Someone doing a search online spots your article title and a few words about it. Your headline fairly represents your article and touches one or more emotional reason for the viewer to pursue the matter a little further. The viewer wants to allay a fear that you address, feel respected for knowing what you wrote, solve some problem that angers him or her, or whatever.
The viewer clicks on your article. In maybe five seconds, the first sentence is read and a bit more scanned.
If that test is passed, the viewer reads on. Some in a hurry may only read subheads. Others will read beginning and ending or soak up the whole.
Now what? A lot of the people that have made it this far will have some interest in knowing who the author is. Is the guy on the level? Can I trust him or her when it comes to what the article says?
This is your moment. Of course, if the article solved the reader’s problem entirely, the reader may exit. Why bother going further? If the article was dull, disorganized, or irrelevant to the reader, he or she is going to exit before finishing. Why would some readers click on your link? Why would they go to your website or blog?
Well, for one thing, if your article gives an hors d’œuvre, the link can be to the first course of the meal. Serial shows each end with cliff hangers. If your article ends with a hook, the author information can be the fishing line. Deliver some of the goods in the article and promise more in the resource box or author information area.
For those who feel some reason to invest their energies reading your stuff, most will feel curious, angry, sad, humorous, awed, adventurous, afraid, and so on. Viewers having an emotional reason to peruse your resource box or author biography will.
What is important is the continuity between the article body and the author information in both content and emotional appeal. If your link goes to a site irrelevant to the article, that’s okay, but you aren’t going to get many interested viewers. If your author information shifts to conflicting emotional appeals, you aren’t going to get many interested viewers.
If the emotional appeal of the author biography reinforces or adds to that of the body content, then you are going to get people to click through. In fact, the more emotional appeals, the stronger the reason(s) to click through.
One tactic is thus to begin the author information area with a call to action: “Next, go to …, ” “For further information on ‘X,’ go to … .” Subconsciously, people tend to follow directions, especially when they have at least a mild inclination in your favor. If you link to a blog post or website portion directly relevant to the issue at hand (rather than to the home page), so much the better.
So much the better for your article click through rate, which is what you want.
Peter Rubel
P.S. And do not include your email address in the author area unless you want spam.
Tags: article marketing, click through rate, emotional appeal
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