience exactly what they are going to get.

The first thing Neil does is create a very compelling headline.  Instead of making a vague promise such as “How to get more traffic”, he decided to create a headline that will tell you exactly how much traffic you are going to get.

The headline “Double your traffic in 30 days” is so compelling because his readers can imagine how much better their blog will be next month with twice the traffic.  They can easily imagine more Tweets, more comments, and more money.

Second, by telling his readers that the course is worth $300, he provides a specific value.  This further increases the reader’s excitement because they feel like they are getting a bargain.

Finally, he has pictures and books and CDs just below his headline that provides a physical representation of the information.

By offering a tangible benefit that your readers can wrap their heads around, you will be able to grow your email list, and your blog, much faster.

When Ramit Sethi drives traffic to his blog on Iwillteachyoutoberich.com, one of his goals is to get readers to sign up for his free “Dream Jobs” course.

Ramit’s niche is the extremely competitive personal finance space.  Aside from being a great copywriter, he creates a great call to action by pointing to readers that he has been featured in mainstream media outlets such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, CNBC, and Fortune.

Because everyone interested in money and career advice is seeking credible experts, citing his features in the most renowned mainstream publications makes Ramit’s call to action almost irresistible.

There’s a good chance that you have never been featured in the New York Times or the the Wall Street Journal, but you can use similar tactics to build credibility by guest posting on popular blogs.

The most popular blogs only publish guest posts with unique and interesting content.  If your content has been published on a popular blog, then you’ve built credibility in your reader’s mind that your blog is interesting and worth reading on a regular basis.

Do you know what your audience really wants?  Do you know what they think about late at night when everyone else is fast asleep?

Jon Morrow knows. He has an intimate knowledge of what his readers truly desire.  On his blog BoostBlogTraffic.com, Jon is giving away a free cheat sheet that reveals 52 hacks to write great headlines.

While bloggers may be interested in writing great headlines, Jon understands that bloggers really want blog posts to go viral. And headlines are one of the elements that make viral posts possible. The only way for Jon to truly understand the inner desires of his audience is to speak with them on the phone or in person.

If you are able to speak with your readers frequently, you will understand what keeps them awake at night and create a call to action that speaks to their innermost desires.

At the bottom of every post on Hubspot is a call to action that gives readers more information on how to be better at social media and internet marketing.

What’s remarkable about Hubspot’s call to actions is their relevance. For instance, this offer for a free ebook on email marketing came at the bottom of a post titled “How to Breathe Life into a Boring Email Newsletter”.

By offering an ebook on email marketing after a person has just spent five to ten minutes reading an article on the subject, Hubspot is able to increase conversions—they’re simply offering a way to receive more information on the topic in which a person has already expressed interest.

Creating relevant offers isn’t something that can be done right away.  Hubspot is able to do it because they have an entire team of marketers creating ebooks, webinars, and tools for their readers to download. As your blog progresses, you will be able to repurpose your content to create relevant calls to action.

The truth is even the most perfectly crafted call to action isn’t going to turn you into an A-list blogger overnight. You probably won’t get thousands of people to subscribe to your email list tomorrow.  That takes connections, work, and time.

But what if you get a hundred email subscribers this month?  And what if five of those subscribers buys your $500 course? How can you transform random traffic into loyal readers and paying customers?

Get thinking. Be creative. And over time, you will have a raving mob of loyal readers eager to consume your next blog post or purchase your next product. Just be sure to remember me when you’re rich and famous.

Greg Digneo is the author of the blog Sales Leads in Thirty Days and is hosting a free webinar that shows bloggers and content marketers how to drive more traffic to their blog and convert that traffic into sales.

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5 Effective Tricks to Create a Killer Call to Action

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

5 Effective Tricks to Create a Killer Call to Action

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View the original article here

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Use Monroe’s Motivated Sequence to Call Your Readers to Action

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Use Monroe’s Motivated Sequence to Call Your Readers to Action

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View the original article here

Continue Reading