Wonder why you blog, email, tweet, share and advertise but don’t get the visits, clicks, signups and sales that you need desperately?

While it could be any number of reasons, I’d like to challenge you to take a good hard look at your call to actions. If you don’t know what they are, simply put – it’s short but powerful sentences, buttons and links that instruct people what to do next. Following are 6 Ways how to do that…

#1 Have A Call To Action

Sounds dead simple right? However, most bloggers don’t have any sort of call to action on their posts, or are inconsistent. I’m guilty of that. That’s why it’s always a good idea to review at intervals during the year your top posts for:

A) The presence of at least one call to action

B) The validity and relevance of the call to action

Remember, call to actions don’t have to always be to buy something or lead to an affiliate link. Although, those would greatly help the profitability of your blog. They could be an invitation to opt-in to your list – another great option or lead them to read other related posts, where you hopefully have product or affiliate links on.

#2 Use Buttons

Links are OK but buttons get attention and when viewed on a mobile device easier to tap as well. Whether buttons get more clicks than links is something you have to test. Whatever the result, if there’s only one action you want the reader to perform, mix it up and save buttons for areas such as the top, middle or bottom of the post. Or, use them to break up the text.

Tip: Creating buttons can be problematic when you aren’t savvy with stylesheet code or graphics. If you use WordPress, try Super Styles.

#3 Invite Them Multiple Times

Don’t just put one link or button and call it a day. Tell readers to click, read, watch, download, discover, and do it several times. Of course, do this tastefully. If your post is super short then it’s probably not a great idea to have a link in every sentence.

Write up your post first, then come back to see where you can naturally insert an invitation for people to perform the action you want them to.

#4 Use Action Words

Whatever action you want readers to perform, use it. Words like:

• Call
• Download
• View
• Order
• Claim
• Register
• Sign Up
• Click – Yes, click! I know the effectiveness of this word is often debated hotly, some saying it’s archaic but the final word should always be your results. If the word Click in your call to actions perform better, then by all means continue using it.

#5 Change It Up

Repetitive call to actions are boring. They also look a bit spammy, and make you sound like a broken record. In a single post, even if you’re inviting people to do the same thing, use different language for your links and use the links in different contexts.

For example, if we were promoting my plugin store on a post, we could link to the offer page when we mention “WordPress Plugins”, later in the post, we might invite people to “Learn more”, after that, we could tell people to “View all plugins” and we could end the post with a button asking people to “Claim A Free Plugin”.

#6 Try Different Action Methods

If you’re asking people to subscribe to your list, try doing it in different ways such as:

• Adding the sign-up form right into your post
• Linking to a dedicated opt-in landing page
• Using links that open the signup form in a popup. There are WordPress plugins you can use do this. One of them is Link Gate. See how it works.

So here’s your challenge. When you write your next post, try these ideas.