How to Write Persuasive Blog Posts

 

by Tom Martin

Persuasion is part art and part science.

There are many data-based strategies to successfully create persuasive communication. That's the science. Likewise, there are just as many techniques for delivering the words, ideas, and data that persuasion often requires. Knowledge and mastery of those techniques is the art. And, like science, art can be learned.

So, today I want to share five key characteristics of persuasive blog posts and a simple five-paragraph template for creating your own persuasive blog posts.

Five Characteristics of Persuasive Blog Posts

There are countless books and papers on how to write more persuasively, but I'm going to share the characteristics I've found most effective based on 30 years (ouch, I'm old) of persuading folks using blog posts and other content marketing tools.

The most persuasive blog posts are...

1. Logic-Based

Far too often, we allow our emotions to color our style. Passion is great, but in written communications, passion usually clouds, hides, and often replaces fact. To convince the skeptic, strip your posts of emotional language and pleas entirely.

2. Data-Driven

Writers fall back on emotional language because they lack any meaningful data to support their position. Sometimes the data doesn't exist. But more often the lack of data is because the writer is too lazy to do the work to find the necessary supporting data.

The truth is that it's much harder to argue with data than opinion, so find the most compelling data and include it in your posts.

3. Proven, Not Told

In a great scene in A Few Good Men, Tom Cruise's character tells Demi Moore's character, "It doesn't matter what I think, only what I can prove."

Never have truer words been spoken. When you're trying to persuade "the other side" to come around to your point of view, build your case using logic, facts, and proof served up like breadcrumbs. You want the reader to follow the breadcrumbs down a logic trail that you believe will deliver reasonably intelligent, logical people to your desired point of view.

4. Short

We live in an ADD world. Although I disagree that humans' attention spans have shortened, I emphatically believe humans' time to pay attention is at an absolute premium. Don't make your reader wade through War and Peace. Make your point, make it well, and move on.

5. Not Lines Drawn in the Sand

At some point, your blog post will venture into the land of opinion: the point of view you're promoting and encouraging your reader to adopt. If possible, don't state it as a black-and-white decision. Instead, give the reader permission to acknowledge the point without having to agree or disagree.

Soften the landing with phrases such as "the data seems to support you should do X," or "research suggests doing Y leads to positive outcomes." Softening words, such as "seems" and "suggests," give readers permission to draw their own conclusions vs. having to begrudgingly accept yours.

It may feel like nothing, but that one little change can often be the difference between successful and unsuccessful persuasive efforts.

Did you see what I just did there?

A Template for Writing Persuasive Blog Posts

Now that we hopefully agree on the characteristics of a persuasive blog post, let's move on to writing them—more quickly and efficiently.

Any time I'm looking to speed up a creation process, I look for templates. I'm a big fan of templates because they help clarify your thinking and focus your writing by keeping you on point and reducing or removing tangential rants that often find their way into persuasive writing.

Over my 30-year career, I've had to write a lot of persuasive content—letters, memos, sales decks, whitepapers, and, of course, blog posts. Although this template is designed to write better, more persuasive blog posts, it works exceedingly well for creating all those other forms of persuasion, too.

Though this template may not be perfect, it works for me—and hopefully you.

1. Don't bury the lead

In the first paragraph, summarize what you're going to tell the reader. Explain the current state or problem that you're trying to change. In broad strokes, define the change you seek. Then, offer up a view of the future if the reader adopts your point of view.

If readers are already inclined to agree with you, your job is pretty much done. But if they're not so inclined, you'll have to work a bit harder. So, let's move on to designing the actual persuasion portion of your blog post.

2. State your case in a single line or short paragraph

Tell them what you want them to believe. Don't hedge. Use simple, clear language devoid of vague words and phrases.

3. Use three paragraphs to make three arguments

Why only three paragraphs? Because, believe it or not, there is actual science supporting the theory of three in making persuasive arguments.

Use the first sentence of each paragraph to make a persuasive argument. Use another 2-4 sentences to provide relevant support points or data that you can link to or reiterate. And, yes, ideally include three supporting pieces of data for maximum effect. I call that data triangulation.

If you have more than three arguments, that's fine; You can include them. But ask yourself whether you really need them to successfully persuade the reader. As they say in sales, once you've made the sale, shut up. The same can be said for writing.

4. Use the final paragraph to reiterate your point of view and suggest that the supporting data successfully makes your case

If you're trying to entice the reader to action, give them a simple next step or action to take. Far too often we incorrectly assume that lack of action on the reader's part is the result of too little persuasive fuel, when in truth there is just too much friction associated with the requested action.

* * *

And that's it. A simple five or six-paragraph format for quickly and easily crafting your next persuasive blog post. Give it a try.

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25 Awesome Tips On How To Write Persuasive Blog Posts. Part 2

 (The beginning of article - Part 1 - https://bit.ly/3v4K6tG )

13. Use stories and examples to build audience’s trust

As I have told you that you have to back up your claims in your blog posts.

But what if I tell you that there is a way to let your audience believe your claims without proof?

That way is to use stories.

Stories are a very effective way to connect with your audience and make them believe in your saying.Click to Tweet

That is the reason why we feel a strange connection with stories while reading or watching them.

And you don’t need any proof for that connection.

Isn’t it?

For example, in my Generatepress free vs premium article, I have made a short and sweet story to connect with my readers.

Similarly, examples are a great way to let your readers believe in you without proof.

You can see just a few lines before I have harnessed the power of examples.

14. Address the common objections of the product or service you are promoting

This strategy is one of the best and important for product review articles.

In most of the reviews articles on the internet, you would see people telling only good things about the product.

However, very few actually address the real user queries or objections of the product.

And that is the reason why the latter one drives the most amount of affiliate sales.

Because addressing both good as well as bad things develops trust in your audience about your review which leads to more sales.

Here are some common objections about products that you can counter in your review articles

• What if this product is no use to me?
• What if this product doesn’t work as expected?
• Would I get 100% money-back guarantee with this product?
• How x product compares to y one available in the market? (x your product and y competitor’s product)

You can use Quora, Reddit, Amazon, and product hunt to find the objections for a product.

Also, to fully satisfy your reader’s query, you can add a FAQ section to the end of your product review post.

This also can make a bit difference in product sales.

15. Use the power of visualization

Visualization is a great weapon if you want your readers to take the desired action you want.

This tip works like a charm in the post where you are promoting a product that you want your readers to buy.

For example, in the intro of this post, I have used visualization to draw your attention.

So, that you would read this article till the very end.

However, don’t use it too much because if you overdo it then it would sound like a cliche.

16. Use social proof to improve conversions

Getting conversions is one of the biggest dreams of marketers.

What if I tell you that there is a way to take it to the top?

The way is by adding Social Proof to your article.

In a study, it has been found that 92% of people first read reviews about a product before buying it.

So, there is no denying that social proof is one of the most effective ways to gain user’s trust and buy them products that you are promoting.

Here are some platforms where you can find social proof of any product:

• Reddit
• Quora Questions
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Facebook and twitter polls
• Product hunt or g2.com

After finding the review just take the screenshot of the product and add it to your blog post at relevant places.

17. Make an actionable list post

There are millions of articles available on the internet about a specific topic.

For example, for the keyword keto diet, there are more than 250 million results available on Google.

But most of them just fluff and don’t give their readers actionable steps to accomplish a specific task.

So, to stand out from these articles you have to make an actionable list post that gives your readers exact steps to accomplish a specific task.

In simple words make your reader’s life easier by giving them actionable strategies and in return they would make yours by buying your products.

18. Use a lot of killer subheadings

In this age of video, many people are switching towards videos to gain knowledge.

Because videos are easy to consume and you can get your desired information quickly.

So, how a blogger could survive in this video era?

By using a lot of subheadings.

Simple!

By using a lot of subheadings you are making your blog easy to skim. So, users can easily navigate to the part of the blog post they want to read.

Along with that subheadings make your blog content much more readable.

Tell me which article would you like to read?

One with a big chunk of text or the other one with a lot of subheadings to break that big chunk.

I would go with the second one.

Here are some strategies which you can use to make your subheadings engaging:

• Use question subheadings – Using questions subheadings in your blog post adds curiosity in the mind of your readers, that helps them to get going.
• Use Power Words – Using power words in your blog subheadings evoke emotions in your readers, that helps them to take action.
• Try Negative Subheadings – According to a study, it has been found that using negative headlines worked 30% better than those without them. So, you can try it for subheadings as well.

You can use Quora, Answer the public, Question DB, or SEMrush to find subheadings for your blog.

19. Provide value to your customer first

It is true as affiliate marketers, our job is to sell the products we are promoting, but that doesn’t mean we should always focus on that.

You should first give your loyal readers the value, then expect sales from them.

Many new affiliate marketers try to sell a product by just telling your readers the positive aspects of the product.

Which is one of the nasty practices to have sales.

Because if your readers buy a product after reading your biased review and later found that the product is a bad one then it could cause huge damage to your credibility.

So, always do an unbiased review of the product, telling both the positive and negative of the product you are promoting.

It helps you build super strong credibility within your audience and also make your readers into lifelong customers.

20. Use perceptual contrast to sell your desired product

This is a super exclusive psychological sales tip that you can use to sell your desired affiliate product easily.

Perceptual contrast simply is a method of changing the perception of your readers about a product by comparing it with another which you want sales of.
Click to Tweet

For example in this Bluehost vs Siteground comparison post by Sumit Sao, he has cleverly used this technique to drive more sales.

Bluehost is a very big web hosting company and also WordPress recommends it too.

But in this post, he has tried his level best to change this perception by telling the real drawbacks of this web host.

For this, he has used a lot of screenshots, real person reviews, etc to prove his point.

And in contrast, he has promoted Siteground hosting which he wants sales of.

By giving legit reasons why it is better than the Bluehost one.

Hope you got my point!

21. Add a click to tweet button

Driving organic traffic to your blog is tough in 2022 because you are competing against old authoritative blogs.

But you can drive traffic from social media, and the easiest way to do so is to use click to tweet buttons.

You just have to simply insert it in your blog post and if your readers click on it then your post will be shared on their Twitter account.

To add a click to tweet button you can use the social snap plugin.

It is my favorite social media plugin which I use on all my blogs.

22. Focus on formatting and grammatical errors

Formatting your blog post properly adds a little touch to your blog’s persuasiveness.

You can use blog, italic, and underline in your blog posts to drive the attention of your readers to that word or phrase.

Along with that, you should also pay attention to fix the grammatical errors in your blog posts.

It won’t make or break the persuasiveness of your blog post, but it has several other benefits.

First fixing the grammatical errors increases the readability of your blog post and makes it easy to consume.

Also, your blog is a place where anyone on the web can visit and if you have done a lot of grammatical mistakes in your blog, it can impact your credibility.

I personally use Grammarly to find and correct the grammatical errors in my blog posts.

You can use it as a desktop app, a mobile app, or as a browser extension too.

The best part?

It has a free version too.

23. Determine your CTA and add it

CTA (Call to action) as the name suggests is used to call the user to do a specific task or action which you want them to.

It can help you get more blog comments, social shares, email subscriptions, etc.

For example, in all my blog post conclusion, I ask you a question and tell you to answer in the comment box.

This is a CTA that is telling you to do comment on my blog so I can get more blog comments.

Along with that I also ask my users to share that post which is also an example of CTA.

But this doesn’t mean that you should add a bunch of CTAs altogether in a single post.

You should predefine your CTA for a post before you start writing it.

Is it to share your blog post, do more comments, or subscribe to your YouTube channel.

First, define it and then add it wisely throughout your blog post.

If you want to know how to jaw-breaking CTAs for your blog then you can see this video:

24. Be consistent with your learnings

To develop trust within your audience requires consistent hard work

But it can all be ruined if you change your opinions or facts multiple times in your blogs.

Remember if you really want to make a huge dent in blogging, you should stand by your words.

But how to do that?

You don’t have to do anything out of the box for that.

Just make a journal where you document your learnings which you have got by reading articles or watching videos.

Here is an insider look at the journal that I have made to document my learnings.

Along with that, it would also help you during the research of your articles.

For documenting, you can use Evernote or Google Docs, or any other note-taking app.

25. Write an action packed conclusion

Most bloggers focus a lot on their blog content, headings, etc.

But one thing which is neglected the most is the conclusion of the blog post.

The conclusion is the area of your blog post which can drive you major profits.Click to Tweet

To write an awesome blog conclusion, you should use the 3Es of marketing.

Here are the 3Es of marketing.

Empower

In my blog description guide, I have empowered you by telling you that writing a great blog description is not rocket science.

It gave you the confidence that you can also write effective blog descriptions as well.

Enforce

In the next line, I enforced you that for making a great blog description, you have to follow the advice that I have told you in this blog post.

So, indirectly, I am telling you to read the post again if you haven’t.

Encourage

In the last line of my conclusion, I am asking you a question so that you would comment on that blog post.

Instead of this, you can also promote your affiliate link or ask your readers to share your content.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much research is needed for writing a persuasive blog post?

The amount of research you have to do to make a persuasive blog post depends on the knowledge you have of that particular topic.

If you have ample knowledge, then you would need a day or two to make a structure for your blog post.

And in the next one to two days write content and edit it.

However, if you have no clue about the topic, then you have to do full-fledged research before writing the blog post.

And this should take time.

Is a blog a persuasive text?

Yes, the blog is a persuasive text because you want your readers to take action after reading your blog post.

Especially if you are writing a product review post.

And for that, you have to make your blog post persuasive.

Bottom Line

Writing a persuasive blog post demands a constant struggle and years of practice.

But you can significantly reduce your efforts by applying the above-given tips in your blog posts.

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