Engaging or Not:
Dominate the eyeball war by testing your content!
- Landing a man on the moon took 5 manned practice missions and innumerable tests on the necessary equipment
- McDonald's "Angus Snack Wrap" took a year of tinkering and focus groups to get from drawing board to a plastic tray near you.*
- We "test drive" cars, software, perfume, grocery store grapes and hundreds of other products. We like certainty!
Create your blog content, but please - test it out. Sales depend on how well you evaluate your online content!
Every examination involves a few questions, so here are five to start you off.
1. Does your content focus on a question your audience is asking?
You know your business is wonderful in so many ways, but your potential customers may not give a darn about what you know. Start with topics that you think a customer would care about. What are their pain and pleasure points? You might not even have to answer the question in your piece! Simply verbalizing the issue may be an effective way to produce further clicks on your website.
Don't bring an 18-wheeler to a tricycle party. Right now, you understand way too much about your products and services to focus it down to what a customer is really asking, so get an honest second opinion. Saying too much makes a reader give up and go elsewhere.
2. Who are these inquiring people?
Is your audience defined as specifically as possible? I am thinking about you right now, in your office, trying to find out how to add good or better content to your online presence. I am interacting with you, asking questions and giving advice in a conversational tone.
When you begin to study your audience, learn to trust your marketing data over your own imagination. These two will disagree to some extent; prepare to respect the never-lying numbers.
3. Whose Voice?
Once you draw a bead on your ideal customer ask what kind of voice would they listen to? Dense and scientific? Caring and sentimental? Funny and entertaining? Kirk or Spock? Choose a "voice" in your writing or multimedia that you know will capture your audience's ear.
4. Show and tell a story
Our brains are wired to respond to stories. Witness the vast shelves of fiction in the bookstore or library. We LOVE stories with characters, problems, plot twists, climaxes and happy endings. Use the power of story to elicit an emotional response. Does your listener / watcher need to be shaken out of complacency? Assured of their decision? Introduced to a crucial detail or feature?
Multimedia like video, graphics, music and the like are hard to beat. Consumers are increasingly expecting more than a page of words to give them answers. If verbiage is essential, keep blocks of text short with plenty of white space. Keep it simple - for the most part avoid fancy typefaces and multiple colors. Again, test it!
Give your multimedia a voice as well. Sometimes homemade cell-phone video is just the thing to get your message across. Other times you'll need to spend a bit more on production values.
5. Provide easy access to more
Give your consumers a place to go for more! Make the "next step" links large and clear. Use click here embedded in your copy for instant navigation, or better yet, buttons with as few words as possible. Is it as easy as possible for a page visitor to get somewhere else?
Learn and live. Test out your online content and sell!
For more information on blogging services in Savannah GA, contact United WebWorks.
* http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/mcdonalds-tests-recipes-taste-speed/story?id=11444997