You might be saying, "I'm a blogger, not a sales person. I create content. Why would I need to worry about calls to action?" But if you are, I'd encourage you to adjust your thinking. Making money from your blog, growing your business, and getting readers to interact will be next to impossible if you can't effectively motivate your audience to take action.
Still skeptical? Take a look at Darren Rowse. His latest video on making money online encourages bloggers to build products, and for good reason: according to his blogging income breakdown, 40% of his February income came from ebooks and another 9% from membership sites such as Third Tribe Marketing and ProBlogger.com. Certainly these revenue streams would not have existed if he'd never asked anyone to buy his ebooks or join these sites. He is successful, in part, because he's great at creating effective calls to action.
Even if you're not selling anything (yet), you still want your audience to take action by commenting, interacting, sharing, Facebook "liking" your post, watching your videos, attending your events, etc. These things all grow your blog and your community. So let's get into some tips that will help you create successful calls to action on your blog, no matter what your goal. To give you some examples of these tips in action, I'll use blog posts about the last month's most-blogged-about stories, according to Regator (they are, in order: Japan, Libya, SXSW, Charlie Sheen, March Madness, AT&T, Elizabeth Taylor, St. Patrick's Day, iPad 2, and Rebecca Black).
1. Be clear
Example: Social Times's "10 Ways To Help Japan Through Social Media"
In this example, the goal is to get readers to take action to help Japan. There are several options, and each is presented in a clear, simple way: "Watch this video," "If you have received information about someone in Japan who was affected by the earthquake or tsunami … add this information to Google's Person...
