How's Your Strategy? Optimize for List Growth & Audience Trust

How’s Your Strategy? is a video series where I’ll be reviewing the strategy behind the blogs and websites of creative entrepreneurs. I take a close look at each person’s goals and how they’re being reflected on their website and make suggestions for improvements.

Follow along and ask how you can apply what we’re going over to your own website. Take one change you can make to your website and get to work on it today.

Today we’re looking at the website of J. Gilbert of Joyfully J. She’s all about motivating and empowering women, specifically moms, to take a leap of faith to build their own business and maybe even write their first book.

J’s goals that we’ll focus on are growing a target email list and building trust with her audience.

Enjoy!

In case video isn’t your thing, here are some of the main points we went over in the review.

Optimizing for list building

Focus on easy-to-find opt-in opportunities in places like your header, sidebar, and/or footer
Save landing pages for super high-value or temporary offers
Avoid having too many calls to action in one spot – you don’t want your audience to be overwhelmed or just ignore things all-together
Include a call to action at the bottom of your about page to give readers a next step
Use graphics to draw attention to your opt-in opportunities
Use content upgrades in your blog posts
- Content upgrades are more effective than asking people signup for a newsletter because people want to benefit from the actions they take

Building trust with your audience

People looking to hire or buy a product from a small business want to know the person they’re working with, not just the website
On your About page include an image and information about yourself that will show your audience you’re qualified for what you do or teach
Your sidebar is a great place to include a headshot and quick bio that connects with your audience
Your blog content is where your audience will look for your to prove your knowledge, so be sure to have content that relates to your products and services