I am sure you are familiar with the saying “You only get one first impression”. This applies to more than just everyday life, it also applies to your blog! If your blogging style does not draw in readers then you won’t get anywhere!
Is it your blogging dream to convert every single visitor into a real time reader? It’s a great dream! But you have to figure out how to impress every visitor to your blog and give them reasons to come back!
When I started blogging, I asked myself some simple questions that helped me step up my game… those answers turned into golden tips which I still use to make my blog a better place where readers want to come and stay. In today’s post, I will be sharing some of these golden tips to help you learn how to impress your first time blog visitors and make them yours.
Create a Unique & Compelling Landing Page
You know how warm you feel when you visit someone’s home and are greeted with a big smile and a heartfelt “Welcome”? That’s exactly what you need to do on your blog! The average reader is more likely to return when you make them feel welcome and valued. Make sure each visitor to your blog knows that you appreciate them.
As a regular guest blogger, I realized how productive this practice could be and so went ahead to create a custom landing page where I expect every visitor coming from the blogs where I guest posted to land. I use the link to this on my author bio instead of my homepage link. I made sure this page is unique, meaty, and compelling to keep first time visitors busy and hungry to know more.
Offer Something Meaty & Free
The biggest mistake most bloggers, writers, and marketers make is directly marketing their products to first time visitors. While marketing your products is not a bad idea, doing it when you have not really gained full attention of the visitors sets you up for failure.
The ideal practice is to offer something valuable – for free! You might wonder – if I don’t market them on the first visit then how will I get my product out there? Offering something for free is another way of marketing your exposure, experience, and expertise. When you give something for free you give your to-be-audience or client the opportunity of seeing what you are made of. This single practice will compel them to subscribe to your email list and primes them to buy the next time you present a product to them.
So what can you offer for free?
Remember the product you are offering is a test of what you are made of, so be smart with what you offer. Make sure it’s something that will put a smile on their face because it’s a major determinant of what mindset they will have when you do present products. eBooks are a really popular free offer although some people offer free videos. It really depends on what works best for your business.
Do you Know how to KISS?
No, not what you are thinking. KISS stands for: Keep It Simple and Steady. This is one thing that differentiates professional bloggers from those struggling to make a better blog. They keep their blog content simple and allows them flow in a steady tone.
An average visitor is looking for a blog that offers solutions to their problems in a simple and yet productive way. Attention spans are short and there are too many things going on to focus on a blog that is too long or unclear. The few bloggers who understands this trend write blogs that impresses first time visitors. This is a win-win! Once a visitor finds out you give him what he wants in simple and steady way, he will identify with you.
How Clean is your Blog Design?
Your blog design is another factor that determines if you impress or convert first timers on your blog into readers. Personally, I like blogs with clean designs, it makes me want to visit again and again. The days of clustering a blog with ads, plugins, and widgets are gone. Today it’s the cleaner, the better.
I have seen blogs with great content but very poor or reader unfriendly designs. Such blogs flounder, no matter how well they write. Remember the context of this post is “first time visitors”, which means they have not visited before and so ruining it the first time means ruining your career as a blogger.
Ideally, you want to use a theme that clearly differentiates the content from ads and easy to read text in contrasting colors. Don’t forget about font size, font color, and hyperlinks… all these parameters require your careful attention.
Optimize your Blog & Make it Fit for Everybody
Aside from giving your blog a clean design, another important step to impress first time visitors is to optimize your blog so that it is easy to read for everybody. Keep in mind that people don’t only read on their laptops or desktops, there are now notebooks, iPads, and mobile phones. All these gadgets have their own screen sizes and formats. Making sure your blog reads well across all platforms helps readers to read your content without straining their eyes and makes them more likely to come back.
Wow Them with Epic Content!
If you have been following up on the blog posts made here on Search Engine Journal, you will notice that I have a thing for epic content. I also like defining it each time I write about it, so here is what an epic content is:
Epic content is content written to celebrate your readers. It’s a content written out of clear mind, love, and inspiration.
Epic content has no strings attached. Instead you are bent on giving the best to your readers without holding a thing from them.
This is what impresses first time visitors… just because they are visiting for the first time does not mean they are novice; they may have been reading other blogs in your niche and hence will know which blog is offering them the real thing. Writing epic content means writing for those you love so dearly, and when these visitors see the love in your writing tone they go out of their way to subscribe to your blog!
What Other Ways do You Use Impress Your First Time Blog Visitors?
What other measures do you apply on your blog to impress first time visitors to your blog? Let’s crack this discussion in comment…
Image Credit: FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Jackson Nwachukwu is an entrepreneur who blogs about copywriting and content marketing at Content Practical Media. You can visit him today for practical content writing advice you can implement right now to grow your business.