12 Ways How to Write Content That Generates Readers and Improves Sales

Content writing doesn’t have to be the next great American novel to be effective. In fact, it should be about as far away from that as possible. Unless that great American novel is less than a couple thousand words, and relates to solving people’s problems, it won’t help you generate readers or sales.

One way that you can generate these visitors is buy creating great content is to create “exclusive and juicy content”. That’s what we’re talking about today.

Here are 12 tips to help you write better and more effective copy.

Be Relevant

The first rule of content is to be relevant to the reader. If it’s not relevant, there’s really no point. Many businesses think that writing about the business is what they should be doing. WRONG! You should be writing about the reader. If you want to talk about your business, do it in a way that relates to the reader. For example, if you own a lawn care business, don’t write about your services. Write about lawn care tips. Write about keeping the lawn green, when to fertilize, and how to weed. They’ll come to you for service if they need it.

Be Conversational

Don’t be a robot. Don’t be a fact machine. Talk like a regular human, and be relatable. The easiest way to achieve this is to read your copy out loud. If it doesn’t sound like you’re having a conversation, you’re doing it wrong. Easy to read copy will go a long way to making it sharable and attracting more visitors.

Be Clear and Concise

Don’t beat around the bush and offer a lot of fluff. Try to let people know exactly what you’re trying to say. If it’s advice, give them actionable tips they can take away and use right away. Use subheadings and offer bite sized chunks of info. You don’t want to get too repetitive either. So trying to add clarity to points by repeating them isn’t the best strategy. If it’s not clear, go back and re-work the words until it says exactly what you want it to.

Offer Expert Advice

Be the expert. Give them advice on how to achieve something. Usually when people are looking for information, they’re looking for ways to accomplish something or solve a problem. People will take expert advice from strangers. They’ll even take the advice of experts over their own common sense. Offer solid, quality advice, and people will look at you as a resource. This can help with both attracting visitors and making more sales.

Create an Outline

Creating content blindly often leads to a wandering article. Outline what it is you want to say, and how you plan on structuring it. This will allow you to have a clear goal and keep you from meandering. Sometimes you’ll realize things as you go along – and that’s ok – the outline just makes sure you keep the big picture in mind. It will ensure you blog consistently.

Find Pain Points

Nothing helps sell a product or service like solving the pain. If you can find out what pain points your readers are having, tell stories that show how you can alleviate these pain points. This can be done with either the product itself, or the advice you’re giving them. Both will make the content more sharable and help to increase sales.

Use Quotes and Testimonials

You can add authority to what you’re writing about just by adding quotes from other experts. If you want to give validity to your product and service, add testimonials from a variety of previous customers that help illustrate your point. Previous customers can often talk about the pain points that were solved in a way that people will find relatable.

Use Urgency

Using urgency and scarcity can really help your conversions. Psychologically, this will leave the reader feeling like they need to act quickly or they’ll miss out. Most people have a fear of missing out. This will cause them to purchase things they’re not even sure if they need, just because they don’t want to miss a great price – in case they decide they want it later. Things like a limited time price or a promotional discount can be very effective. Use language like “limited time”, “sale ends soon”, etc. to create this urgency.

Remove Distractions

Many websites, landing page and articles have too many distractions. This can be as obvious as too much going on around the main part of the page, to simply having too many links in your article. Of course you want to cite sources, but if you link to an interesting article, they could leave to read it and forget all about you by the time they’re done. Use links when needed, but don’t overdo it. Remove the clutter from the header and sidebar so that the point of the page is clear.

Get Emotional

There’s nothing more powerful than a story, image or video that can illicit an emotional response from your audience. Think about the last time you actually cried, laughed, or was truly inspired. Chances are you had the urge to share it or talk about it. Creating breathtaking content with an emotional connection is key to getting shares and generating more readers. Many large brands use emotion to help sell products. Whether it’s the youthfulness of Pepsi, or the inspirational motivation of Nike, inject emotion into your content.

Avoid Pitches

If you dive into a sales pitch, you’ll lose people. Most people understand why your website exists, but they want content that is useful and not just an advertisement. If you sell brooms, don’t just talk about the mess and how your brooms are the best ones to clean it up. Give them good actionable, related advice. Tell them how they can prevent dirt in the first place, how to handle dirt from pets, what to do if you get dirt behind the fridge. All of this makes you an expert on cleaning, and if they’re sold on a broom, you’re their first call.

Have a Call to Action

Lastly, have a call to action. Just like the point above mentions, don’t carelessly toss it at the top like a sales pitch. Make your content relevant, and at the end of it, or in the sidebar, put the call to action where it can be useful. “Check out our solutions” or “Learn more” or “watch the video” or “sign up for our newsletter”. Simply having a next step after the article can go a long way to turning a reader into a sale.