Call to Action in Articles......

A call-to-action gives content a purpose. At the very least, it informs readers what the article is for and how readers can benefit. So my question is why wouldn't you want to do that?

If you're not comfortable with the sales pitch, tone it down. You don't need to blatantly advertise to advertise. Subtlety works too.

A call to action doesn't necessarily mean you have to "sell" something, but your content should definitely have a purpose. A gentle recommendation to subscribe to your email list (below) your content can be of super value and you're not being overly eager to sell right away. Then you can also do a soft-sell in your emails from time to time. If you're providing over-the-top content, readers WILL want to subscribe... and you can also offer them a free report or ebook or extra special offers that those who are NOT subscribers do not get.

Is a call to action essentially just asking the reader to do something? Such as the previous poster suggested, subscribe to a newsletter - or like a Facebook page, share a post, buy a product?

Honestly, it depends on your niche, what you are looking to do with your traffic, and how your visitors make buying decisions.

For example, if you are going to go the Google News route and try to cash in on all that free traffic for industry keywords, then you need to go the pure journalism route and not use calls to action at all within the text. But that doesn't mean you can't have a subscribe banner, multiple contact points and stuff like that....you just don't do it in the main text.

Then again, that's not speaking to ideal consumers...that's a method to bring in everyone for traffic purposes. So it all depends on your goals right now.

Now, if the majority of your traffic is motivated buyers then you definitely need to use a call to action within your blogs. This would be if your page is getting heavy organic or local clicks from folks who are ready to do business with you right away...the strategy would be to impress them, capture their information and the start a conversation. So you want to give them every tool possible to take that first step and reach out.

I hope that helps.

Your call to action must be TAILORED to what KIND of article you wrote.

Your article must fall into ONE of FOUR categories:

Know - articles which help readers get an idea of the different factors and issues surrounding the main problem they're looking to solve.

Like - articles which help readers get a better understanding (and preference for) one of the solutions to a problem.NOTE: the solution here is NOT a specific product/service but a method.

Trust - articles which get the reader to trust your specific solution.

Buy - articles with strong calls to action to buy the particular product/service YOU are promoting

Your call to action must be POSITIONED PROPERLY to reflect the type of article you wrote. Otherwise, you'll be sending out MIXED SIGNALS and chances are HIGH your article won't be as effective as you had hoped.

The key is to PUSH the reader through the KNOW-LIKE-TRUST-BUY process.