If you are blogging on a business website, you’ve taken the first step toward attract the traffic you need to be successful. With regular articles and social media promotion, you can draw a consistent stream of potential clients via your blog posts.
But you don’t want it stop there. If visitors reach the blog post, read your article and then leave, you’ve missed a great chance to sell them on your great products or services. For the best results, you want visitors to click through to other pages, to take a look at your offerings, and to possibly sign up for your free gift (and newsletter list).
So, how can you ensure your website visitors are going to explore? Give them an invitation.
WordPress, our most highly recommended platform for blogging for business, has a few free plugins that help you give your readers the nudge they need to take action:
Add promotional content on blog pages
A free plugin on WordPress will give you the ability to add a piece of content that will display at the bottom of every blog post. This will allow you to promote a special or your free sign-up offer, complete with email signup form.
The plugin is called the Bottom-of-Every-Post plugin.
With this plugin, promotional content will show up at the bottom of every blog post, so all your visitors easily see your invitation to explore the site further. In Internet marketing, it’s not enough to wait for visitors to move from reading content to taking action – you must give them a little nudge. This plugin will help you do that.
Direct their attention
Using a Hello Bar is another way to attract your blog readers’ notice. The Hello Bar is exactly what it sounds like: a bar that shows up at the top of your viewers’ screen with a custom message. You can use this bar to promote special content, and include a link. For example, your Hello Bar could say, “Get a free consultation on our services today, click here.” Or you could include an invitation to sign up for your newsletter or announce a sale on a particular product. The possibilities are limitless. If you can write it in one line, and add a link to a page, then you’re on your way.
You can get this tool free at HelloBar.com. The free plan has some limitations as to how many clicks are allowed. If you are just starting up, this may work just fine for you. If you want more options, you can pay for the service.
It offers some nice features, including split testing that will allow you to test multiple messages and styles to see what gets you the best results. You can also access statistics and track clicks, views and the overall click-through rate.
The free version allows up to 25 clicks a month. The paid version, as $4.95 a month, allows 100 clicks, and also includes additional support services.
The good old pop-up
If you want something even more attention-grabbing, you might consider the pop-up. You’ve most likely seen these on other sites. When you load the site, a square box pops up with promotional content. This is often used to promote a free gift (and newsletter sign-up), but occasionally it might include information about an upcoming event or a product available at a special rate for a limited time.
You’ll find that there are many, many plugin options for pop-ups. Some are free and some are paid, and the biggest difference seems to be how picky you are about customizing your design. If you want a simple but clean pop-up, you should have no problem finding something free.
To get started, check out the WP Super Popup. It has both a free and paid version, depending on what you need.
If you want to ensure your blogs are not only bringing traffic to your site, but also directing it to your most highly prized content, one of these tools should help you give your website visitors the nudge they need to explore your site further, and with any luck, become valued clients.
