A Blogger’s Best Friend: Get AIDA

Tom Chandler writes that AIDA (one of marketing’s oldest formulas) is a copywriter’s best friend. But I would take that one step further and state that it is a blogger’s best friend as well. So I’ve embellished a little on Tom’s post with blogging specifically in mind.

So what is AIDA? It is an abbreviated anacronym for Attention, Interest, Desire and Action.

Attention:

This is self explanatory. Write catchy blog titles that will bring in readers. Nuff said. But sometimes we obsess more on specific keywords within the post title link to get good (SEO) search engine results and forget about the human factor. So don’t forget to write for humans as well as for spiders.

Interest:

In other words, delivering the goods on whatever your post title said to grab your reader’s attention. I’ve talked about this many times before. It’s important that you say what you mean, and mean what you say. Don’t just link bait your readers and then leave them hanging out to dry. Be honest and give them what they came for, otherwise you run the risk of losing a potential repeat reader forever.

Desire:

Ultimately what we want most is to create a desire for our readers to return to our blog, and that means we want them to subscribe to our newsfeed, bookmark us, or link to us. For business bloggers we might want to build good faith and lasting relationships with our customers (or potential customers), encourage our readers to make a purchase or to click on an advertisement. The bottom line is we want to build a lasting readership that will keep coming back to our blog.

Action:

I think this is where most of us blow it (myself included). As Tom points out:

After you’ve gone to all the trouble of getting your reader’s attention, building interest and creating desire, you absolutely must tell your reader what to do.

For bloggers, that might entail encouraging your readers to leave a comment. A reader that makes a comment will probably return again. They will also probably bookmark you or even better, subscribe to your newsfeed.

I can see two reasons for that. Firstly, they will surely return just out of curiosity to see if you or someone else has replied to their comment. Secondly, if they thought your post was important enough to comment on, they will also probably deem your blog worthy of a bookmark or subscription to your newsfeed as well. Hence, it is important that you try and develop a thriving community of commenters on your blog.

Tom ends his post with an addition to the AIDA formula that he calls Engagement:

Simply put, try to end your posts with an open comment or a question that will create a desire for your readers to engage in the conversation. Now you are a ready for the big leagues.

So in keeping with what we’ve just learned I’ll end this post with a question — do you think that AIDA is relevant to blogging, and could it be helpful in building your blog traffic and readership? I know that I do.