I’ve been blogging professionally for about a month now and I’ve learned a lot about the other side of blogging. The purpose is mainly one thing: conversion.

What is conversion? It’s when you get a person that reads the content to do something, be it subscribe to a newsletter, share information with their followers, or buy a product. Most of the time, it’s buying, the golden standard of success for businesses. Sure, blogging aims to increase traffic usually through search engines but the final stage is conversion and without it, your clients will quickly dump you.

Blogging is Sales

As a hobbyist blogger going into my fourth year, I had a hard time understanding this at first. Don’t people want great informative posts that they find amusing, interesting, or intriguing? Yes. But when you’re searching for information on a product, it’s because you’re thinking about buying it. As a professional blogger, the goal is to convince the reader to do what you’re asking, whether it’s buying or opting-in to a list.

Of course, my hobbyist side wanted to tell a story, weave a tale that readers couldn’t walk away from. But do I read a blog about, say, makeup products for the narrative? No, I look at them to find out if I should buy a specific item or not. Once I realized how I used blogs of the variety I was writing for, I understood the purpose better. Professional bloggers, ironically, are in a perfect storm, drawing the connection between potential customers and products they need. They’re fulfilling the purpose of both parities.

Why You Need a Blogging Purpose

You’re probably thinking, “I don’t need to sell myself to my family!” But you do. Let’s break it down.

Your readers of your blog, Mom or not, won’t come back if it’s really boring, poorly written, or just a direct copy of another blog. You have to keep your readers interested, regardless of who they might be.  The purpose, on their side, might be to keep up with your life or enjoy your writing. The key is to do what professional bloggers do, capture attention and get your readers to do something. The something can be tweeting about the post, writing a response post, telling you they liked it, whatever. It’ll help your blog spread and grow.

For a lot of personal bloggers, purpose can mean a variety of things. Blogging can be just sharing with friends and family, putting yourself out there for professional reasons, having a fun pastime, expanding your skills, or a desire to be the next big thing. Whatever you want out of your blog, you need to keep your overall purpose in mind when creating content and seeking out readers.

Take a blog about books for an example. There’s a lot of blogs about books out there but our author wants to show us what she reads, have fun, and share some of her own writing inspired by what she reads with us. If she keeps this purpose in mind, she’ll create content that answers the purpose and generate a good readership. If not, she might decide to post a recipe that has nothing to do with what she’s previously blogged about. She’ll look scattered and her readers might stop reading because it’s not what they came for. But if she posts the recipe and says it’s based on a book and integrates it into her purpose, then she’s on target and her readers love it. Problem solved!

Killing your Blog Darlings