Every marketing tactic you do is all about getting attention.

Blogging, advertising, social media, and SEO all are meant to get people to find you online.

Now that you have their attention, how are you going to convert that into genuine interest?

Remember that people won’t buy from you unless they trust you.

So you have to turn attention, into interest, into trust, before converting them to paying customers.

And people today have digital A.D.D. If they don’t find something they like in 10 seconds or less, they’re gone.

You want to get people to stick around.

Let’s say someone Googled “best Orange County fishing spots”.

They found your blog post (because you used long-tail SEO) and followed the link to your website.

Now you have their attention. Let’s turn it into interest.

Opt-In Opportunities

You need to give people the opportunity to opt-in at various places on your website.

It will make it easy for them to find it, and increase your subscriber conversions.

The first place is at the top of your sidebar. This is a prominent position that people pay a lot of attention to.

Second, is the bottom of each blog post. If people like what they’re reading, then you want to give them the opportunity to sign up to receive more just like it.

Finally, you should include an opt-in opportunity on your resource pages. You’ll learn more about those in a minute.

Related Posts

Your content should be like a spider web.

You want all the various pieces to overlap and connect to create a sticky net.

This helps increase visitor retention by providing them other interesting, helpful information they might like.

There are two primary ways to do this.

You should be interlinking from your posts to other related posts. These inline links help spark people’s interest and gives them more background information on that specific topic.

You can also have a “Related Posts” section at the bottom of each post. When they’re finished reading, it’s a way to provide further help or context to the topic.

Popular Articles

You can also put a “Popular Articles” in the sidebar.

These are the articles that have the most visitors and views. It’s your audience’s favorite content, which is the equivalent of “social proof”.

Social Proof is a powerful concept that tells people, “If it’s good enough for these people, then it’s good enough for you”.

It acts as a credibility builder and shows that you know what you’re talking about.

If other people believe you and vote with their actions (attention, visits, traffic,), then new people can assume it’s safe to buy into you as well.

Resource Pages

Resource pages are your final, secret weapon.

They’re content landing pages that help you convert strangers into subscribers.

Blogs are in reverse chronological order, so your new content always shows up first. However you want people to see your best content too.

Creating resource pages allows you to highlight specific sections and help readers see the most important information you have.

Another popular tactic is to use a “New? Start Here” page. This gives readers a more proper introduction, and allows you to highlight specific things for new visitors to see on your site.

All of these tactics are meant to keep people hanging around.

The best ways to measure this interest are by looking at pages per visit, depth of visit or time on site.

Getting people’s attention is difficult. They’re bombarded with messages today.

But once you have that attention, you need to turn it into genuine interest as fast as possible.

If not, then you may lose them forever.