We know that having a call to action can improve engagement on social and encourage conversion on landing pages. But what about content marketing? Can your blog posts benefit from including a simple call to action? According to HubSpot’s Dan Zarrella, it’s a resounding yes.
Using a dataset of 50,000+ blog posts, Zarrella analyzed posts containing one of three simple call-to-action words: comment, link and share. He found that posts containing one of those call-to-action phrases received more engagement (in the form of comments, links and views) than those that did not.
Based on Zarrella’s findings, it’s safe to say that, if you’re looking for engagement, it’s better to include a simple call to action somewhere in the mix than to go without. If you plan to start integrating CTAs in your blog posts, keep the following points in mind.
Include the call to action at the bottom of your post for the most conversion.
The goal of writing a blog post is to have viewers read it and then act, right? If that’s the case, then doesn’t it make most sense to save the CTA until the end of the post? Using it too soon could cause readers to steer away from your post and, possibly, from your site altogether. Instead, save it for the end.
Make it simple and keep it short.
For the most part, the CTAs Zarrella analyzed only consist of one word: link, comment, share. Even if you didn’t have the context of a complete sentence surrounding them, you’d still be able to determine what the blogger is asking you to do. They’re easy to understand, but they’re also easy to follow through on. The easier it is for your audience to act on, the more engagement and greater response you’ll get.
Adjust the CTA from post to post if need be.
Depending on what your blog post is about, it may not make much sense for you to use your go-to CTA. For example, if you’ve put together a comprehensive list of something, you’re not going to be looking for readers to comment and add their own ideas to the list. Instead, you want them to share the list with others to build traffic and help your content reach others. Determine what the best CTA is for the type of post you’re creating and then stick to it to avoid giving readers too many directions.
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