Are You Persuasive?

You’ve written your content, and your words sparkle on the page.

You’ve SEO’d it to the max, and ensured that every one of the keywords that showed up in your analytics has been artfully included.

You’ve trimmed and tightened, and included some hot visuals to draw the eye.

But …. have you persuaded?

Think about it. That was the point of the exercise, wasn’t it?

All content is persuasion. It’s the main purpose when we create and post content. We want to persuade readers that we are expert at something they care about. We want to convince them that they should give us a second look when considering B2B vendors. We want to draw them into our orbit.

So whether we have persuaded those readers to follow up and — oh, please, please — contact us and perhaps begin the engagement process is important.

Persuasion doesn’t come easy, which is probably why it doesn’t always happen.

We can’t just craft a scintillating article, or design a fabulous ebook, or create a blog post that is retweeted everywhere and expect that to be enough.

If someone hasn’t looked at it, become enchanted enough with the possibilities of working with us, or at least marked us down as a possible for some day, then we may have attracted them, or even entertained them.

But we haven’t persuaded them of anything.

Persuasion is the creation of an impression in someone’s mind that they should take some action. It involves thinking, of course, but the point of persuasion is to entice someone to do something. It’s influencing, cajoling, inducing, perhaps even seducing.

The first and main point of persuasive content should be to get into the minds of people that we are hoping to persuade.

1. We have to have a logical argument that makes sense to the reader or viewer
2. We have to talk to them in a language that’s familiar
3. We have to show them that we understand them and their problems
4. We have to convince them that there is more beyond this one post or article … and that they should search for it
5. We have to, finally, move them to take a larger step, contact us somehow and engage with us

Think about the content you create so rigorously. Is it aimed at the right people? Does it address their concerns and offer the hint of solutions to their problems. Is it seductive enough that viewers will take some action.

Is it persuading anyone to do something?